From Faro we took a morning train which left at about 10:00 AM to travel north to Lisbon, which is the capital of Portugal. As the ride started out it took us through many orange groves...
As the journey went on the landscape got more mountainous and there were many beautiful wild flowers. The trip was supposed to last about 3 hours however about an hour into the ride we started slowing way down then eventually came to a complete stop. Then shortly an announcement came over the loud speaker in Portuguese, so of course we could not understand it. Judging by everyone's frustrated looking faces and body language we made the assumption that there was going to be some sort of delay. We ended up sitting in the same spot for about 45 mins so we ended up finally making it to Lisbon about 2:00 pm.
After we checked into our hotel we set out to find some lunch. Then we bought tickets for the Lisbon hop on hop off tour bus to take us around and start getting acclimated to the city. Lisbon is definitely quite a bit different than Faro as it is much bigger and more of a commercialized city. There is still a lot of old uniqueness to the city (pics to come later.)
After riding one route on the bus we headed back to our hotel to check out the panoramic view of the city from the bar/restaurant located at the top floor. The sun was setting over the hills and it was beautiful to see the light hitting the red roof tops. The pictures don't really do the view justice...
but below is a link to a short video clip. Still much better in person but helps get the idea...
After enjoying the view and it got darker we took a cab into one of the main squares we had seen on the bus tour (we were staying a bit further up the hill). When we got dropped off we just happened to catch the end of a light show that was going on. The colors lighting up one of the buildings were really fun to watch. Check it out in the video clip that we took below...
The next morning was Easter Sunday and we started out by having brunch at our hotel. Next we set out to do the other route on the bus tour. This section was to show us the newer areas of Lisbon. We have really enjoyed the hop on hop off tours in other cities but this one we both agreed was a fail! Both times we had to move around seats to get our headphones to work in the outlets and once they finally did it didn't give us much history of the city, etc. On the second route we felt like we just rode around on a city bus for about 2 hours not really seeing or learning anything. It even drove us to the airport, not sure why... We might be done with the bus tours for a bit.
Like Faro, Lisbon also had some graffiti in some places that are real works of art...
Lisbon was a little cooler then Faro and a bit rainy for a short time, didn't stop us though...
Eventually we made our way down to the marina area along the river. This is also where there is a huge bridge that resembles the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco! When we came into Lisbon from Faro the train actually went across the bridge.
Across the river there is also a huge Christ statue (you can see it in the distance in the far left in the pic above.) We never actually got close to it, but got this shot with our zoom lens, it is huge...
In the marina area we found a great restaurant called 5 Oceanios for a nice Easter lunch. The large prawns and sesame seabass were excellent!
After lunch we set off for more exploring of Lisbon. Here we are in the square during the daylight of where the light show had been the previous night...
From there we set out to wander through the Alfama neighborhood. This is a very hilly part of Lisbon with very narrow and unique streets.
We found the cutest little beers we had to try out too, they were less than 1 Euro!
Since Lisbon is so hilly in some places there are street cars. We didn't ride one but they are another resemblance to San Francisco!
From the Alfama area we continued our way up the hill to Castelo De Sao Jorge (a castle). Here is a view of it in the distance...
The exterior as well as interior is made up of brick walls and open spaces to explore...
Our favorite part was that it had great views overlooking the city...
I've mentioned before that one of our favorite things about traveling to new places is trying out each countries food specialties. In Portugal they are know for their amazing custard tarts! They were so good...
The event that began that night I struggle to even describe how it happened and what it was actually like...There really is no way to because it was so crazy in person but I'll do my best with words, a few photos and a short video clip! So we were walking back to our hotel around 7:00 pm and we noticed big crowds of people watching a futbol game on TV and could hear people chanting and cheering. Eventually we got to a point on the sidewalk where there was an area with a big screen and probably around 100 people watching the futbol (soccer) game. They had air horns, scarves they were waving around and there was lot of yelling with excitement. We stopped on the side to watch for a bit and Brian said, "we pretty much cannot go back to our hotel right now because something big is about to happen!" Turns out it was Lisbon's hometown team Benfica about to win the national title which they have been chasing for several years.
There was only a few mins left in the game and when they won the entire city went NUTS!!! This is where it gets hard to describe... EVERY car on the street was honking and waving things out their windows (this didn't stop for more than 6 hours) People came flooding from EVERYWHERE and began running to one of the main squares in Lisbon which happened to be near our hotel. This turned out to be a HUGE pep fest that last way past our bed time! It's funny because we had a picture of me earlier in the day with the empty square behind me...
Then this is what it looked like shortly after the game ended and just continued to fill up as the night went on...
See the statue of a man in the center and the crane? They used the crane to put a huge team jersey on the man! As the night went on people were climbing the statue and a few people made it all the way up to the top, so crazy (and dangerous!)
Watch this short video clip we took to help get the idea of what it was like!
It was such a crazy experience to just happen to be in Lisbon during this exciting time for entire city. We had to buy one of the scarves they were selling all over to remember it! By the time we made our way back to our hotel around midnight you literally could hardly walk in the streets and people were climbing street signs and traffic lights! Just as we were falling asleep at 12:45am a huge fireworks display began that you could see from our room! There is no doubt the party (and car honking) lasted all night!
The next day we set out to explore the village of Sintra which was about a 30 minute train ride from Lisbon. It is nestled in the Sintra Mountains and had very lush tropical looking vegetation and spectacular views.
Since we didn't want to walk all the way up the mountain we thought it would be way more fun to have a driver take us in a "tuk tuk"...
We learned history of Sintra and saw great views as we wound our way up to the top...
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Eventually we arrived at the beautiful Palace of Pena!
The palace had so many interesting shapes colors and tiles...
After touring the palace our tuk tuk driver picked us up and brought us back down the mountain. We got some lunch quick then went to explore the Quinta da Regaleira (old royal summer residence).
There were some underground tunnels we were able to explore and one lead to what is called the Initiatic Well. The bottom of the well is 88 feet down into the earth and has a spiral staircase that leads you back up to the surface. The well is supposed to represent the relationship between heaven and earth and when you move up towards the light at the top of the well your sins are said to have been washed away. Here is the view from the bottom looking up, water was constantly dripping down slowly...
Midway up...
View from the top looking down...
On our last day (we didn't leave until that evening) we took the train about 30 mins to the coastal town of Cascais. We had breakfast and just walked along the pretty coastline...
All said and done we LOVED Portugal!
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