Lisbon, Portugal- Day 1

This weekend I made a journey to Portugal not knowing what to expect. It was not exactly at the top of my list of places to visit in Europe. Words cannot express how wonderful it was. There is so much to write that I have decided to split it up into 3 entries, one for each day.

When we landed it was beautiful weather, sunny, clear skies and about 78 degrees. We took a bus from the airport to our hostel, Living Lounge. When I think of "hostel" the picture that comes to mind does not resemble this place one bit. It was gorgeous, so clean, just wonderful, better than some hotels I have stayed in. We put our stuff down and headed out to explore the city.

The first adventure was to walk to "Cais do Sodre". We found it and then took a street trolley down the road towards the Belem Tower. On the trolley you pay through a machine and there is no attendant or anyone checking tickets. So my friend Jeannie says," I the ride home I think we will save the 2 euros and not buy tickets." A few minutes later 3 officials get on-board and start checking tickets. Some other foreigners had a problem so the officials took their passports and wrote them a ticket. From that point we knew we always be buying a ticket.

The first stop was at a Monastery built in the 16th century with a combination of late-baroque and the Renaissance styles. It was quite beautiful. Then we headed across the road towards the Tagus River. On the river is a monument dedicated on the 500th anniversary of the death of Prince Henry the Navigator to acknowledge Portugal's discoveries throughout the world. Now looking out onto the river there is a bridge that looks identical to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, it is the sister bridge. It was commissioned to be built during the reign of a dictator in 1965, and is now named "Ponte 25 de Abril" (Bridge of April 25) which marked the day that ended dictatorship in Portugal in 1974. After admiring the bridge we headed down the river to the Belem tower. Torre de Belém was built in the 16th century to provide protection for the city and has been used for other things over the years. It is now a monument and we were planning on going up in the tower. When we got to the door there was a sign that said "Closed - workers on strike". So we were not able to go on top of it. After a few hours we decided to head back. This journey turned out to take much longer than expected.

First we waited for about 45 minutes for the trolley that would take us back, and it never showed up. So I asked a bus driver if his bus would also take us back and he said yes. So we got on and sat in Portuguese traffic for almost an hour. It turns out there was a fire that caused the traffic. In the meanwhile we were standing on a bus with no room to move at all. There was no air conditioning so we were dripping in sweat. We were so thankful to get off.

After Jill and I headed up to the Basílica da Estrela, the first church in the world to be dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. When we arrived we could not just look inside because they had just started mass. So we decided to go to mass and this way we would also be able to see the church. Well it was in Portuguese so knew what was going on, but did not know the words that were being said. It was interesting. During the sign of peace we picked up on how to say peace in Portuguese and so we said it to the others around us. Following mass we headed back to the hostel for dinner. The cooked us a wonderful meal and we met new friends, some from the U.S., others from Ireland, and some from France. This would soon become the closing of our eventful yet ejoyable first day in Lisbon.