5/29: day 3 (pre-trip)

Today was the third full day in Lisbon and the last day of our pre-trip.

While VBT made arrangements for picking us up at the airport and setting us up in a hotel in Lisbon, we were on our own for entertainment and meals. For simplicity, we ate at the restaurant in the hotel for breakfast.

The Europeans know how to do breakfast. No powdered eggs or orangeade from a vending machine. The hotel in Lisbon had a magnificent buffet set up in stations.

There was a bread station. (The tongs are there for a reason - today a woman picked up a piece of pound cake with her hands, changed her mind and put it back. Really?!?!?!)

There was an eggs, breakfast meat, potatoes and grilled vegetables station. (The little black pot had sautéed mushrooms and they were delicious.)

There was a cheese and thinly-sliced meats station.

There was a cut fresh fruit station.

There was a fresh-squeezed juice station including a decanter of something green (in the front) they called "de-tox".

And here are the grumpy Americans who couldn't find anything there that they wanted to eat. (Walter must be happy because he has his coffee.)

The breakfast area was in an atrium and had some magnificent art.

In fact, there were pieces of art all over the building.

The configuration of the building does not utilize this grand staircase for regular use.

We did not have plans or tours set up for today. But we started by going to the tourism center and buying a Lisboa day pass (18 euros) that gave us free transportation on the trolleys and entrance into a number of museums and other attractions. 

We took the #15 trolley to a part of the city called Belem where there were a number of attractions that Rick Steves recommended.

The first stop was a monestary (Mosteiro dos Jeronimos).The line stretched out the door and along the sidewalk for maybe 50 meters. It looked like at least an hour waiting in line so we decided to skip it. True to the Rick Steves guidebook, we were able to go directly into the church without waiting in line.

The church was, as many European churches, spectacular. My pictures don't give a good sense of the grandeur of the place.

Mike reminded the agnostic to take off his hat. Thanks, Mike.

At the other end of the building, people were going in so we decided to check it out. It was the entrance to the Museum Nacional de Arquelogia and it was free with our Lisboa pass so we went in. 

It was a small, one-room exhibit of work done at a dig site and it was good for about 15 minutes but it turns out that when we got our tickets for the museum, we could also get immediate entrance tickets to the monestary. We went back to the first entrance and waltzed in like VIPs. 

The monestary itself was large and airy with amazing detail in the columns, walls, and ceilings. 

One room had a wall that was covered with decorative tile.

Another room was a display of Portuguese and world history. It was a one long bulletin board that went around the center of the room with English on the outside and Portuguese on the inside. Surprisingly, most of the visitors stayed on the outside of the display.

A few things stood out. First, I know virtually nothing of Portuguese history except that, like the Spanish, they sailed all over the world. 

Second, their travels involved the slave trade, a dark chapter of human history. 

Third, the Portuguese think in terms of a western-centric view of history. (Columbus didn’t “discover” anything. He may have been the first western European visitor to the New World, but the First Americans didn’t need to be discovered. Happily, Le Moyne College no longer has a core requirement of Western History.)

One of the things the Portuguese brought in their colonization of Brazil was slavery.

Fourth, the Jesuits were mentioned in many phases of Portuguese history. (I should write off this trip as a work expense!)

Here are the three stooges. One is not so bright. (Walter suggested that line.)

The second stop was the Monument to the Discoveries. The monument is a pretty well-known Lisbon tourist attraction. Many of the major figures in Portuguese history are portrayed in these images. It is a modern structure with an elevator and staircase inside. It is hard to get a sense of how tall this structure is from pictures but the people in the foreground may provide a little perspective.

After lunch, we headed down the waterfront to a castle. The line was pretty long and it didn't seem to be moving very fast, so we took pictures of the castle and the line of people along the bridge waiting to get in instead.

"Hello English pig-dogs!"

We kept walking. A nearby grassy area would have been a nice place to hang out if it wasn't cold and windy. We felt particularly bad for the street vendors who were hanging out and hoping for some customers. I took pictures of vendors with a bicycle theme.

This one was pretty cute - she had a boombox going with some Portuguese pop music and she sang while she pedaled. She asked me if I wanted to pedal. I am not sure why she thought that might appeal to me except maybe to warm up?

I felt so bad for this guy selling ice cream, I didn't even try to talk to him.

Finally there were these two guys who were selling beaded bracelets. They were two handsome 20-something kids with man-buns and they were cycling around the world (not circumnavigating the globe, just lots of different places). I don't remember where they had been riding but they were heading north this summer to England and Scotland. then they planned to fly to India and bike in the Himalayas. Then they would ride in Southeast Asia before flying home to Australia. These were their rigs. They claimed that they could pack them up for air travel without paying baggage fees but I don't believe it, especially since they both had trailers.

They gave me a business card for crazyguyonabike.com that purportedly had their travelogue but the website is a mess of postings and it's impossible to find any particular one.

The third stop was the carriage museum. The national carriage museum was one of the destinations that the travel literature said to visit. The exhibit contained dozens of royal carriages in two locations. The first location was a dark gallery with two rooms: one with royal carriages and one with vehicles of that era including fire-fighting equipment and early ambulances.  I found the latter much more interesting,

The second location was across the street in a modern building that looked like it could serve as a convention center. Here's Walter and Mike walking down the hall. That's a lot of carriages!

Just as we were getting tired of looking at one carriage after another, we found a couple carriages with decorations that were over the top. Here's the back of one.

Here's the front of another.

This carriage was too small for people; it was for carrying a religious statue.

There were also sedan chairs. I thought the chinese had invented these since they had so many servants?

After recharging our batteries, we went to dinner and tried another place on the plaza across the street from the hotel, Populi. They advertised having the sexiest WC but it cost a euro to use it so there are no pictures. But wait until you see the pictures of the toilet in the next day's blog entry!