Portugal Sightseeing

I wasn't sure how we would take to Lisbon as our first impressions after getting off the train were of a dirty and poor city, due mostly to the homeless man urinating in front of us. I'll just put it down to a tourist experience.

We have enjoyed our two weeks here in Lisbon and have managed to do plenty of relaxing as well as sightseeing. We were lucky enough to get tickets to a 3-day Rock Festival near Sesimbra in Portugal that showcased a number of International acts such as Prince, Stereophonics, Vampire Weekend and Julian Casablancas (of The Strokes) just to name a few. Of course one of our favourite acts was Prince. It was truly another amazing experience.

Prince at Super Bock, Super Rock Festival

As for sightseeing, we took a day trip out to Belem; it is referred to as the historical heart of Portugal. The entire area of Belem is closely associated with the Portuguese Age of Discovery. The natural harbour made it an ideal launching point for the exploratory voyages which turned Portugal into a major economic force. In 1755, Lisbon and the surrounding region including the Belem area, suffered through a devastating earthquake. As fate would have it, much of Belem was spared.

We visited the Tower of Belem which was not for the claustrophobic. The narrow staircases up and down only wide enough for people going up or down, not both ways and the dungeons below where you had to crouch as the ceiling was not high enough to stand. Overall, even though it was a fort, it did look magical and fairytale like when you climbed up to the very top of the tower and could see views of Lisbon and the castle.

Tower of Belem

The Oceanarium was also a great day out. I think we have seen a lot of fish on our journey through Europe, however, this Aquarium would have to be one of the better ones. The Oceanarium is primarily a giant tank that you walk around on 2 floors with many smaller tanks on the sides. There are then open areas that have different climates within - of note is an area where the penguins swim around. We also got to see a weird Ocean Sunfish (that I've never seen before), some Puffins and an Otter. After, this we exited and went for a ride on yet (another) cable car - this one was pretty boring - we got to see the site from Expo '98 - which was mainly just ugly eyesores and views of the River Tagus and the Vasco Da Gama Bridge.

 

Ocean Sunfish at Oceanarium

In the evening we ventured out to the streets in Bairro Alto as that's what the culture is like here. You basically find a bar, which is easy as hell, order a drink - which is usually a Mojito (a very potent one at best) and then consume it out on the street. After about 4 of these and feeling a little bit intoxicated, we moved onto a reggae bar where we met a few locals - Marco, Christian and Rodriguez and continued to learn about Lisbon's culture whilst drinking Lisbon's beer of choice Super Bock. It tastes much like VB I'm afraid to say. We woke with strong headaches the next afternoon.

After wasting another day with a hangover, we decided to make it up by eating and visiting the Santa Justa Elevator. We all know what a huge fan David is of Portuguese chicken, so lucky for us, we scoped out apparently the best and most juiciest chicken in Lisbon (we beg to differ, Petersham chicken shops in Sydney give them a run for their money). After the feast at the Bonjardim restaurant we headed home to have an early night so we could appreciate the next day.

Santa Justa Elevator Shaft

After having a quiet night in and being able to sleep in (again, seems to be a recurring theme, these days) we set off on another day trip to Cacilhas and Costa da Caparica. We took a ferry to Cacilhas which lasted about 15 minutes and then took a 35 minute bus ride to the coast of Costa da Caparica. This beach reminded us a bit of places in Queensland. Although there was not much there, there seemed to be a lot of people on the beach and in the water. Nice enough beach but I much preferred Cascais.

Costa da Caparica

Following on from this, the next day we spent sightseeing Sintra, Pena Palace, Cape Roca and Cascais.

 Cascais

Lisbon, A Giant "Fuck You" To The Disabled

If you're wheelchair bound or on crutches in Portugal you've got it tough. Between the slippery cobblestones, treacherous steps, and massive hills with narrow pathways barely wide enough for one person this seems like a city designed to weed out the mobility challenged amongst it's population. I don't think I've seen a single wheelchair ramp or wheelchair accessible train station so it looks like the only option would be to latch on to the back of one of the recklessly fast taxi's that hoon about the streets. I'm pretty sure most of the cab drivers base their fare structure on how scared their passengers are by the end of the ride, and their tips on how many near death experiences that they graced various pedestrians with.

It's no wonder that the inhabitants of Bairro Alto all seem to be so fit, there are some hills so steep in this suburb that there are special trams that run up and down some of the hills. A few of these are specially modified so that the wheels are at a 30° angle to the main body of the tram. I'm wishing that our tourist map had altitudes as well as just streets as it seems to take us much longer to walk anywhere with Sancha taking quick rest breaks between each section of steps.

