Lisbon

I was only really in Lisbon to catch a train, and did very little thinking about what I'd do for the few days I had to wait for it. Nonetheless, I found enough to keep me so busy that I never got to explore the historic inner city, which is a shame because it is one of the oldest cities in the world. I did catch a bus which skirted the centre, going through a labrynth of streets which were decidedly not designed with buses in mind, and it seems to have all sorts of interesting nooks and crannies. I was staying in a really cool loft about a 15 minute walk in from the centre, and explored the area between there and the University of Lisbon - nothing particularly touristic, but probably a good cross-section of typical life in suburban Lisbon. Just up from where I was stayng, there was a pretty big version of the Spanish Department store, El Corte Inglés, which had some good food outlets and was quite fun to wander around - I had dinner there one eveing and was a bit disturbed to find that several people were smoking: something I don't recall seeing anywhere else on this journey. Dinner was a not very good deconstructed burger with very fake looking sauce. Amused by the beer they were selling, however.

Something else that stood out was the large number of really good bakeries: they gave me plenty of opportunity to try out the local sweet, Pasteis De Nata, which is a custard tartlet. They tended to look a bit burnt on top and generally a bit munged, but they were delicious: unless you were dining in, bakeries would only sell them by the half dozen or so, which led to me eating one or two more than might have been optimal for my health. I also found something called a farton - apparently they are really Spanish but are plentiful in Lisbon: a very light pastry about the same diameter as my thumb and maybe twice as long, they come with a dusting of sugar in bunches of half a dozen.

farton

I did see one building which really impressed me and thought it must be an art gallery - more than a little disappointed to find out it was a sprts stadium, the Campo Pequeno bullring.

My other exploration was of Belém, which is about 6 km from the centre of Lisbon, at the mouth of the Tagus River.

According to the people in my loft, there is a cafe here which is ground zero for the Pasteis De Nata industry: I did go in but was so overwhelmed by the queues that I went elsewhere for my fix.

I was here for the Carris Museum - which means nothing unless you know that Carris is the name of the organisation which runs public transport in Lisbon. The museum is more commonly known as the tram museum: the first stage was a static display of photos and documents providing an account of Lisboan public transport, which started with horse-drawn trams. The oddest thing I learned was that the company was originally started by two brothers, one of whom lived in Brazil which is where the company was initially based. Maybe he had telegraph, but still it must have been enormously difficult to get a transport network up and running when you live the other side of the plant in the 19th century!

I wish I could write as neatly as that! To take us to the tramshed, they laid on a tram

Being a tram museum, there were naturally a large number of trams and I geeked out and took photos of practically all of them, then when I went into the bus shed did much the same there! I'll just provide a selection - the first is a horse-drawn tram which looks very heavy.

The last is a Thames Trader - I included it for sentimental reasons, as a truck like this was one of the vehicles I learnt to drive in, way back when I was about 14 or 15. Outside, there was a very sleek and modern tram

I wasn't quite done with my exploration of transportation history, as nearby is the National Coach Museum, which was two large pavillions crammed full of coaches - one was very dark so I couldn't get any photos but I took more than enough in the other pavillion.

Museu Nacional dos Coches

That last photo was the front of an early version of a Popemobile - a coach given by the King of Portugal to Pope Clement XI in 1716. They sure knew how to decorate their coaches in those days!

That last one is almost spartan by comparison. Just down the road a bit is the Mosteiro [Monastery] dos Jerónimos - an absolutely huge building which took exactly 100 years to complete, starting in 1501. One of the key functions of the monks here was to provide spiritual assistance to navigators and sailors, as many (including Vasco da Gama) set off from here on voyages of discovery.

Mosteiro dos Jerónimos

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I didn't go in, because the day was drawing on and the plan was to check out the Berardo Collection - as a young man, José Manuel Rodrigues Berardo ran away to sea and made his fortune in the gold and diamond mines of South Africa, and gifted his collection of modernist art to Lisbon. As with all modern art, some exhibits left me wondering - is this art or inventory?

A few things caught my eye:

One exhibit in particular had me entranced - it was a space set up a bit like a room, albeit a slightly disordered one, with three or four different women's faces projected onto exhibits, and recordings of their stories playing.