I Wish it Would Rain Down(Phil Collins) - Another drizzly day in Lisbon,Portugal

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Twenty four hours have passed since daylight yesterday and as light came up today......nothing much has changed with the weather, just more drizzly rain.

We are either going to have to do what we did yesterday and take on Lisbon in the rain or vegetate in the apartment.

We waited and eventually as the morning passed the weather did show signs of improving and so we decided to make the drive into the city around 20km away and see what we could achieve by way of sightseeing.

If we only did one thing then catching the #28 tram which is essentially a tourist tram would be our aim.

As we headed down to the coastal N7 road that would take us into the city the sun started to break through the clouds out to sea and as that was the way the weather was coming from, our spirits for a better afternoon rose.

It was a good 20km into Lisbon city and it was built up all the way although the road was a 70kph speed limit and the traffic all hummed along with just the occasional roundabout to slow things a little.

The massive Ponte 25 de Abril (25^th April) suspension bridge towers above the water between Lisbon and Almada on the southern side. It has been likened to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and certainly is a standout feature of the bay. Unfortunately we didn’t get in a position to stop the car and take some video or photos of this imposing structure.

As has been the case before we were distracted from getting to where we thought there was going to packing close to where the tram #28 left from to do its run.

There were roadworks and a car jammed in front of a bus that needed to turn left to continue its direction and behind that a heap of impatient drivers.

As they started to use their car horn to hurry things along Gretchen somehow swerved around the back of the bus and headed up the hill towards another car park that had appeared on the GPS.

The car park was in a shopping mall and entry was from the road and down underground into a maze of cars and alleyways to drive up and down trying to find a space. Just as we were about to think we would never find a car park in this vast area we found one!

Before we left home I had had a mental picture of where we would end up in the city but now that picture had gone!

We were on a hill as we emerged from the mall and we were sure what we wanted was on the flat so we trekked down what seemed like a road taking us in the right direction.

At a busy intersection we came across a tourist map on a stand and got our bearings, we were headed in the right direction, of sorts.

We don’t usually do cities but here there was the #28 tram to ride and if that was all we managed then so be it.

We found our way onto the main street to the tourist part of town; the Avenida de Liberdade.It is based upon the Champs-Elyesee in Paris and is 90 metres wide with two lanes of speeding traffic both sides of a wide walkway down the middle which is tree lined and looking fresh in the spring leaf colours.

Continuing downhill and taking in some of the Moorish design buildings we got ourselves to the bottom and entered a large square where we also located a tourist caravan and got instructions to where the #28 tram left from. Without finding this tourist caravan we would have been lost!

Wandering around to where we had been told to head an incoming #28 tram came by absolutely chocker full of people.

Although the city has new trams that operate on most routes it can only be the 1930’s Remodelado variety that is small enough to get around some of the corners on the route.

We got to where the route started only to be confronted by a horde of people waiting to get on the next tram.

It looked like we were going to be thwarted again in ticking one of ‘must do’s ‘ of the list as neither of us are quite up to getting on a small tram with dozens of other people after making the progress we have over that flu bug.

So we watched the tram unload and reload taking all the people waiting and then watched it disappear off into the maze of streets.

It seemed the sun had bought the tourists out in great numbers and we couldn’t be sure how many would turn up for the next tram and whether there would be a similar number to that on the next departure.

We had come a fair distance from the car park in the mall and we had to get ourselves back there. Although we did now have a street map from the tourist caravan.

We hadn’t had any lunch and we were a little low on sugar so we stopped off at a cafe in the big square and got ourselves a coffee and a sugar rush in the form of a rather sugary cake.

We had at least got some energy back in our systems and so we retraced our steps back up the Avenida we had come down the hill on.

We did take a couple of wrong turns but we were still able to find our way to the underground car park in the mall.

There seemed to be a lack of exit directional signs so we decided to wait for a car pass us that we thought might be exiting and then we would get in behind it and follow it.

That idea worked perfectly and as it turned out we weren’t actually parked that far from the exit.

We headed home on the same road we came into the city on, feeling disappointed that we hadn’t achieved what we had wanted to with sightseeing in Lisbon. However the weather hasn’t given us the time to do the things that needed dry weather and there is not much we can do about that.

Our friends Mila and Thunder were waiting at the gate for us and escorted us into the apartment.

Tomorrow we are off for a night in the hinterland, 150km odd inland from Lisbon.

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