On the bright side the large hills means a spectacular view of the city from the Castelo de São Jorge that we visited. The castle even has a camera obscura with a periscope which is used to give 360° views of the city from the top room of one of the castles towers. One of the more impressive sights is the 25th of April Bridge (which looks quite similar to the Golden Gate bridge) and the massive Christ the King monument standing nearby (which was inspired by, and looks quite similar to, the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro). The castle, like most other places in Portugal, also comes fully equipped with a bunch of old guys playing cards.

We also took the opportunity to go and get some authentic Portuguese style roast chicken. It was so good we went back another night for dinner and had even more awesome Portuguese cuisine, including some fantastic whole grilled sardines.

Castle of São Jorge

25th of April Bridge

Camera Obscura in the Tower of Ulysses

Old guys playing cards in the castle courtyard

Tasty, tasty chicken. Or what's left of it by the time we remembered to take a photo

I'm gonna eat you little fishy!

Madrid

Madrid was a city we did not intend on going to at first, although we decided to have a stopover to break up the 15 hour train journey from Barcelona to Portugal.  Lucky we did get to stay in Madrid - otherwise we would have totally missed out on being lucky enough to celebrate with the rest of Madrid and Spain on their World Cup win against The Netherlands.

We began our first few days in Madrid slowly, as David was sick and I was busy caring for him in our Hotel room.  We were then surprised to find out friend's of David's from University - Roxanne & Grant were in town as well, so we spent time with them - watching the World Cup finals - David finding a friend (a man who accosted David and soon wanted to spend most of the evening hugging him and touching his neck, it was quite funny.  Just picture this - the biggest bogan - drinking white wine out of a flute glass, caressing David's neck and yelling into his ear in Spanish and the word "España" every fourteen seconds).  Luckily for David, Spain won and his new friend went off to find his friends.

From here we continued to drink copious amounts of alcohol and then went home, wasted the next day and then went walking around the city - around to the Temple of Debod; Royal Palace; and parklands and then returning in the evening to meet Roxanne & Grant for more sangria, tapas and shisha.  Another random outing.

More tapas and sangria was consumed the next day - we did some gift shopping and I brought some perfume as I was sick of smelling like sweat all the time - deodorant just doesn't cut it sometimes! (it's just 30+ temperatures, roll-on deodorant, I end up smelling worse than when I put the roll-on on).

The day before the World Cup Finals - it was just magical - seas of red and yellow (a bit different from Bangkok as they were seas of excitement and happiness).  The city was covered in flags, people, vuvuzela's (which gave me a constant migraine), people dancing, singing, you name it - the city had it).

The day of the Finals came and people where out early - again - seas of red and yellow.  The square was full of people, so we decided to head to a bar, where we could see the T.V. screen and not be killed just in case Spain lost.  We got there a bit late so we got the better of the "crap" tables, but we were able to see. 

It was so fantastic to be amongst all the Spanish fans - just so exciting to be apart of it!  The bar was fun - we had jugs of sangria (again, seems repetitive, but it's yummy - most of the time); some more tapas and enjoyed the game.  It was awesome that Spain won.  The streets were mayhem - fireworks going off at every street corner, crowds chanting, people dancing, boys chasing one another - again you name it, it was going on).

No sleep for us as the party went on all night and all morning, we ended up getting some sleep and waking up at 4pm the following day.  The city was still crazy - music and parades going on throughout the city.  We ventured out down the street and then waited around for the grand parade of the Spainish champions to hit the streets and thank their fans.  Again, we were lucky enough to be in the right spot at the right time and were able to catch a glimpse of the sporting champions.

Our last day in Madrid, we spent 5 (five) hours at the Prado Museum and lounging in the Jardin Botanical Gardens before heading back to the hotel to collect our bags and depart for Lisbon.

Barcelona

We have been in Barcelona for 8 days now and most of that time has been spent lazing around drinking lots of sangria and people watching at the beach, taking in some rays of sun and finding lots of cheap tapas bars around us.

Our first day we decided to take the tourist bus around town to get to know what sights lay before us in Barcelona.  We decided to sit on the top half of the bus, which is exposed to the weather elements, in our case lots of sun (it was close to 36 degrees) - a bad choice for me without a hat, sunglasses or sun cream as I got quite burnt.

