Northbound from Lisbon

It’s time to pack up here in Lisbon. Tomorrow, we take a train 3 hours north to Porto. Porto is where we meet up with Road Scholar – Beyond the Vineyards. We cover a lot of smaller towns and sites – things that Ron and I can’t possibly get to via train.

We are doing:

• Porto, Portugal
• Amarante, Portugal
• Aveiro, Portugal
• Santiago de Compostela, Spain
• Leon, Spain
• Segovia, Spain
• And then we finish the trip with 4 nights in Barcelona on our own

We spent our last big day in Lisbon on our own, walking a route that should never be walked. We had asked one of our Lisbon Riders guides about the idea of walking from the Old Town to the Lisbon Aquarium, and she gave it a definitely not, which, as always, sets off some haywire connections in our brains that dictates that we must walk it.

While it certainly gave us some unique sights into the outlying areas of Lisbon, it took us hours and hours, and, in the end, we took an Uber back at a cost of only 7 Euros, making me wish we had shelled out money for a ride earlier in the day. We spent way more than 7 Euros on drinks, snacks, more drinks, more snacks over the course of our walk;)

But we are richer for the experience…or at least still in possession of our cash. Here is the alley where we nearly got mugged by a quintet of young men, who turned away at the last moment, when I spied some people in a backyard and walked us right in:

Here is some random art:

And here we are, lost in some sort of industrial warehouse district:

But fret not because we did make it to the National Tile Museum (Museu Nacional do Azuelo), housed in a convent from 1509. We arrived at 12:30, merely two hours behind schedule, and found that they close for lunch at 1:00, so we had 30 minutes to appreciate the history of Lisbon, the history of tile making, and the history of tile making in Lisbon. The coolest thing there was a 75 foot blue and white tile rendering of Lisbon, done in 1738 – before the 1755 earthquake. They’ve got the entire thing up on a wall on the 3rd floor:

Having learned no lesson whatsoever from the first part of our trek to the Tile Museum, we still failed to call an Uber and continued on to the Lisbon Aquarium. Here, along with thousands of young Lisbon primary school children, we got up close with some penguins at their fantastic penguin encounter. The picture below is not enlarged – that is how close I was!

The Aquarium had other assorted sea creatures etc., but I was there for the penguins. I did also make my standard travel discovery of a pineapple drink that can’t be found in the US:

I’ll leave you with this last photo…a fine example of one of the many cool things about Lisbon. Lisbon’s history as a repressed dictatorship is evident in much of what we saw here. The edges are rougher, the buildings are more ramshackle…but the city is alive with happy people, eager for tourists, and a wonderful place to stroll. It’s one of the best travel bargains I’ve come across in Western Europe. Look at those prices!!