Date: Sat, 27 Dec 2003 10:02:44 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Lisboa
Bom dia,
Half my trip is over. for this first half, i've been luckly to have excellent weather every day - nice and sunny and warm... today was the first day since munich that was overcast,foggy and cold.
i spent most of the day in the suburb of Belem (translation: Bethlehem) ... went to a monastery there, which was ok.. added surprise was that there was a wedding going on today, so i saw that too. the chapel was great... the priest's voice was really carrying in there! the monastery was nice... the foggyness added to the niceness of it too. the whole place was very quiet... very relaxing. i lingered there quite a long time.
next was the "Museu de Marinha" -- Maritime Museum. this was also ok -- it had a lot of models of ships from the "glory days" of Portugal's world exploration. It also had 2 real (and intact) canoes brought over from Cochin and Goa, India during the 1500's. seeing that was kind of interesting.. lot of information about Goa and Diu actually... They had a model of the castle in Diu. And models of ships of Vasco De Gama, Henry the Navigator, etc... then real much newer full-size original ships -- dating from late 1800's onwards. all in all, quite interesting.
after that was a quick stop at a cafeteria for lunch... consisting of one Indian-style samosa, two chicken croissants, and some kind of an apple pudding that looked better than it tasted.
finally last stop in Belem was the best of all of the above -- the Torre De Belem -- Tower of Belem. It's not really a tall tower, but looks quite nice. Built around early 1500's or something ---- i forget now. It's on the river (Rio Tejo) overlooking all the Lisbon and Belem area beaches... again,the foggyness added to the beauty i think. But it took away from the views though..still nice!
Then took the tram back to Lisbon -- that was pretty much the end of the day. I roamed around the Baixa marketplace area... nothing interesting there. Then went to the internet cafe I was at yesterday to send this email - closed. Went to another one -- long line. Went to a third one - and i actually got on a PC, but it had Windows 2000 installed with 16mb ram... extreeeeemely slow! I replied to a couple of your emails and left... and now i'm at THIS place -- the fourth one today -- a web cafe called "Web Cafe" in a not-so-nice part of town. looking out the window i can see some graffiti in english... "all terrorists welcome" and "All Al Qaida welcome to Lisboa".. hmmmmmmmmmmmm....
well, that's all for today -- tomorrow there's one more place left to see in Lisbon "Castello de Sao Jorge" then off to Sintra for some nice palaces, then off to Porto for the night. day after that to Bilbao, Spain ....... and the day after that -- PARIS for new years!
hope it doesn't rain there on the 31st.. i can stand the cold, just not the rain/snow. forecast says 50% chance of rain...
chao,
me.
Monastery:
Museum of Maritime History:
Tower of Belem:
Other Lisbon Pictures: