Friday 22nd January - Sunday 24th January

Friday 22nd January

Headed into the town of Sintra just outside of Lisbon, famous for being a Royal retreat. After a struggle to find parking, we had a wonder around the charming old town. There was a natural history museum and as it was free we decided to take a look. The collection of fossils and bones were good, but all the descriptions weren’t in English. So although we could follow the display, we didn’t really know a lot of what we were looking at! As we came to the end, a very friendly and informative member of staff came over. He then proceeded to walk us back through, explaining with great interest some of the pieces. We ended up having a nice little private tour.
Then off to Lisbon and some motorhoming parking, Tom knew about, in the Belem area of the city. We found a spot, with about 10 other motorhomes parked up on the side of estuary. It was evening, so we took a little walk around the area we were, we would head into the main part of the city tomorrow.

Saturday 23rd January

Headed off towards Lisbon centre, but first we needed to buy a day pass for the tram. We discovered though, after a fair bit of walking and some failed attempts, that you can only buy the day pass when you get into the centre! So for now we hopped on a tram and paid the fair.

With our day passes now purchased we wondered off around the Baix area of the city. This part is made up of wide boulevards, all very pretty and grand. Then a look around a Sixties and Seventies design exhibition. Before we jumped on one of the small old trams that Lisbon is famous for. We took a ride on the famous tram route No28, which weaves it’s way around the old quarter. It goes down very narrow streets and up the hills Lisbon is built on, a great way of seeing Lisbon.

Lisbon and actually Portugal on a whole seem to like their tiled buildings. As you walk around Lisbon, the buildings although in one way a little run down they are beautifully tiled. It just seems to add to the amazing character, this city seems to have. I could wonder around the city for ages, just taking it all in.

As earlier we had spotted an Indian restaurant, something not seen too often, in the evening we indulged in a curry. This was our first since leaving Birmingham, where we had got a tad addicted to them. The food was lovely and gave us the taste of what we had been missing! We then caught a tram back to where the motorhome was.

Sunday 24th January[i]

Headed out on the bikes for a cycle ride along the estuary that runs around Lisbon. As we had decided to go to the Oceanarium further along. The bike ride ended up being a lot further than we thought. Some parts of the harbour had cycle and walking routes, while other parts were just on and off pavements around the docks.
The Oceanarium was big and very interesting to wonder around. It had a huge under water tank containing the usual sharks, stingrays etc, as well as some very strange large fish. Our favourite though were the huge sleeping Sea Otters, lying floating on the water.

On the way back we stopped for a nice lunch overlooking the boats in the harbour. Then headed around a really good photo exhibition, by a photographer called Korda. He is the man responsible for taking the famous photo of Che Guevara, the image that is used again and again. A lot of the photos were taken following Fidel Castro and the Cuban revolution, so interesting to view.