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Published: January 13th 2010
After missing our flight to Lisbon we weren't taking any chances with the rescheduled flight. I was slightly anxious that, given we had to get up at 4.30 am, we might sleep in. When Conor asked me if I'd set an alarm for the morning my response was, 'I've set four.' Anyway, no dramas second time round.
Our visit to Lisbon got off to a bit of an ominous start, however. After checking in to the hostel we went out for a walk around town and were greeted by a man beating the living daylights out of another guy with a stick. Not sure if they were homeless or wasted or what, but it wasn't pleasant. Even more unpleasant was the woman yelling encouragement in Portuguese to the beater. Fortunately, the man being attacked was able to get away.
Highlights of Lisbon include:
- Wandering around the streets of the Alfama district.
- Visiting the Castelo de Sao Jorge, a really nice castle with great views over Lisbon.
- Seeing the Mosteiro dos Jeronimos.
- Eating custard tarts, which the Portuguese apparently do best, in Belem district.
- Walking along the waterfront to Torre de Belem, an old
fort/tower with good views.
- Hearing some fado - traditional Portuguese music.
- Doing a day trip to the beautiful town of Sintra, just north of Lisbon. We did a really nice walk up to Pena Palace, which was a very different sort of palace. From 1840, it's a mish-mash of styles and colours, blending pinks and yellows with blue and white mosaics. The palace also has a really nice garden with plants and trees from all over the world.
From Lisbon we got a train up to Portugal's second largest town, Porto, which is famous for producing port. Porto is a really nice, although slightly rundown, place with lots of cool tiled houses and streets for wandering. It also has a massive bridge over the river Douro which you can walk across and allows you to see the whole of Porto.
We put in a pretty decent effort on the port-tasting front. Between tastings and tours we now know a fair bit about it. It wasn't long before we were agreeing with the motto of Percy Croft from Croft wineries: 'Any time not spent drinking port is a waste of time.' We also caught a train through
the grape growing area to the town of Regua, which provided some spectacular scenery. The train follows the Douro river and there are narrow terraced vineyards all the way along. We also had a pretty amusing lunch in Regua, due to the extremely attentive waiters at the restaurant. To start with, one of them actually went and took another customer's food so that he could show us the special of the day. He was also far too good at topping up our glasses and we ended up having a little bit more port than we needed to... made for an interesting train ride home.
To end Conor's trip we had a couple of days in London, staying with Michelle and Stefan. We smashed out all the main sights in that time: Trafalgar Square, Big Ben, Westminster, Buckingham Palace, St. James' Garden, West End, Tower of London, St. Paul's Cathedral, Hyde Park, Notting Hill, Brick Lane and Camden markets. Highlights include seeing the Billy Elliot musical, a return trip to Brick Lane for more great food, and Conor's performance in Hyde Park - attempting some sort of running heel click, she stacked and fell straight into the mud. Nice work
Constance!
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anonymous
non-member comment
I see I made it to Pena Palace? Unfortunately we didnt get there and what you took a photo of was actually a mirror! What you were doing naked, lounging about with flowers reliving woodstock, I guess Ill never know!