Hop on Hop off in Lisbon

Start off today with breakfast that is included with our hotel. First time we have seen a full breakfast at a hotel we have stayed in, scrambled eggs and everything. Andre is suffering from his cold still so takes it easy to start the morning. I head off a couple of blocks down the street to find the post office to pay the balance of our tolls. You always hear about postal workers in the US going crazy, they gave it easy compared to Portugal. Wow, these people really get yelled at a lot, I sure wish I understood what they were saying, but lots of yelling...I paid my last 3.50 Euro that they shows as outstanding, we were sure it would be 4.50, wonder if that last Euro will ever catch up with us? I really think by the next time we are in Portugal this whole toll system will have changed, it really is silly, and makes renting the car a bit of a pain. We think we have it figured out now, but we have definitely wasted a few hours just trying to pay our tolls, or figuring out where to pay our tolls, over the last few weeks.

Back to the hotel and we are ready to venture out one last time and return the car. We decided that Lisbon is just too busy, and parking is just to crazy to us to bother with driving ourselves, we'll just use the metro and bus system. So our 15 minute drive from the hotel took us nearly 1.5 hours, not one of our most enjoyable trips to say the least. But, we made it safe and sound, car passed inspection, and we are all paid up. The car rental place drove us back to the airport and from there we caught a city bus to where we could get on the hop on hop off bus tour. Not sure if it was just the stress of how the day started this morning, the off and on rain, or what but this was not our best tour. We completed most of one tour then got off the bus in the city as the bus was finished for a break. We then decided to grab some lunch at a little lunch counter, then got on another hop on bus on another route. We were sitting upstairs in the open air and of course it started to rain, and we were both freezing, so we decided to get off at the Basilica even though it is pretty much out in the middle of nowhere.

The roundabouts all had amazing things in the middle, like this statue

Train station, from Expo 98

Hanging out some laundry

Parliment building

Interesting seats along the waterfront, share it with a tree!

Nice view of water and gardens

ice skating rink

At the Basilica we went in a side door and I saw a sign to climb the tower. OK, one more tower climb and off we go. We get to the top, about 120 stairs, and a nice view but not the most impressive. We see another door at the other side, go in here and it is above the sanctuary and we are in the dome part looking down onto the church, an entire circular balcony that is open in the middle. Wow, am I ever glad we did this, what a unique view. It was a little scary looking over the edge, and if you dropped anything, oops it would have fallen right where the priest would have stood. A family with 2 young teenage girls came up not long after us and the girls wouldn't come into the balcony, they stood in the doorway and looked in, but wouldn't walk around, thought of Dad here, he would have been right with those 2 girls holding their hands! 

Basalica

At the top, see door behind, this is where we went in to see the next shots

Looking up

Looking down, amazing!

Straight down, very high, Dad would love this!!!

Looking across

Back down the steps and the guy that sold us the tickets to go up told us not to miss the crypt in his broken English, he said the small door was open and to just go in from inside the Basilica. So off we go to explore another Church, we come across the door to the “crypt” and this little old lady is inside and starts to talk to us. She explains how beautiful it is here, and that there are over 300 figures made out of paper mache from the 1700's, I'm really confused now, and then she turns on a light and this beautiful creche is displayed. It was really stunning, so much work would have gone into this, really very special. We spent quite a while in here just looking at and admiring all the figures, and talking to this lady.

amazing creche of paper mache

From here we had a decision to make, go back and finish the tour from where we got off, but it is still cold and rainy and we are pretty sure we will never get a seat inside. We thought about walking back, but weren't sure just how far we were. Then we saw the trams that are included in our tour ticket so decided to try that. Figured out where to catch the tram and hopped on for an another adventure. This tram was packed with people, some not too happy to have tourists on board I don't think. There was one guy that jumped on the back when we started moving and just help on to the side of the train, the Portuguese woman beside me told me to be very careful, this is what the pickpockets do, they distract you by doing this while the pickpocket is on the train.

Tram we rode

Off the tram and no real plan. We know we want to do Belem but we are running out of time today, and it may be better for tomorrow anyway as it is where we hope to do some museums and it is not supposed to be very nice tomorrow. So, off we go again on the exact same bus tour we had started earlier, only this time we complete the round. So we've done 2 routes today, seen some nice sites, some impressive statues and architecture but we are done for the day. One thing we did see that was especially interesting was the bull ring. Interesting because we watched a bullfight last night on TV and we realized this was the bullring that we saw last night, they have the fights here on Thursday nights. In Portugal they do not kill the bulls like they do in Spain. Plus last night we saw that a horse and rider seemed equally important as a bullfighter that we are used to seeing with a cape. The horses were amazing, they had live music that the horse would prance to as it was egging on the bull. The best part of the fight was at the end though. About 10 men come out all dressed up like matadors and one guy puts like a jesters hat on and starts walking towards the bull. By this time the bull is pretty tired, he has been taunted now for quite a while by the horse, as well as the bullfighter. Anyway this jester guy starts getting closer and closer to the bull, starts calling to it, and eventually the bull charges him. This is the amazing part, the jester jumps on top of the bull and then the bull continues on into the rest of the men that are lined up behind the jester, it is kind of like human bowling with a bull! We saw them do it twice with the same line up! I sure hope these guys are well paid. We're not sure how it really ends but we saw the bull eventually stop fighting and the men had him pinned down.

bull ring - seats 8000

I know we would have had to stop here if we had any grandsons or nephews with us!!

After the second bus tour we have had it for the day. We grab the metro back to the hotel, get warmed up and have a port. We are working on finishing our opened bottle before we leave, don't think we will have any problems with this!

We're pretty beat after spending the day out so decide to just go to a restaurant near our hotel. Front desk recommends a place just across the street and down a side side, so off we go. There are only 2 people in the restaurant, but we're just too tired to look for somewhere else, it is already 8PM by now. This is an Italian place and we haven't eaten Italian since we've been away so it will be a nice change. The menu is not in English so we ask for an English menu, the waiter leaves and out comes the cook, he is the English menu. So, the cook explains some things, and takes our order and gives it to the waiter, very cute. I had a delicious pizza, very thin crust with lots of veggies on it, Andre had some kind of beef in port, he said it was good too. It is so fun watching what goes on around you, the waiter pulled the dishwasher out, gave her a few coins and off she went to get something, then she came back and he gave her some paper money and out she goes again. I was planning on ordering some kind of pasta but the chef told me they do not make any of the pasta or sauce homemade, so I went for the pizza, I told Andre if the dishwasher brought back a frozen pizza we were leaving! Anyway dishwasher did come back with something in a bag eventually, but we were already served by then so no idea what that was all about, but it was fun to watch.

Back to the hotel, Andre is really hobbling, he has done something to his hip and walks like a very old man. He's been complaining that I walk to slow this trip, ha I could easily beat him in a foot race now! Climbing the tower yesterday I flew up in front of him. Poor guy, hope it is better before he has to get on a plane on Sunday for the day.

This is what part of our day looked like today

Off to bed, tomorrow we will try to hit the sites that we missed out on today’s travels.