Port in Portugal!

Port today, in more than one sense! We docked at Lisbon at 8 this morning, and Torsten again spent the first little while admiring the buses and cars off our balcony. After a quick breakfast, we disembarked and waited in line for the infrequent shuttle bus to take us into the city centre (it dropped us off at the Placa de Commercio).

Torsten rode happily along in his backpack as Ingo and I speedily made tracks away from a particularly annoying, loud and ignorant group of fellow passengers who had been debating the merits of a sightseeing bus where you’d have to pay versus wandering around the city and not knowing what anything was. The novel concept of doing some research in advance had apparently never occurred to them – they had no idea what was in Lisbon, and, to quote one of them “once you’ve seen one European city, you’ve seen them all, right?”.

Lisbon is a delightful city, and we only saw a tiny part of the Alfama, which is the old Moorish quarter. The streets are narrow, cobbled, winding and very steep, and the houses have lovely wrought-iron balconies. Our goal was the Castele del Sao Jorge, which was supposed to have a good view, excellent museum, and beautiful grounds. However, we didn’t make it there, as we stopped at the Church of St. Anthony de Sé to look at the crypt there, and then stopped at the Sé (Cathedral) itself. The Cathedral had beautiful chapels off the transept, and the niche with the baptismal font near the entrance was tiled in lovely blue and white azulejos – ceramic tiles for which Portugal is famous. (Actually, a lot of the houses we saw had those azulejos on them – it made for a very colourful and unique display) The Cathedral also had a treasury which contained numerous reliquaries (some containing relics of St. Vincent), vestments worn throughout the Catholic year, and some old music books with Gregorian chants in them. The treasury also afforded a close-up view of the rose window, which depicted Jesus and the 12 apostles with the symbols of their martyrdom.

After the Cathedral, on the way to the Castele, we stopped for lunch at a little terrace café. We started with a fantastic gazpacho, and then I had grilled sardines and a Fanta, while Ingo had an excellent Sangria and some roasted squid. Although it was such a hot day, we decided to finish off with an espresso for Ingo and a cappuccino for me, since the coffee onboard the ship is frankly awful. By that time, Torsten was getting a bit cranky and wanting to go, so we packed him into his backpack, whereupon he proceeded to say bye-bye to everyone in the café – I think everyone turned to look at us and smile as we left!

Continuing up the roads to the Castele, we stopped at an antiquarian shop to look at antique azulejos, and then stopped again to buy some water for Torsten to drink, as he was both thirsty and tired. Ingo, however, decided to pour half a bottle of the freezing water onto my pants. He CLAIMS he was aiming for the cup that Torsten was holding, and that Torsten moved, but I have severe doubts. Two shops down the road was a shop that sold port – so we stopped in to look around, and wound up buying 2 madeiras and 2 ports. The lady in the shop was very nice, and kept holding things up for Torsten to identify, like pens, magnets with pictures of chickens on them, grapes, etc.

Finally, when we reached the Castele, we looked at the time, and we only had an hour before we had to head back to the ship – so we decided not to go in. Instead, Torsten walked up one of the streets and spotted a cat lying in the sun, and spent quite a bit of time telling all passers-by that it was a cat. He was so enthralled by it that he actually sat down on the road to continue staring at it. Eventually, we managed to tear him away from the cat and walk back to the shuttle pickup point. A bus arrived shortly after we got there, but there was no room for us, so we settled down to wait for the next one. By this time, Torsten had fallen asleep and I was carrying him in his sling, so we were in no real rush. However, quite a large crowd had gathered when the next one arrived, and instead of forming an orderly queue, everyone just barged in at once – I started shouting “Watch out! Baby!”, as big men pushed past me to get onto the bus. It was unbelievable how rude some people were. Luckily, Torsten was really tuckered out and was largely undisturbed by the scrimmage.

When we arrived back at the ship, we got through security without a hitch and made our way back to the stateroom – where Torsten woke up. He and Ingo went out to play while I did a bit of work, then we went to have dinner. We bumped into the nice Swiss family there, and Torsten was very happy to see Simone (the little girl) again. As her father calls her “Simi”, Torsten has picked that up, and ran after her, saying “Imi, Imi!”. Heads turned in the dining room, and there were an awful lot of “awwwwws” at that.

Tomorrow is Cadiz – hopefully it’ll be as much fun as today was!