From 11/10:
We started out this morning with a stroll through the Parque de Eduardo. Lisbon doesn’t have a lot of green space in the city but this is a large city park.
Then we headed to Station Apolonia to check out the train schedules for tomorrow. I’m still trying to figure out if the trip to the National Horse Fair is possible. I know that in theory you can take the train but so far I hadn’t been able to find the station that this mythical train would leave from. I think I have it figured out now.
Just outside the station is a military museum. Or as the SO put it, “A boy museum!!” This wasn’t in the guidebooks because it isn’t set up for tourists. There aren’t English captions on most things. But really, do you need translations on how to use cannons? They are sort of point and shoot. It is in a huge and ornate building with real life Army guys. It also said no pictures. Now, I had taken a few pictures before I saw the sign. After that there were a few things that needed to be photographed so I had the SO stand lookout so the Army didn’t get me. There was a stature of some guy on a horse. The horse’s name was on the card. I thought that was sweet. He also happened to have the same name as the SO. I found that amusing so I took his picture. There was also a wagon used to haul pillars for an arch. The thing was massive. The wheels were about 10 feet tall. It needed photographed too. I’m not in jail so it is all ok.
From there we wandered around the Alfama some in search of some churches. We found one but they were charging to get in so we said no. The other was never found. We did end up having a fanta with some Dutch tourists in front of the Fado (Portuguese blues) Museum. We also found a small neighborhood church. It was very ornate inside but there was a man yelling, “No Pictures!” So we took a picture of the graffiti on the wall outside instead. I’m not posting because it was rather rude. It suggested that people become intimate with the Pope.
We jumped back on the metro to go to Port Wine store where they did tastings. We tried a white and a red. I’m not a huge wine fan but the SO liked it. It was Invictus brand.
Another train ride took us to Parque de Nacoes which was built for an Expo. Vasco de Gama mall is also there. Imagine that. You discover a sea route to India and gain control of the ocean for your people and they name a mall after you. Lunch was at an Italian restaurant in the mall. I had a pizza Margherita. The waiter kept saying “I’m sorry” every time he came over. He meant, “Excuse me” but we kept thinking he did something bad every time. We finally explained the difference to him.
We went out to the park and wandered around on the river. There is a sky tram and a huge oceanarium that we were too cheap to go into. The walls of the oceanarium have sea creatures made out of tile quilt blocks on them. Very awesome.
The SO has trouble with his back and feet from old Army injuries so he wasn’t feeling so good. We headed back to the hotel. There is a big movie theater and mall by the hotel so we saw a movie. You Again with Kristen Bell and Jamie Lee Curtis. It was in English with Portuguese subtitles.
I’ve decided that I am a homing pigeon. Show me where home is in a strange city and I can find it again. We tried again to find the restaurant from the first night. This time I didn’t get lost at all and was able to find the most direct route even though someone was whining that nothing looked familiar. That was because we never took the direct route before because we were previously lost. I had a warm goat cheese with figs appetizer and mushroom risotto with fresh mashed apples and chocolate mousse with orange cream. The dinner music was recordings of covers of popular songs. The best one was a song that had a swinging 1950s style. The man singing was a crooner like Frank Sinatra. So imagine my shock when I concentrated for a second and realized the chorus was, “I’m on a highway to Hell!” I’m sure AC/DC never imagined it like that. Then we took the direct route back which upset the SO because we only walked 9.72 miles and had we gotten lost even once we would have easily gone over 10 for the day.
