Wednesday was another bright and sunny day and at 9 am we were on the bus for the start of our tour of Cosmopolitan Lisbon. Our guide was Fatima, who had met us at the airport.
The first stop was the Tower of Belem, which is pronounced in a nasal kind of way that I cannot replicate with the written word. It was actually quite busy here as there were lots of other buses visiting this landmark site in Lisbon.
This area in general is important in Portuguese history as the starting point for many of the voyages of discovery undertaken by Portuguese mariners and explorers throughout the ages. Indeed, the first thing we stopped to admire was this monument to the first aerial crossing of the south Atlantic from Portugal to Brazil. This took place in 1922.
Rather more prosaically, this street vendor opposite, lets you squeeze your own orange juice by pedalling the bike! It was a bit too energetic for us to do that.
Here we all are in front of the Tower.
The Tower was completed in 1519 and is considered to be a very fine example of Manueline architecture, so named after King Manuel I who ruled Portugal at about that time. It is a rich and slightly idiosyncratic Gothic style of architecture, but it does look pretty good.
Surprisingly, we did not visit the nearby Monument of the Discoveries, which was built in 1960, to commemorate the many voyages of discovery that left from this part of Lisbon. I managed to take this photo with the zoom lens just to show that it is still there.
It was a very short bus ride to our next stop, the Monastery of St Jerome. This is a splendid Gothic and Manueline building that took 100 years to build from 1501 to 1601.
It is astonishingly beautiful both inside and out.
As you might expect, it has some quite nice cloisters inside as well.
Vasco da Gama was entombed here. He was, as you will remember from school, the first European to reach India by sea in 1499.
Happily Viking had sorted out tickets to get in, so no queuing for us. Even more happily, Fatima had arranged to meet us, after our tour of the monastery, in a little cafe where we managed a quick cuppa and another of those delicious little custard tarts.
It was here that I came across this long tea bag - I've never seen one of these before. It was actually very good.
Then it was back on the bus to go to the Alfama area of the city. This had once been under the domination of the Moors, but later was a bit of a Jewish enclave. It was typified by tiny squares, white churches and narrow streets.
The area of Alfama lies below the old Moorish Castle that sits above the city.
Shortly after our visit to Alfama, we were released by Fatima to spend the rest of the afternoon in the city centre. The four of us worked our way down to Commerce Square that we had passed earlier in the day.
We went by the Santa Justa elevator that allows people to move easily between different street levels. It was built in 1902.
We soon found a little place for some lunch called Tapas and Friends. It is a chain, but the food was nice as was the service.
We had some nice ham, prawns, Padron peppers, crispy thin potatoes with aioli, olives, red wine. What's not to like?
Nymphs at the fountain.
At the Commerce Square, we happened upon the most astonishing thing - a beer museum. It was quite warm by now, so we had to stop for a very cold beer, just because it was there.
Of course, the square is not just about the beer, it has some very nice architecture to be photographed in front of.
From the square we left for our hotel and spent some time resting up, freshening up and dressing up for another dinner. Sharon had been in Facebook correspondence with the owner of the Little Wine Bar and that is where we went. It is rightly famous for tapas and wine.
One of the specialities is the chorizo flamed in wine at your table.
We also had some more Pata Negra - you really cannot eat too much of this ham - along with more prawns with chilli and garlic, codfish cakes, cheese croquettes, nice bread, oil, mixed butters. It was all just delightful.
Michael and I also had these little steaks with onion and horseradish.
Pudding was a scrumptious chocolate cake.
We had a very nice Gallego wine to start and then a bottle of Quinta de Rede from the Duoro. We also managed a glass of port with the pudding.
It was a lovely meal, but the restaurant was in the middle of a very long flight of steps, so not the most accessible. However, there were restaurants all up and down the steps, which made it very pleasant to walk by before we got back to our hotel.
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