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| Monument to Prince Henry the Navigator |
Having not been able to do Seville Justice due to absolutely
awful weather, we made up for it with Lisbon. We bought the 48 hour three tour
`Big Yellow Tours’ bus tickets (that’s a mouthful). These tickets allow use of
trams and public buses (the Big Red Bus Tours don’t).The open top Hop on Hop
off service is fantastic, and there is a running commentary as you’d expect
detailing major sites.If there is a problem with it, it’s the musical `fill’
when all we really wanted was constant facts, because you drive past stuff
you’re desperate to find out about and instead you just get to listen to `Fado’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fado,
not my cup of tea at all. The other minor gripe and this entirely personal, was
having at least two stops on the tour at Portuguese Super Malls, with a stream
of general advertising codswallop about being able to buy the latest designer
brands blah blah blah.
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| Trafira Docks |
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| Belem Tower |
Let’s start at the beginning of our days. We had to rise
early and catch a bus near the Orbitur Campsite (see previous post ... convenient BUT), from Costa
de Caparica to Trafira, where we then caught the ferry to Porto Brandao and finally Belem (west Lisbon, or
more properly west of the 25th of April Bridge).
River
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| Prince Henry The Navigator Monument and his Peers |
The river starts in Spain, and is fed on its journey by
several major tributaries (see the links below). Having been born near the
Thames and having spent most of my life living within a mile or so to a few
hundred metres away from the river or it’s docks I have a bit of a big river
fetish. The Tagus at its deepest is 46metres at its widest its 18kilometres and
its over a 1000kilometres long (see bridges below for how to cross it).
The port of Lisbon runs along the banks and has all the
normal functions of a working port such as container stacking and loading, but
also a marina, a leisure area, a trendy bars and discos area, the museum of the
orient and three three cruise terminals.
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| Docks and a Giant Baby Jesus Preparing to Clap in the Distance |
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| Expo 98 Area |
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| Looking Inland |
This is a slightly odd mix, but is easily explained by the
functions of buildings, and technology over time. Where once bagged and boxed
goods turned an economy, now containerisation has taken over. This leaves
unused warehouses and other buildings (such as the Cod Salting house, now the
Museum of the Orient ... the wiki link doesn’t say enough and the museum link
is verbose to the point of making the eyes bleed, so you’ll have to take my
word on it).
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| Big Graffiti and they Celebrate It |
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| A Square (Tram cables) |
http://www.museudooriente.pt/?lang=en
(seeing this website you’d just pass on by), the displays inside will bring
tears to the eyes, silks, lacquer work, water colours. Worth the visit to
Lisbon on its own.
The old buildings and warehouses that haven’t been pulled down
have just been converted, and the ports new functions have grown around them.
So whereas Londons docks were regenerated elsewhere on the river and completely
new docks were built because the size of ships increased over time, Lisbons
deep water estuary allowed `organic’ growth without moving the dock site. To
give a bit of context, London’s docks broadly by generation are: The Pool of
London (from London Bridge to just below Tower Bridge, no locks, just riverside
berths, then St Katerines Docks Part of the pool of London but much later, West
India Docks (Isle of Dogs), The royal Docks (city Airport area), then Tilbury
Docks just beyond the city limits in Essex, and now just being developed The
London Gateway Super Container port. These facilities spread over a period of
hundreds of years and are all separated in measures of miles (around 30 from
the Pool of London to the London Gateway).
The port of Lisbon, in common with Cartagena, is entirely self-contained
in all of its generations over those same hundreds of years, due to the vastness
of the estuary, the depth of water and geology.
Referring to the video, I said the Tagus/Tejo has a lot of
power. It fills on the incoming tide slower than it empties and watching it on
the ebb is a site to behold, the ferry journey back to Trafira on the ebb tide
was ten minutes quicker than the journey into Lisbon with the tide.
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| One of a Pair of Fountains that have Small Ornamental Canals |
Bridges, Discoveries
There are two very special bridges over the Tejo/Tagus, the
25th of April Bridge (previously the Salazar Bridge). Also a correction
to the earlier video: The railway was always under-slung, it was just the
station that was built later (some of the guide pamphlets could really do with
being re-written by someone with English as a first language ... same in Spain
... maybe English ones are as bad for foreign tourists).
The bridges Top Trump facts can be read from the link below.
Further inland is the bridge that caught my eye: The Vasco
da Gama bridge. It’s the longest bridge in Europe at 17kilometres (just over 10
miles). I wish retrospectively that we’d crossed the Tagus using this bridge,
because it crossed salt marshes and nature reserves (we could always go back
that way instead of crossing Spain in the north).
