Lisbon Day 2

We had quite a day today. We slept until almost 10:00 and then hurried not to miss breakfast that lasted only until 10:30.  We left the hotel at 11:00 am and returned at 9:30 pm after a fun filled day of sightseeing!

We started the day by headed downtown by subway to commercial square, where we bought a 3-day lisbon card that gives us access to museums and public transit. We took a very crowded tram ride out to the western part of the city, called Belem. In Belem we toured the enormous and magnificent Jeronimos Monastery. The Order of St. Jerome was apparently just active in Spain and Portugal and was kind of a national thing here. This monastery was closely associated with the kings for centuries. Many were buried here and built parts of it. Their palace was up the hill behind the monastery. We toured the monastery, its huge church, and the very extensive and well done archeological museum which is housed in part of the monastery.

Here is a view inside the main cloister, that almost gives a sense of the size, but definitely shows the ornate carving. Its a late medieval building in the Manueline style - which was kind of Gothic but with lots of maritime motifs meant to promote Portuguese sea power.

In addition to the kings we'd never heard of who were buried here, Vasco de Gama's was also in the Monastery.

The monastery faced onto the river across a beautiful park. On the river was a huge Monument to the Discoverers built in the 1950s celebrating 500 years of  Portuguese discoveries. The photo above of the monastery and park was taken from the top of the monument. As was the photo below of the pavement in front, which had a nice map of the world inlaid in it. In fact, all throughout the city we've notice really amazing paving designs, every square an sidewalk is laid in different stone patterns and its all very pretty.

Then we walked along the breezy river's edge to the Belem Tower. A cute little fortress also in the Manueline style. It was used as a prison and had some canons I guess to attack anyone coming up the river. In this picture you can also get a sense of how wide the river is (very). This is the mouth of it looking out to the Atlantic beyond. This blurry picture also shows how sunny it is. Sometimes its so bright its hard to get a good picture. I climbed up the stairs to the top of this tower as well, but Mommy turned back halfway up because the very tight windy stairs made her a little nervous.

We returned from Belem around 5:00 and once back at Commercial Square in the City Center, we had ice cream in a nice cafe and then visited a museum called the Story of Lisbon. Its basically another city history museum, but privately run. It had no artifacts like the one we saw yesterday, but had an extensive audio tour in English so we learned more. There were also lots of videos and photos to help us visualize. We've noticed that the focus is definitely on the Age of Discoveries (under Manuel of the Manueline style) and the 18th century rebuilding after the big earthquake - then it skips to the 1974 revolution. Not much discussion of the 19th century and no mention of the dictatorship.