Justins World

I arrived in Lisbon on Good Friday, expecting this quite religious country to be somewhat quiet. I’m used to Good Friday being one of the few days everything closes with the usual exceptions of fish and chip shops. It was evident tourism changes things and I had no issue finding a place to eat and as i looked around red meat was perfectly acceptable here on Good Friday! I think Aussies just like the idea of eating fish and chips on Good Friday and have made it a tradition, regardless of the declining rates of religion.

Lisbon was also evidently not pocket sized like Porto. My hotel was in an ok location but stil one or 2 stopsd on the metro, a short tram ride of a 30 minute walk from the historical centre. Even then, that historical centre is quite large and not the only sight in Lisbon to visit. I spent a day chasing historic tram 28 as it climbed one of the hills in the city going through the narrow streets. Catching the tram would have required queing for way to long, by my estimate a 100m long queue!

The queues for the tram however were short when compared to the queue for the Jeronimos Monastry and the Belém bakery store nearby. Quite why everyone was queuing for portuguese egg tarts I’m not sure. I know this bakery claims to be the original but why would you queue for one, when you can get them on pretty much any street throughout the city. Once i got into the monastery it was quite nice, but I was already over the crowds and people and that was after my first full day!

The Town of Sintra which is about 30 minutes from Lisbon, is where royalty used to hang out in the summer. There are over a dozen palaces spread over the hills of Sintra and they all seemed to involbve walking up hill to reach them. I’d done some research on this though and book a small private day tour to see the main highlights of Sintra and also the coastline nearby. I was glad I did. Our guide “Lukas with a K” was friendly, fun and knowledgeable. There was only 5 of us, myself and a family from NZ who were also very delightful. We reached the most famous sight, the Pena Palace, right ion time to be one of the first people in. Lukas had a lot of great spots for photos, I just went with the flow here and stood where he told me to stand! The palace was bright and really well decorated with items from the period it was built. By the time we were leaving the hoards had started to arrive.

The other major palace we visited was the Quinta de Regaleira. Famous for its well with an accompanying stairtcase to descend into the well and explore the tunnels underneath. Apparently built by the Freemasons so it all made a lot of sense in a secretive cult kind of way! The gardens were lovely and the palace while small was still striking especially from the outside, with a gothic horror look to it. Our last stop for the day was Cabo do Roca the most western point of mainland Europe and also heavily touristed. It was a wonderful day tour from Lisbon and glad i did it this way, it would have been way too stressful to DIY this myself.