We got off bus and headed towards the teleferic de montjuic cable car. When we got out up the top of the mountain we explored the park and castle; we also had some terrible hotdogs and sangria for lunch.

From here we headed back down and continued on bus journey to see World Trade Center, Columbus Monument, Port Vell, Port Olimpic, Ciutadella, Pla de Palau, Barri Gotic, Casa Batllo and then got off at Passig de Gracia - La Pedrera.

We walked from this stop back to our apartment in Sant Marti. We stopped into a cute little bar to have beer on our way home that served us popcorn with our beers.

Onto the next day, another scorcher of a day - we ventured to Tibidabo.  Tibidaboo is one of the 3 oldest parks in the world. The park is the highest point on the Collserola massif which boasts fantastic views of the city and port.  Inside the park is also The Automata museum which is housed in an old modernist theatre dating back to 1909.  It contained a collection of automations from the end of the 19th Century.  We saw coin operated dolls, mechanical games and toys and some very strange things.

The trip up to Tibidabo was quite annoying - first you take the Tramvia Blau where they squash you in, and then you take the Funicular (cable car), which takes you on the last climb up the mountain. We spent about an hour on the mountain top before heading back down to catch the train to Barceloneta, where we headed towards the beach for some tunes and sangria at Sotavento Beach Club.

Another lovely day ended, but then we headed straight back into another by getting up reasonably early, which seems hard for us to do with ease these days.

Day 4: This led us to the Aquarium and Zoo in Barcelona.  The Aquarium was very crappy and to add to this there were several annoying families - we could not wait to escape! From here, we went to the awesome zoo, where we saw dolphins, lions and tigers and bears. Oh my!

Day 5: Spent most of our day at Barcelona Sants Railway Station, by that I mean we spent 2.5 hours in a queue waiting for our ticket number to be called in order to reserve our seats to Madrid. We then had a siesta, a quick stop at the internet cafe to read some news and find out the location of McDonalds for the free whiffy, then McDonalds for free whiffy (wi-fi is pronounced "whiffy" here in Europe) and hit a few bars afterwards. One beer at some random bar, another two at Frankfurt Rodert (with some awesome tapas), then a last cerveza (beer) at Cuando Pueras Cafe to finish it off.

The other days we have spent eating at various tapas bars, walking around Barri Gotic and seeing yet another church; more sangria by the beach, a day trip to Sitges where we swam in the Mediterranean with several hundred others; more cocktails and lots of walking around.

Not a very exciting blog post as it is a race against the "whiffy" connection dropping out.  Tomorrow, we head to Madrid where there looks to be strikes on the metro lines.  So we will have fun figuring out how to get to our accommodation. At least there won't be any arguments about trains.

Irun...an unexpected stopover

Having arrived in Irun late from Bordeaux, we missed our connecting train to Barcelona on the Saturday afternoon and could not get on another train till Monday morning.  This unexpected stopover led to us both being highly stressed, annoyed and having to forfeit 2 nights accomodation in Barcelona.

We exited Irun train station and checked into the first hotel we could find. For 35 euro a night we found the biggest dive! My bed had bloodstains on it and David's was filthy.  Though, we did have our own bathroom and balcony that overlooked a small ghetto.

After having a quick rest, we decided to venture into town and see what the town had to offer us.  After finding the tourist information centre we found out that there was a fiesta on tonight, unfortunately David had to return by himself as whilst we were having dinner. -(for entree - some very very tasty stuffed olives and then a beautiful seafood paella for 9.50 euro at Meson del Jamon I had a case of food poisoning from lunch).

After David arrived back to the Hotel around 12.30pm, it became evident that the Hotel was a "sexy-time" hotel - meaning that it grew very noisy and didn't settle down till about 7.30am.  Doors opening and closing, ladies of the night, propositions out the front of the hotel, screams, knocks on our door - we were both fearing that we would not make it through the night alive.

After not much sleep and worrying about our safety we searched for another place to stay around 10am. We ended up checking out and moving into another hotel across the road.  This one was such an improvement! Having solved our accomodation problem we decided to head into Hondarribia, a town about 5 minutes away from Irun. 

It is an old medieval town near a bay, we spent about 1 hour walking around the "old town" and then headed into the "new town" for a bite to eat.  We found "Bar Ondarribi", a delightful little tapas bar, where we got free prawns with our meal of Champinones (mushrooms); Sardines and Pulpo Gallega (Octupus with paprika and potatos).

It has been an interesting little stop-over, one that was unfortunately unplanned, but nice to see Hondarribia.  don't think we will return at a later stage though.