From Lisbon with love

The first thing we saw driving into Lisbon from the south is a large concrete statue of Jesus inspired by the one in Rio de Janerio. Then you cross a bridge that looks like a smaller version of the Golden Gate. From the highway, we can see how hilly the city is and how much water surrounds it. Lisbon topples down the hill to the bay, jam packed with building, narrow streets, alleys and staircases. Trolleys ply the tracks taking mostly tourists up and around the town. From the vantage point near our apartment, the port looked like Seattle’s with container ships, tour boats and recreational vessels tightly vying for space. We climbed to the top of Castel San Jorge to see all around the city, from what looked like the financial business district of metal and steel to the historical area we had just a walked through and all around the bayfront. Ferries cross the bay to outlying suburbs. This could almost be the Bay Area or Seattle except that this has been going on here for a thousand years longer. There is something rather haunting about Lisbon, it lacks the shiny veneer of the other cities that we’ve seen and perhaps it’s the Fado music. But it would take much more time than we have here to uncover what that is. Onward: Galicia beckons.

A meager attempt to capture a sense of Lisbon