There is a little cafe a few doors down the street and we thought we would get a croissant and coffee for breakfast. I think something got lost in the translation and we ended up with two ham and cheese sandwiches on some kind of tasty roll.
We decided to follow the self guided walking tour of the Baixa district from our Lonely Planet guide. We started out at the waterfront at the Praca do Comercio. A really nice square with fabulous buildings.
Chris also found a pay WC that cost 1 Euro ($1.40). It was advertised as "the sexiest WC in the world"!
As we worked our way up from the waterfront there were lots of squares, plazas and narrow steep streets.
And of course some street buskers to entertain the cruise ship people who only venture a few blocks from the waterfront.
We walked for a couple of hours and finally stopped to sample some Ginjinha, a local cherry liqueur.
It was only early afternoon so we thought we should walk to one of the high points in the city for an overlook in the Alfama district. On our way there, we encountered a TukTuk driver and struck up a conversation. For 10 Euros, he gave us a guided tour up through the streets to the park with a fabulous observation area. Best 10 Euros spent so far.
We had some great views of the city.
We followed the narrow winding streets downhill through the old city of Alfama. This is the part of Lisbon that survived the earthquake of 1755. Narrow steep streets and tiled buildings.
On our way we visited the Se, a formidable building built in 1150 on the site of a mosque after the Christians recaptured the city from the Moors.
We made our way back to the waterfront and walked along it until it was time to climb the 500 stairs to the street of our apartment.
After 18,500 steps today we found a nearby rooftop bar and a beer and sangria.
We only ventured a few doors down the street to a local restaurant for supper and a reasonably early bed time, still suffering a bit of jet lag.
Great shots as always. I see on day 2 you wandered through Alfama, the area in which we rented our apartment. Lisbon is a great city to walk around isn't it?
ReplyDeleteA note on the blog format - for some reason a list of pages are not showing up on the right margin. I see a link to September and that is it. I had to guess the URL for day 2 as I couldn't find it anywhere.
Mark