A Bit More Lisbon

We woke up and took our time this morning. Jim was feeling much better. Unfortunately our slow start made us miss breakfast so we had to wait until the buffet opened back up for lunch at 11:30. After lunch we just sat in the atrium. Kristi napped; she didn’t sleep well last night. As we said yesterday, the view from the ship, looking at the Alfama neighborhood, or the other side, looking out across the Tagus River is very nice. 



We did decide to disembark again and go into town, for the exercise if nothing else. We walked across the street and ventured into and up the Alfama. Talk about narrow streets, it’s a very old neighborhood — Lisbon is one of the oldest cities in Europe, founded about 1200 BCE. As Rick Steves says to do, we just meandered. Once at the top we walked back to the Biaxa, which is the main touristic historic center. 





Kristi found the shop with the “best gelato” she’s ever had. She enjoyed the dark cherry. Jim enjoyed some Portuguese Alka Seltzer — his stomach is still just a little upset. 

Lisbon is a very cool city. It is touristy, multicultural, and always moving. If you venture away from the touristy areas it’s also great. Most people speak almost perfect English and it seems like one can hear a multitude of other languages being spoken. 

The sun was setting as we sailed out from Lisbon. It is such a beautiful city and especially to sail from. 





We have two days at sea before docking back in Southampton …

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Disembarkation — Journey Home

Image
The end of a cruise, especially a longer one, produces a somewhat melancholy mood. But alas, all good things must come to an end. We set our alarms for 6:00am as we requested the earliest disembarkation time in order to get to Heathrow for our flight home this afternoon. At least we got breakfast, one last trip to the Lido deck buffet.  After breakfast we just had to collect our things from our room and walk off the ship. On the dock below our room, operations were in full swing, restocking the ship for the next voyage.  We opted to take a bus from Southampton to Heathrow, thereby avoiding dealing with our bags on the train and transferring trains in London proper. We just had to taxi to the station.  The bus almost turned out to be a very poor decision. There was an accident on the motorway just a short distance from Heathrow — which of course created gridlock. We finally arrived at terminal 3 of the 8th busiest airport in the world about 88 minutes before our flight. ...
Read more

Steaming North

Image
We left Lisbon last night on a heading almost due north. By 3:00pm we were just about at the northwest corner of the Iberian Peninsula. Over night and today has been rocky, but not bad. As we would be entering the mouth of the Bay of Biscay, and traversing it for the better part of the next 24 hours or more, the captain again warned us to use the handrails while up and about.  After getting up, Kristi brought us a light breakfast to enjoy in our room. Then we played cards and listened to music as some passengers Zumba-ed for a while.  We decided to have lunch in the dining room for the first time. Why did we wait?  Breakfast and lunch is just as nice as dinner — lunch is three or four courses, including dessert. We shall probably do it again tomorrow.  Panzanella Salad Roast Leg of Lamb After lunch we participated in the Roulette tournament.  For just a $20 buy in each we got to play three 5-spin rounds.  After the preliminaries Jim was on the leader board....
Read more