Chapter Sixteen: Our Neighbor to the West o El Primer Día en Lisbon

I decided it prudent to take advantage of the relative proximity of Portugal and have a weekend getaway in Lisbon. As with many trips, I hadn't researched Lisbon until the night before the journey, so I looked through various suggestions, TripAdvisor, and Wikipedia to create a plan for seeing the city. These scrawled notes became the blueprint for a delightful trip.

Upon arriving in Lisbon, we dropped our belongings in a charming hostel -which served banana pancakes every morning - and continued to downtown Lisbon for lunch at an Indian restaurant. We strolled around the area, finding trams that went all over the city. While my previous experience with trams had mainly been the quaint and touristy trolleys in San Francisco, I learned through a bumpy half hour ride that the Lisbon trams are much more functional than decorative.

 

After staying on the tram too long and having to make another trip through the city, we eventually ended up in one of the city's higher neighborhoods, close to the Castle of São Jorge that overlooks the city. All bruises from the tram ride were soon forgotten as we looked out upon a sea of Spanish tile roofs and the Tagus River -which I called the "river ocean" given our proximity to the peninsula's coast and the fact that I wasn't sure if it was a river or the entrance to an ocean.

As we looked along the Tagus, we saw a reddish bridge that connected the two sides of the river known as the "25 de Abril" bridge. Given the tram ride and seeing the "25 de Abril" bridge, I almost felt like I was back in San Francisco, ready for some clam chowder courtesy of Fisherman's Wharf or an encounter with some junkies courtesy of the Haight. Anyway, climbing along the walls of the Castle was an adventure in itself and it was amazing to be walking along the rampart just as people in the past had - with no safety railings.

 

The trip back from the castle was a little more confusing and I ended up strolling through what felt like most of Lisbon. We ended up finding a tram to Belem, the city's historical neighborhood. After walking by the Jerónimos Monastery and seeing what I think is the Monument to the Discoveries from afar, we headed to the possibly world famous "Pastéis de Belém" where Lisbon's pastry delicacy "Pastéis de Belém" is served and theoretically originated. Apparently nuns started making them in the monastery (and apparently desert and pastry making is a popular pastime for monks and nuns according to my Señora) before they began selling them in the shop next door. Sitting in a large tiled room, I enjoyed a sandwich and pastéis before finishing the first day in Lisbon. Alright, this chapter has gotten sufficiently long, so I think the next chapter will deal with my visit to Sintra and the rest of Lisbon.