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Lighthouse on the rocks at Nazare
the lighthouse looks as though it has been knocked over by the powerful waves! Our route from Satao to Lisbon took us through Nazare, a beach resort on Portugal’s West coast. We organised a stop for a few nights at Vale de Paraiso campsite and spent some time exploring the surrounding area.
Nazare has a beautiful beach and the long beachfront road houses cafes, restaurants, ‘gift’ shops (mostly selling tat but a couple of the shops have some nice tiles, pottery and wooden boats etc.) and little else. The beach was almost empty the day we visited, although the sun was out, there was a relentless and chilly wind coming off the sea so sunbathing was clearly not an appealing option for most. It’s easy to see why the beaches along the west and south coast of Portugal are so popular for surfing! Huge waves!! We wandered along the beach and, from the shops along the front, took a few turnings in to the narrow cobbled lanes behind. These hold more charm than the long stretch of beach cafes and bars, the houses that run either side of the alleys have their washing strung above, bird cages hung outside and signboards advertising rooms to rent.
There’s a tough climb from the beach up,
through the town, to the main N242 road that lead to our campsite (until the 18
th century the lower beach areas of the town were actually under water and the people lived more inland at Promontorio do Sitio, which is on the cliff top, 110 metres above the sea) but you can choose to take the funicular up to Promontorio do Sitio instead, which takes a matter of minutes, although it did make me feel a bit peculiar: sitting in the carriage, going backwards and upwards away from the town… I don’t think it’s one of my favourite ways to travel, perhaps I should have sat the other way around so that I couldn’t see the rooftops falling away as we went up?! Though I feel that this would defeat the object…
Local walking routes around Portugal are well signposted or marked with red and yellow painted symbols; all you need to do is follow. We tried out one of the routes from our campsite to a beach just north of the town’s main beach, the route was really well planned out and the fact that we reached the beach and back again, through pine forests and sandy tracks,
is a testament to how easy the markings are to follow. The beach at the end of the walk was totally deserted, not only of people but also of any kind of commercialism! Not even a solitary ice-cream shed! A nice surprise and luckily I’d brought lunch so we sat in the sand dunes and ate.
We travelled to Lisbon after this short stop at Nazare, it was a surprisingly easy journey and it took us over the 25 de Abril bridge, a suspension bridge that carries vehicles and trains across the River Tejo, built by the same American bridge company that built the San Francisco Oakland Bay bridge (not the Golden Gate, as we first thought, it looks very similar!). High above the bridge on the Almada banks of the river stands a statue, in excess of 100 metres high, of Christ the King: Cristo-Rei in Portuguese, looking over the city. He was built here to symbolize the gratitude the Portuguese felt for being spared the effects of World War II. Steve thought it looked as though he was about to perform a double back somersault plunge in to the river!
Lisbon is a very diverse city;
it became a major trading point in the 15
th century as a sea route to India was discovered and, later, gold in Brazil. The city was all but destroyed by three massive earthquakes on 1
st November 1755, the following tremors brought fires and a tsunami that killed as many as 90,000 of the 270,000 inhabitants but the Marques de Pombal immediately set about rebuilding the city in a ‘simple, cheap, earthquake proof style’ that still remains. There is a statue of this revered man atop a towering column in the Parque Eduardo VII, from this point you can see all the way across the city out to the river and beyond!
We hopped on one of the old wooden trams for a ride around the city: number 28 takes you on the best journey around the narrow back streets and up some hills so steep you’re sure it’s not going to make it to the top! The tram was as packed as a Central Line tube train so it was tough to get really good views out of the windows as we were standing but it’s such fun anyway we didn’t care! The tram driver finished his route and
kicked us all off, there were only tourists left on the tram by this point; we all looked at one another as if to say ‘where are we and how do we get back to the main part of town??’, Steve and I figured out where we were with the help of the phones map app and headed back to the Baixa area on foot. This took an absolute age and carried us through some less salubrious parts of town! With aching feet we decided there and then to take a tourist bus the following day and, from this, we could decide what we wanted to see.
Each area of the city has a different kind of ambiance: Baixa is a grid of wide, criss-cross streets and plazas; it was this area that was first rebuilt after the earthquakes. The streets are named after the trades that once took place in this area, from shoemakers to cod-fishing! Principe Real, Santos and Estrela are the posher part of town, with boutiques hotels and antique shops. The Rato area is stuffed full of expensive hotels and designer shops… we just looked at these from the bus! One of the absolute must
The Tram...
Just gorgeous!! see’s though, is the Alfama district and the Castelo (castle), the little lanes are tiny and full of character and although there are a good number of tourists wandering around looking lost, there is also a real local feel to the area, people going about their usual business, probably having a chuckle at the rest of us as we blankly consult our maps and trot up another wrong turn!
We had a fantastic couple of days in Lisbon, there’s so much to see that we barely skimmed the surface, I think if you visited over and over again, you would find something different every time.
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paul and jackie
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Lisbon Bridges
Is the Vasco de Gama bridge on the A12 open yet, it should offer miles and miles of views of the city & river... Love the tram, driver was probably "train"ed in London.