LISBON, PORUGAL

Today, we arrived at our last port-of-call before home; Lisbon, the capital of Portugal.

I think it’s fair to say that over the years, after many repeated visits, we’ve seen most of what Lisbon has to offer (or, at least everything that we’re interested in). Our plans for the day, then – such as they were – were very modest, with nothing more on our itinerary than a gentle stroll into the city and back again. As it turned out, we ended up walking a little further than we expected…

After a leisurely breakfast, we headed ashore, and walked along the front promenade towards Commerce Square. There are a lot of road works and general improvements going on in Lisbon right now, so we had to navigate our way past some cordoned-off areas near the terminal. Not that that was a major issue, but the traffic is clearly having issues with it if the queues were anything to go by.

Almost without thinking, we walked with no other purpose in mind than the enjoyment of being off the ship, and to indulge in what is our general tendency to just put one foot in front of the other repeatedly, and see where it gets us.

Much of Commerce Square was also cordoned-off due to some event that appeared to be taking place for the benefit of a large number of school children. We couldn’t quite make out what the event was about, although they all seemed very excited to be there, and there were many policemen on duty around the perimeter.

If we had any thoughts of where to head for at all, it would have been to hunt down a green area; a park or similar. The only one I knew of, and had identified on the map, was Edward the 7th Park, some way out of the central area, so that’s the direction in which we headed. It was extremely hot, though, and about half way up Liberation Avenue, which is a long, tree-lined road, flanked by endless designer outlets and high class retail shops, we decided that Edward the 7th Park was too far for us to walk on this occasion (all-aboard was 3:30pm again, so we had to keep and eye on the time).

After a brief re-evaluation and consultation with Maps.Me, we changed our course and headed towards a large park off to one side of the Liberation Avenue, which turned out to be Lisbon’s Botanical Gardens, requiring an entrance fee of €5 each. I should also add that finding our way into the park proved problematic due to the many road works that seemed to be in progress in the vicinity, and we were just on the verge of giving up altogether, when we finally found our way in.

€10 seemed a bit much, particularly considering that it isn’t something we’re generally interested in (although, these were the second Botanical Gardens we’ve paid to visit on this trip, so maybe we’re turning into the sort of people that do hunt them out with regularity), but having walked this far, we decided to just pay up and check them out (after all, it was still a lot less than what we paid to walk the walls in Dubrovnik).

I’m pleased to say that the gardens weren’t a total disappointment, and were pleasant enough to walk round. Whether or not they were worth €10 is debatable; they weren’t that large, but we enjoyed our walk around them anyway, and treated ourselves to an ice cream and use of their loos before navigating our way back towards the city centre.

We may need to think up a plan for our next visit in October; perhaps take advantage of one of the tours, in order to place us at Edward 7th Park and walk back, or even try out one of the electric bikes or scooters that are available on every city corner. The castle remains one of our favourite locations, so maybe a return visit to that will be the thing to do. In the meantime, we rather enjoyed or potter around Lisbon this time around, even though though we were in danger of over-stretching ourselves. By the time we’d returned to the ship, we’d walked about 8 miles, and our feet knew it (if I’d know we were going to walk as far as we did, I would have worn my trainers and not my sandals).

Leaving Lisbon is always worth being up on the open deck for, because it entails sailing under the ‘April 25th Road and Rail Bridge’, which makes a fantastic sound, rather like a swarm of hornets as you pass under it.

And that’s more or less that…

We have two sea-days left, with more classes tomorrow and Sunday morning, and an exhibition planned for Sunday afternoon.

Bring ’em on…