It’s Wednesday 26 April and tomorrow at approximately 8am we will be disembarking at Southampton. Yesterday on Arcadias back deck, Anzac Day was marked by a minutes silence and a brief flag lowering ceremony. Attended by about 40 of us Australian and New Zealanders – it felt good to be reminded of home.
Our last port of call two days ago was Lisbon capital of Portugal. Once a strong seafaring nation colonising many countries- today mired in debt. Our son Pierce had travelled here recently and given it a good review so we were looking forward to seeing if for ourselves.
With a population of 1.5 million we knew Lisbon was going to be a large city so we had previously decided that we would also like to see some of the countryside. It was for this reason that we took a bus along the coastline eventually finding ourselves in a seaside town called Cascais. What interested and surprised us on the way here was the amount of surfing beaches we passed. We had not previously equated Portugal with surfing. After spending a few hours meandering the “heel destroying” paved streets of Cascais, browsing shops, drinking coffee and watching the sun worshippers lazing on the beach – it was time to head back into Lisbon.
Our impression earlier that morning when sailing into Lisbon – had been that everything appeared to have been built on a large scale. We had passed a huge statue of Christ – similar and built on the same scale as Rio De Janeiros “Christ the Redeemer”. We had passed under the 25 April Bridge – built on the same lines as San Franciscos Golden Gate Bridge. On arriving back in Lisbon – this feeling of bigness was reinforced. The roads were wide, town squares were huge, churches, castles and cathedrals all enormous.
Most of our exploring was done around the Baixa or “lower town” area. It was at the seaward end of the city expanding north into Praca do Comercio (commercial square) encompassing fantastic little alleyways, great shopping, many historical sights and countless coffee houses offering the mandatory “egg custard tart”. The terrain was hilly in parts and with quaint electric trams rattling by, tuk tuks beeping at everyone, traffic on the “wrong” side of the road – getting around unscathed was an achievement in itself. After fortifying ourselves first with hot chocolates, eclairs and egg custard tarts and then later, elsewhere with a cold local beer – all cheap (Portugal is another European country suffering post GFC) we had to admit that Portugal – home to Mateus Rose and Port had been another great stop.
