Lisbon – Part 3

On our fourth day in Lisbon we started the day with the Santa Justa lift. It’s this really old tall lift made out of iron that gives an impressive 360 degree view over Lisbon. It’s about 30 metres high and is not for the faint hearted up the top. I especially loved the one way tight spiral stairs when some lovely persons attempted to go down the stairs in the wrong direction when you and others were half way up 🙂 There was one set of spiral stairs to go up and a different set to go down. The stairs provided a see through view to the ground below and at that height Rach and I preferred to look up than down.

The lift leads to the Carmelite Convent which is the ruins of an old gothic church that has now become a Museum. The old look of the arches and old brickwork that make up the building looked pretty cool.

We had read about in one of travellers’ guides that a fair bit tomato plant herbs arrive through Portugal from the near by seas. Walking down the street on the way to the Arch of Street Augusta, I was often greeted by a number of men offering such herbs. Some of them were like car sales men. If you happened to walk by them twice they’d plead you to take interest. The walkway to the Arch was full of restaurants, shops, drawers, painters and people selling their arts. Lisbon had some art display of painted cows all around the city. There are one hundred of these cows all painted differently and in random spots. The walk to the Arch had a few of these on the way.

Next was St George’s Castle. This was set on top of one of the hills right in the city of Lisbon. It looks out over all of Lisbon and across the river Tagus. The castle walls cover quite a large area and inside there are lots of sitting areas and garden spaces, as well as another little castle. The other little castle inside allowed you to walk on top of the surrounding walls. You could only imagine what it would have been like back in the days when it was in use.

After the castle we headed for Oriente to see Brazil play Japan. There was three times the amount of people as there was for the Portugal game, and of course all dressed in Barzil clothes, hats, scarfs and anything else you can imagine. This crowd were even crazier. When the first goal was scored the crowd continued dancing and jumping up and down for a fair while after. It was quite an interesting sight. Of course Brazil won.

On the fifth day, even though it was raining I caught a boat across the river to Cacilhas. I wanted to see the Cristo Rei. It’s a massively tall statue of Christ similar to the even taller one in Rio de Janeiro. The statue is already on a pedestal that’s 80 metres tall. The statue itself is another 30 meters higher. The statue can pretty much been seen from any where in Lisbon.

I walked along the foreshore in order to get to it and I passed many fishermen and some real ghetto areas with houses and building that looked like they were from a war zone. As there were no cars and very few people anywhere near the foreshore, there was nothing but the calm silence of wind and the occasional drops of rain. The low light and with everything being wet gave it a bit of an eerie feeling in the ghetto areas.

Walking along the foreshore I passed the Boca do Vento, which is 50 metre tall lift with a bridge that stands tall in the wind and extends out to the hill and provides an excellent view of the Lisbon and the river.

After walking along the foreshore for about in hour, I realised that I had gone the wrong way. So unfortunately didn’t see the Christo Rei up close. It was getting darker so at this point I headed home ready to leave for Faro the next morning.