We woke up to screeching sound of cars and breaking glass.....right outside our window, down on the street below there was an accident. We couldn't really see everything cos it was obscured by some trees, but there were police sirens and a lot of chaos. After our usual shower and solid breakfast, we headed to Roosio square to meet our guide for our 3 hour walking tour of Lisbon. We figured since we only had a day left and so much to see, this was a good way of covering it all. We got to the square by 9.30 or so and had a half hour wait. We could see other tourists also hanging around for the guide. He showed up exactly at 10am, a Purtugese chap called Edgar. There were about 8 of us, a fun couple from Calgary, a jolly guy fcalled Alejandro from Mexico, another couple from Australia and a very quiet guy from Germany. We hit it off with the Calgary couple - Sandy and Grainger - right away esp R and Grainger who worked for the Canadian Oil and Gas Co. Our guide Edgar introduced himself, gave us a brief run down of Portugese history and was soon joined by his asst. Calea. The walking tour took us thru some very interesting parts of Lisbon, a few places R and I had already been to including the Alfama area. On the way, the guide stopped at a liquer store and introduced us to a very potent Portugese liquer called Ginginha. The tour was supposed to end with a tram ride to the top of one of the 7 hills of Lisbon, but as luck would have it, the street power was off so we all had to trudge up....it was quite a hike but probably more interesting than the tram ride cos we walked thru some narrow residential areas of the city and got a good look at how people live. Finally it was done by about 2pm. The Canadian couple and R and I visited the nearby Castelo De Sao Jorge, spent some time there and then went our separate ways. R and I hunted for a restaurant called Resto De Chapito near the castle that Gautam had recomended for lunch and we stopped there for a great pasta lunch and a magnificent view of the city.
We walked back to Rossio square, stopped at an Internet cafe for an hour or so, met the Canadian couple there again, bought some strawberries and candy, picked up our clean clothes from the laundromat and went back to the hotel. We slept for a while, woke up at 5pm and decided to just hang out at the hotel itself for the rest of the evening.
No comments:
Post a Comment