Here are the last photos that I want to show you from my January trip to Lisbon. I really enjoyed this ‘Jewish flea market’. I don’t know what was Jewish about it but it was definitely flea-style, the trash and treasure kind of market.

I love the colours.

Here’s Joan. Mum will ‘tsk tsk’ about me wearing sneakers with a dress but it would have been impossible to walk in the pretty black shoes that I brought to wear for the work part of the week.

Mmm, sexy reading material. Wolfgang and Rosangela paid a Euro for the sauciest one of these graphic novels.

We took a 45 minute train trip out of Lisbon to a town called Sintra. Sintra is famous for its three castles, and we made it to none of them due to underplanning and over-relaxing.

This ‘house of cream tarts’ (queijadas) was in front of the train station.

We came across this door on our long climb up the mountain towards the Moorish Castle.

The first sign of the castle were these ruins.

We reached the Moorish Castle half an hour before it was to close. We decided to save ourselves the cost of the entry fees and continued on the path to the next castle, Pena National Palace.

It was only to be expected. Pena Palace had just closed when we arrived. By this time we were a little weary of the whole thing, so we paid for the crazy lurching bus ride down the mountain to the centre of town. It is a picturesque place, full of little craft stores and the smell of roasting chestnuts. And of course the third castle, Sintra National Palace in town, was closed too.

On our last day in Lisbon, we took a 20 minute tram ride to Belém, home to the justifiably famous Pastel de nata, the Portuguese egg tart. The tarts are so yummy! I wish I took a photo of us sprinkling cinnamon and icing sugar on them and scoffing them down.

But here is a photo of Belém’s second most famous attraction, the Belém Tower.

The Tower and other museums are free to visit on Sundays.

The chapel of Jerónimos Monastery, which is a World Heritage site. It’s very pretty but, you know, I’m a bit over cathedrals and chapels now. I think I’m done, now that I’ve seen Canterbury Cathedral, York Minster, Winchester Cathedral, Durham Cathedral, King’s College Chapel in Cambridge, the Dom in Cologne and other churches all over Germany, the Sacre Couer and Notre Dame in Paris…

Well, maybe I’ll make an exception. I might still put up the cash to visit Westminster Abbey one day.

Lisbon by night is as interesting as it is by day. While we were there for work, we went out to dinner every night. I don’t have any photos from then, but here are some from my weekend off.

This made me, Wolfgang and Rosangela laugh for a long time. Maybe it wasn’t an error, though. Maybe resistance does give rise to more resistance.

The streets are lined with orange trees. I’m told these are Seville oranges, which I sometimes see at the grocery store labelled with the warning ‘BITTER ORANGES. Best used for marmalades and cooking’.

Despite the warnings, we decided that we would try them out.

Many people seem to have had the same idea as us because we couldn’t find any low hanging fruit. Damjan and Rosangela, the tallest of the four of us, were tasked with fetching some oranges.

Although Wolfgang is grimacing, he actually seemed to quite enjoy suffering.

 

And here is a view of Lisbon from a lookout that our hostel manager recommended. In fact, he mapped out an extremely detailed itinerary for us for the two days that we were there.

If I have only a few days to spend in a city, I tend to spend those days walking around. I prefer not to visit a big attraction that takes up the whole day.

In Lisbon, I made an exception. We finished up work on Thursday. Damjan was flying in Friday night so I didn’t mind frittering away my Friday until he arrived. I figured I would save my city exploring so that we could go together.

This is how Wolfgang, Rosangela and I ended up at the Lisbon Oceanarium. I absolutely did not regret it — such a wonderful place! It’s the largest aquarium in Europe. It has five massive tanks. The one in the middle represents the open ocean. The other four surrounding the centre tank represent the Atlantic, the Indian, the Pacific and the Antarctic Oceans.

My favourite sight was the single sunfish. I have never heard of this fish before. It is huge! According to Wikipedia, the sunfish has been recorded at ‘up to 3.3 metres (11 ft) in length and 2 tonnes (2.2 short tons) in weight’. You’ll see in one of my photos below Wolfgang standing next to the sunfish.

At the entry, a massive ancient sea creature is made of crushed aluminium cans. There are lots of environmental messages throughout the Oceanarium.

The Oceanarium was full of loud kids.

This is the open ocean tank. I think I saw those funny (serious-looking) fish below the manta ray in ‘Finding Nemo’.

Open ocean

There are schools of fish in the tank. Apparently, when the scientists notice that the schools are getting smaller, they realise that the bigger fish are not getting enough food. The big fish are hand fed. Shrinking schools mean that something is wrong with the nutrient balance.

These are Atlantic Ocean birds.

This manta looks like it’s flying.

The sunfish! The next photos are a series showing the sunfish being fed.

Sunfish feeding

Sunfish feeding

Sunfish feeding. You can see the hand reaching down. How does the sunfish know that the food’s for him?

Squid for lunch.

These birds were in the Antarctic Ocean. They flew around the tourists quite happily and weren’t scared at all.

This is is ice in the Antarctic Ocean. It is an extremely odd smooth texture. It’s because the ice is growing from the inside. It’s growing around an extremely cold pipe of some sort.

This is an sea otter in the Pacific Ocean exhibit. It was very cute.

Some shells encrusted on rocks in the Pacific Ocean.

Wolfgang next to the sunfish.

 

This lady’s talking on her mobile and her baby is watching the fish screensaver.

This photo looks like something you might see in a Chinese restaurant.

Long overdue, here are some photos from my trip to Lisbon, Portugal.

We found a hostel in the very centre of the city. When we stepped out, we were already on a main boulevard, Rua Augusta.

Lisbon seems to be an environmentally conscious city. The police had electric vehicles. Here’s one for tourists.

 

Here’s another example. In Europe, buildings require an ‘energy performance certificate’, which is a rating of how energy efficient the building is. These were being advertised in many bus shelters.

And besides these signs, even the ATMs where you get cash out had a sign telling you how much energy it was using!

This is the view of some rooftops from a lookout in Alfama, which is Lisbon’s old Moorish part.

 

That’s Castelo de São Jorge (Castle of St George) on the hill top.

I spotted this sign and it took me a second to understand what it meant.

And here it is! A very basic urinal on the streets approaching Castelo de São Jorge.

Although this was only a small tourist shop, it still had a large stock of port. Portugal is, of course known for the port, a fortified dessert wine. I used to drink it rather regularly after eating three courses at Cambridge formal hall.

Many houses were drying their clothes high up on the second, third or fourth floor of a building. What happens when a bit of clothing falls from a laundry line four storeys up?

You’d think only scooters could get up these streets but there are also quite a few Smart cars and tiny Renaults motoring around here. I think you need to be brave, driving around Lisbon.

A window sill that caught my eye.

Lisbon is a well developed city but there are quite a few abandoned derelict buildings. The city is still rebuilding after the 1755 Great Lisbon Earthquake.

 

I spotted these mail boxes in a derelict building. Amazingly, one or two of them were still being used.