Lisboa

Bom dia, boa tarde, boa noite and obrigada!
Good morning, good afternoon, good night and thank you!

Thank god most people in Portugal speak some English and many are fluent, because we can't seem to grasp much of Portuguese.  While it appears similar to Spanish, it does not sound anything like it.

We hadn't planned on staying right in Lisbon, but we couldn't find our hotel.  They insisted that they had no address, but could be found by following the signs for "camping" off of one of their major highways.  As if!   We arrived at a sister hotel (one that was listed in our GPS) and begged them to find us a room.  Later, Marcus read that in fact many buildings don't have street numbers.  Go figure!  As it turned out, the hotel we stayed in was not far from downtown Lisbon - an easy 5 stop metro ride and so we decided to make it our base for 5 days as we explored the city and Sintra.

In Lisbon we started with the Castelo de Sao Jorge, but at this point we were truly "castled out".  There was no interpretation or signage so it felt a bit like visiting (as Marcus' dad George says) just another pile of rocks.  Sorry Castelo de Sao Jorge - no doubt you have much to offer, but we were too tired to fully appreciate you.  So we took a bus tour of the city instead and that certainly helped to get the lay of the city, not to mention a rest for our legs.  We got off in Belem which is about the same distance as the Beaches are from downtown Toronto.  Here we visited the famous discovers monument. 

Personally, I think Toronto could use a cool monument like this.  Not sure what we commemorate though - maybe a giant size garbage can as  we're seen as one of the cleanest cities on earth?? 

On advice from our friend Lucia, we found the Belem Pastelaria and had their pasteis de nada - worth the price of the bus tour!  YUMMY!  The best we had in Portugal.  (Thanks Lucia for the tip!  You haven't steered us wrong yet).

The most fun we had in Lisbon was walking the downtown shopping district which consisted of several pedestrian zones.  We weren't sure what to make of the buskers who were dressed like North American native indians but played pan flutes.  We were sitting enjoying an ice cream at a cafe (our most helpful waiter suggested we save half our dollars, by buying the icecream in the store as take out and bring it back outside to eat with our coffee), when a young man set up his accordian next to us.  I couldn't believe it when he placed a very small rat like dog on a box in front of him, hung a little change pail from his mouth, and began to play, the dog yapping a high-pitched whine along with him.  He proved extremely popular with everyone, and I was rather horrified at first, but on reflection, figured the dog might actually be having fun and you have to give credit to such an enterprising young fellow, I suppose.