We had a guide again on Friday for a tour of some of the sights that you must see in Lisbon – you know, the ones that are on the cover of every tour guide or city map the hotel gives you. Our guide for the four hour tour, Annabella, met us at our hotel at 9:30.
We started by walking down Avenue de Liberdade (Liberty Avenue), where the Hotel Valverde is. As I mentioned, this is a very wide street with a large grassy mall and pedestrian areas, plus lots of traffic. It’s lined with shops, restaurants, hotels and offices and is very busy. We wove our way down the avenue dodging other pedestrians and sidewalk construction, and along the way she pointed out various important buildings. An old theater, an elevator to take people up to the hills surrounding this flat part of the center city, a funicular to a different hill, a monument to some king or other.
At the end of the boulevard, about 10 minutes from where we started, there was a large plaza with a church which we simply looked at and didn’t enter. The plaza – and many other places we passed during the day – was covered with tour groups being lectured at by their guides. While we often see large tour groups (and are thankful we’re not part of them), I’ve never seen so many more or less concurrently. We saw a number of groups that were traveling the city by bicycle, which sounds like a great way to cover lots of territory. In heavy traffic.
At this point, we hopped in a taxi for the 20 minute ride to the real objective of the day, the Belém area of Lisbon. Belém is a district to the west of central Lisbon which was originally used for agriculture and shipping, as it is flat and located along the Tagus River. At various times the King had his Palace there, which of course incented other royalty to build in the area.
Today Belém is an area of monuments and museums, along with the President’s Palace.
Our first stop was the Belém Tower, built in the 16th century overlooking the Tagus River to protect against invaders from the sea. It’s an impressive structure which includes Moorish design elements and stands about 100’ high.
The second major monument in this area is Monument to the Discoveries. During the European Age of Discovery, Portugal was a great participant, establishing colonies around the world in the search for riches. It was very successful, especially given its small size. The Portuguese empire included Brazil, Angola and Mozambique in Africa, Macau in China. They had numerous other outposts in Africa and Asia. The remains of the empire were largely dismantled in the 1960s with the colonial wars in Angola and Mozambique (1), and with Macau being returned to China in 1999.
We passed, but didn’t go into, the Monisteiro dos Jeronimos, which houses several museums. First, we weren’t very interested. Second, note the line waiting to enter. The tiny people waiting to enter give you some sense of the scale of the building.
At this point we stopped for a snack. All over Portugal we’ve seen pastries called pastel de nata – small, round custard tart. Annabella told us that they were first made, and are still the best made, in a shop we were passing. So we went in, and Sally agreed that they were the best. The pastry chefs were rushing in the back to make hundreds and hundreds of pastries to meet the demand of the people who were lined up to get into the pretty large restaurant and have some.
Our final stop with Annabella was the National Coach Museum. This is virtually the only thing I remember from our trip here 35 years ago. At the time, the museum was in the old garage of an old palace, and I recall it being cramped and dark. The carriages were parked next to each other like SUVs in a Walmart parking lot. Perhaps ten years ago the museum moved to a brand new, purpose-built building near the waterfront.
The new building is a great venue to see all of the dozens of royal carriages that are on display, from as early as 1619. And while I found it somewhat interesting and took a lot of pictures, spending an hour here was more than either of us wanted.
After resting up from our exhausting day – three hours in the midday sun – we went to a very classy restaurant that evening right next door to our hotel for a very good meal. The restaurant has the very hip name JNcQUOI (2).
(1) If you’ve been following, you’ll recall the images from the colonial wars that I shared.
(2) It’s a play on the French jes nes se quoi, meaning “something (such as an appealing quality) that cannot be adequately described or expressed”. The restaurant is located at Av. da Liberdade 182 184, 1250-146 Lisboa, Portugal.
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