Lisbon – Day 1 – The Castle on the Hill
Friday, 10-Apr-2015
Tags: Travel
The first day on trips to Europe are always difficult. First of all, you fly through the night and arrive in the morning — which is still the middle of the night at home. So you lose most, if not all, of a night’s sleep. Then you head to your hotel and it is still long before check-in time, so all you can do is leave your luggage and head out for a while. This is exactly what we did.
We decided to head to one of the famous Lisbon sites, the Castelo de São Jorge. This castle in the roughly southeast side of Lisbon sits on a hill overlooking the water (where else are you going to build a castle?) on a site that dates back to the 7th century BCE. There are archeological findings that date back to the Phoenicians. The castle itself was built by the Moors, added to/changed by the Christians when they drove the Moors out in 1147, fell into disrepair after it ceased being the royal residence in 1511 and then restored in the 1930s.
To get to the site, we walked about a mile to a Metro stop (Anjos) and took the Metro a couple of stops down to the Martim Moniz (one of the many large squares, praças, in Lisbon). From there we walked along the street a bit and then headed uphill (many, many steps up) through a maze of windy residential streets.
From
golisbon:
Tiles (called azulejos) are everywhere in Portugal. They decorate everything from walls of churches and monasteries, to palaces, ordinary houses, park seats, fountains, shops, and railway stations. (They are listed as the #1 item to purchase, though Eileen has not started shopping yet.)
The castle is on a large open area on the top of the hill. From the area you can look over large swaths of the city and harbor. Here we are looking down on Praça do Comércio.
The 25 de Abril Bridge is a suspension bridge connecting the city of Lisbon, capital of Portugal, to the municipality of Almada on the left (south) bank of the Tejo (Targus) river. It was inaugurated on August 6, 1966. Because it is a suspension bridge and has similar coloring, it is often compared to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.
Here is another shot looking further up the city to the The Santa Justa Lift (the gray vertical structure). It connects the lower streets of the Baixa with the higher Carmo Square, and is a huge tourist attraction. We eventually walked past it, but have not gone up yet. There at lots of hills, and people either walk a lot of steps, or go up lifts or funiculars.
Looking further up north. Our hotel in the Saldanha area is up in the horizon area.
The castle grounds covers quite a large area with viewpoints in many directions, with the castle itself only occupying a portion of the grounds. You can walk into the castle and walk along the ramparts and through some of the turrets.
As we were walking back through the castle grounds, we passed a spot where a flock of pea-fowl congregate. There is a restaurant there and the birds just walk around the tables while people are eating.
Once outside the grounds and heading back downhill, we found a different winding maze of residential streets.
When we got back down we walked over to another square (Plaça de Figuera) to catch the Metro home (Rossio Metro stop) and looked back (and up) and saw the castle that we just walked down from.
We continued to do a lot of walking (something that we like to do). Including the walk through the airport, we had almost 7 miles of walking.
One comment about Lisbon. Often when you are landing in a new city you get an impression of the city based on what you are flying over. Some cities look quite built up and commercial (like Manhattan) and some look pretty shabby (like my first impression of Mexico City), but flying into Lisbon my (Larry) first impression was it was just “pretty”. It struck me as a nice mixture of small buildings with their signature red tile roofs, parks, and businesses. I was impressed before we even landed.
Dinner was at Sessenta in Saldanha, an excellent meal. We shared our dishes. Larry started with seared tuna loin with clam risotto. Eileen slightly cured cod, a Portuguese speciality, over a smoked (ham, maybe) risotto. We had a “amuse-bouches” of pastry, duck, and greens, which was excellent. Our wine was a good Vinho Verde. We finished with a warm chocolate cake for dessert and espresso/americano, also excellent.
And it was morning, and it was evening, the first day.
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Larry and Eileen Samberg