Vasco da Gama by the way was the first person to sail around
the Cape of Good Hope and navigate from Europe eventually to India (he wasn’t
the first sailor to specifically navigate around the Cape, just the first person
to go far beyond and discover a route to India by sea).
As an aside it was Portuguese aviators that first crossed to
Brazil across the south Atlantic from Europe (not the first non-stop crossing
of the Atlantic that was Alcock and Brown British, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transatlantic_flight_of_Alcock_and_Brown).
However the Portuguese effort was significant in using new technologies and of
being such a duration and distance ... and using three aircraft to do it. Their
actual flight started from Belem a few hundred yards from where we disembarked
from our ferry from Trafira.
Aqueduct
What have the Romans ever done for us? Apart from
Irrigation, medicine, public order, education etc. They gave us Aqueducts, and
the principle has been copied and re-engineered down the centuries The Livres
Aqueduct spans nearly 60 kilometresas canals, tunnels and water bridges, its
top spans are 65metres in the air. In town we saw scaffolding under a section
and copies amounts of water spilling from it, as a team of workmen try to
maintain and repair it by cleaning the stone without chemicals. Dotted around
the city are incredibly ornate drinking fountains, the lower level for animals
the upper levels for people.
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| Drinking Fountain |
Tiles
You can’t talk about Lisbon without talking about the tiles
on so many of the buildings, patterned in the Moorish style (geometric), or in
far more European styles with murals, or hybrid picture patterns. Those are the
distinct types:. Moorish or Islamic influenced tiles don’t have pictures per
se, just pattern, hybrid have recognisable pictures of flowers or birds, but just
form repeats (like wall paper), and murals are just pictures made from tiles.
I commented to Amanda that were someone from Portugal to
come to the City of London they would recognise the building types but maybe
believe them to be unfinished because they haven’t been tiled.
If buildings aren’t tiles they are frequently painted in
rich pastel colours, the Presidential Palace is pink (and referring to the
video, we know the president wasn’t in because his flag wasn’t flying). We
should also say that this tiling isn’t just the grand houses or places of
commerce, it’s the tenements, road side walls, tunnels , almost any and all
spaces have tiles of one sort or another. Where they are in a good state of
repair and the pattern is complete they are spectacular.
Generally we liked Lisbon, the expo 98 site outside of the
old city (like London’s Docklands) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expo_'98
was a stark contrast; a juxtaposition of the new and the old Lisbons (and we
don’t use words like juxtaposition unless we mean it). The new Lisbon like
Docklands nods to the old city but stands alone, in terms of architecture and
stature. Tall buildings, glass curtain walls, odd geometry, gravity defying
structures like the Pavillion of Portugal, designed to look like a sheet of
paper resting between two bricks (and currently an umbrella to a 20ft tall
fibre glass Tyrannosaurus Rex).
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| Giant Cubist Nob Sculpture |
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| Tile Wall Oceanarium |
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| The Central Station of Expo98 |
The train Station, the Spinnaker like building at one end of
the citys cable car ride, the twin towers with their Carvel Lateen sail shapes,
and old tower from a refinery that stood on the site previously, and all those
names we are now familiar with for all the wrong reasons ... the banks and
their Bang without Boom lending.
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| Brick Supporting Paper and Tyrannosaurus |
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| Super Heroes Mural DC and Marvel Universe |
For me it was an interesting mix, a microcosm of the cityscape
I am so familiar with London; by a River, the seat of Government, home of
museums and culture, a gateway to the world from the distant past to the
emerging future. A bustle of buses, cars and trams, and trains and ships and
people all viewed in one mind expanding eyeful. In some ways I was also reminded
of the Liffey in Dublin, the city stretches to the gates of the Irish Sea. London
is inland, protected from the ferocity of the North Sea, Lisbon looks out
everyday onto the Atlantic. Between it and Ocean City Maryland in the United
States (if I read my maps right), lies the specs of the Azores and lots of open
water, when the wind moves the Atlantic Lisbon feels it. It deserves more than
two days, and maybe we’ll come back one day. Given its position, close to
resorts and inconsideration of its antiquity and once might, I would put Lisbon
way up the list on your must sees. There are grubby bits, but aren’t there
everywhere, those bits just waiting for the eye and imagination to take them
into the future. Portugal isn’t really in the Algarve, be under no illusion, it’s
in Lisbon.
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