Lisbon Day 3

It is about 3:00 in the afternoon and after an active morning we are resting in the hotel room Really Mommy is napping and I am pretending to get some work done. Maybe after I send these picture to you all.

Before I get to today's adventures, here is one more from yesterday I couldn't download last night because my camera battery was dead. It is us in the cloister of St. Jeronimos Monastery.

We started this morning in Commercial Square, a huge plaza built after the 1755 earthquake. 

 

Once you pass through that huge triumphal arch you are in Baixa, the pedestrian area and center of the city. Its full of shops and restaurants. We ate there last night as well as walked around a bit in that area yesterday and today. Its between everything so we keep coming back to Baixa. Here is a view back towards the arch.

Then we started walking up the hill to the medieval part of Lisbon. The first stop was the Church of St. Anthony, which was built on top of the spot where he was born. We thought the Aresco's would especially appreciate this site. Below is a picture of the facade and of Mommy kneeling in front of the altar in the crypt which is allegedly the spot he was born. Apparently John Paul II kneeled on this kneeler and prayed to St. Anthony in 1982. So Mommy is in good company.

 

Right behind the Church of St. Anthony is the Cathedral, which had an early medieval Romanesque nave that hadn't been changed much in the subsequent centuries.

Then we hopped a tram the rest of the way up the very big an steep hill to the Castle of St. George. It was built originally in the 11th century by the Moors, expanded by the Portuguese kings between the 12th and 16th centuries when it was their main residence, damaged by the earthquake, and reconstructed in the 1930s and 1940s.  Here are views of the outside and inside of the castle.

And in one of the towers of the castle there was a camera obscura that using a mirror and two lens and a periscope gave us a 360 degree panorama of the city. A guide worked the controls and pointed things out. It was amazing how clear and focused and detailed the image was. We could see cars driving and people walking.

After that we took two different public outdoor elevators down the hill to Baixa, walked across that flat part, and took the 1902 Santa Justa elevator up the hill on the other side to the Ciado neighborhood. Here we had lunch and checked out the Carmalite Church, which was damaged severely in the 1755 earthquake and left as a ruin as a reminder. It was very dramatic. It has partially been rebuilt we think as well.