A fantastic first day in Lisbon!

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The inspiration behind my trip to Lisbon was to visit one of our good friends from Mike's lawschool class in London (CTLS), Maria, who is from just outside of Lisbon. Not only was it a great opportunity to spend more time with her, but it was great to see some of Portugal from a local's perspective. We were staying with her family in their apartment that is just outside the main city of Lisbon (in an area called Corroios), and a 20 minute drive or train ride away.

On this first morning we took it a bit easy because I had gotten in so late last night. After having breakfast, we drove into Lisbon to visit an inner-city homework program that Maria usually volunteers at on Saturdays. From the moment that we walked up to the door of the program, it was apparent how much the kids love Maria and how they missed her while she was in London; they all ran to give her enormous hugs. She introduced me to the kids and they were all so cute in trying to learn or use whatever English they could to talk to me. We spent about an hour at the program while Maria caught up with the kids and they even had a birthday cake for her birthday that had passed. It was so inspiring that she was obviously making such a difference in the lives of these children.

After the program, Maria took me down to the bank of the Tagus river, on which the city sits. Lisbon, however, is situated right at the end of the river where it goes out into the Atlantic ocean, so it is essentially a costal city. They had a really pretty boardwalk down along the water, near the old expo grounds. I was surprised to see a gondola, like one that you would see on a mountain, going up and over the water, which was really neat! It was such a bright and beautiful day!

For lunch, we met up with Maria's aunt in a really bright shopping mall just off the boardwalk, and she bought us lunch in the cafeteria. It was neat to meet her family, but just like her parents, her aunt doesn't speak any English (and my portugese is non-existant!) so communication was a bit difficult.

After lunch, we continued strolling along the boardwalk and ended up at the Lisbon aquarium (Oceanario de Lisboa). At first I thought that since I've been to the Vancouver aquarium which is pretty good, how different can this be? But WOW, was it ever amazing! The Vancouver aquarium does not compare to this at all. Part of the aquarium is the different habitats and climate controlled exhibits featuring otters, birds, fish and my favourite, the penguins. The super amazing part of the aquarium though, is the area where you are walking amidst a giant aqarium! They have this one huge building that is dedicated to this huge continuous aquarium. As you walk around the building, you are walking over, under and beside this aquarium where giant turtles, sharks and many many other sea life are swimming. In some places the glass wall is about 2-3 storeys high so you feel like you are right at the bottom of the ocean almost swimming with them. We got a kick out of the giant turtles that swam by the glass under our feet as we walked. It was very cool and I HIGHLY recommend visiting the aquarium if you go to Lisbon.

After we finished with the aquarium, we headed back to the car and were going to drive into the old part of downtown Lisbon to look around. I had to help Maria navigate around, even though she had GPS and I'm not from Lisbon and she is!! (I told Maria I would write that and the next part in for jokes!). We went to park the car in a lot near the law school that she attends, because it's easier to park a bit further away and then take the metro in. It was busy and there were no spots left, except for one that required parallel parking. She told me earlier that she did not want to parallel park, but as this was the only spot left and it was pretty big, I managed to convince her. It took her numerous tries to get into the spot, and I had to guide her in by standing outside. Her many attempts (as well as my yelling in English) caught the eye of some construction workers that were working on a building right there. They must have thought "stupid English girls can't park portugese cars", and it was obvious that they were cat-calling Maria in Portugese (of course she understood everything they said, and it was something like, "aww sweetie, do you want me to park that car for you?"). After she finally managed to park the car, I was trying to get her to say something snooty back in Portugese and surprise them, but she didn't! I thought it was funny she could understand them and they didn't know it!

We took the metro to the old part of downtown and walked around a bit. One of the main architectural features I've noticed that is unique to Portugal is the tiled exterior of buildings. Unfortunately we didn't have too much time to explore downtown as we already had a full day. We strolled down to the water, through the old streets and to Praca do Comercio (Commercial Square where some of the government buildings are). After we did some walking, we stopped at this amazing gelato place, called Santini, that has some really exotic flavours of gelato. Yum yum!!! After this, we retired back to the apartment to watch a movie because we were tired from being out in the hot sun all day, plus we did a lot of walking so we needed a rest to prepare for tomorrow!

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Photos

Such a beautiful tree
I just really like this picture. Taken on the boardwalk under the gondolas.

The gondola following the boardwalk
Such beautiful flowers, it looks so tropical!

Probably one of the weirdest pieces of art I've seen
Near the site of the expo, just off the boardwalk

Standing on top of the giant turtle
At the aquarium.