We had two issues getting into the National Pantheon. The first was that the road sloped down a little towards it and that road was paved with the shiny, slippery, deadly tiles that Lisbon really likes to torment its visitors with. The second was the woman guarding the door and taking money to visit. We entered and were sharply told to get out and wait with a flick-of-the-wrist gesture. Okay, we thought, we’ll stand outside and wait. At this point some other tourists turned up and we tried to explain that nobody was allowed in at the moment but they either didn’t understand or didn’t believe us so we watched as they were treated abruptly in the same way as us. We assumed there was a maximum number of visitors allowed so we might need to wait until someone left but this wasn’t the case as a few minutes later we were told to enter. A little customer service training felt like it was in order.

The National Pantheon of Lisbon has a long-enough history of construction that its name has become synonymous with unending tasks in Portugal. The building started life as the Church of Santa Engrácia, and the current form was started in the late seventeenth century following the collapse of previous buildings on the site. The architect João Antunes is considered to be one of the most important Baroque artists, responsible for several cathedrals and tombs, some of which were sadly destroyed in the devastating earthquake of 1755.

The floor plan of the building is that of a Greek Cross – that’s a cross with equal lengths of arms, or a plus sign – with square towers situated at each corner. It was the first church of its design built in Portugal. The interior was incredibly spacious and wonderfully understated in its decor which extended to huge niches and vast curving spaces and marble flooring.

The building’s construction phased out in the early eighteenth century following the death of Antunes and more interest in the building of the Convent of Mafra by the king. In 1916 the still uncompleted church was decreed to be the National Pantheon and work continued, only finishing in the 1960s when the dome was added. A Pantheon is a building housing the entombed remains or cenotaphs of notable figures and Lisbon’s National Pantheon hosts the bodies of politicians, poets, writers, and even the footballer Eusébio. The cenotaphs include ones for explorers Vasco da Gama and Henry the Navigator.

Exploring the interior of the National Pantheon doesn’t take long as it’s effectively one large open space, but there’s more to the building than just that and it’s possible to climb up, get views from inside the dome looking down, and also step out onto the roof where wide-ranging views of Lisbon can be had. They’re definitely worth the effort.

And since it’s possible to see the National Pantheon from your cruise ship it follows that it’s possible to see your cruise ship from the National Pantheon too. In this case Ventura was joined by MSC Orchestra in port.

The next post in this cruise travelogue series will see us say farewell to Lisbon with a short walk along the waterfront and a break for some drinks ashore ahead of the sail away from the capital.

It would be nice to say here that the bus ride out to Praça dos Restauradores (where we were going to disembark) was uneventful and a duplicate of the prior day’s journey (see: Lisbon By Hop-On Hop-Off Bus) and, for most of it, that is the case. And then the bus driver decided to take a different side road for some reason which involved driving under low-hanging tree branches that normally saw no open top buses anywhere near them. Did I get whipped in the face by a branch? Yes, I did. My fault for sitting upstairs near the front. Those in the seats behind us had just enough warning to duck for cover but I was sporting a nice red mark on my cheek for a little while.

We reached the square, admired the art deco of the Teatro Eden once again (it is an absolute beauty), then headed in the rough direction of the castle. That you already know we wouldn’t be reaching.

We passed by a sculpture dedicated to the Calceteiros. These are the craftspeople responsible for Lisbon’s cobbled and tiled pavements that are a common sight throughout the city. There’s no disputing that the walkways of Lisbon are very attractive to look at but there’s also no disputing that they’re bloody deathtraps just waiting to send people onto their backsides or turn an ankle or two. Difficult enough to walk on in good conditions we can only imagine what the pile of bodies at the bottom of hilly roads would look like following a winter freeze.

Praça Dom Pedro IV (or Rossio) was just a short walk from where we’d got off the bus and it had a lovely example of that tiled ground that Lisbon loves. I quite liked it too although my wife said that staring at the wavy black and white pattern made her feel ill. You wouldn’t think that would be the case for someone used to cruising but there you go. The square’s column, paving, and two bronze Baroque fountains from France all date to the nineteenth century although the square was in use long before that and had undergone significant rebuilding a century earlier following the 1755 earthquake that had such an impact on Lisbon.

At the top of Rua Augusta we could see all the way to the bottom of the long road and the huge arch that separates it from the Praça do Comércio that we’d passed by the previous night on our walk back along Lisbon’s coastline.

Lisbon likes its public squares and there was one more to pass by as we continued heading towards the hill on which the castle stood. This was Praça da Figueira and it was host to a statue of John I atop a horse and very popular with tuk tuks. Tuk tuks would feature again on our walk.

At this point we were still intent on visiting the castle but the flat walking had come to an end and we needed to start ascending stairs and making our way up winding, narrow alleys on the most direct route to our planned destination. Tiles, street art, and signs of local festivities were in plentiful supply but I could tell very quickly that my wife’s enjoyment levels of exploring Lisbon were plummeting as the upward progress and additional need to be careful on the paved surfaces was causing her pain in her ankles and knees (old injuries).

Taking a short break I checked the map and made an executive decision to abort our castle plans ()I’m considerate like that, figuring we could try to keep to around the level we had reached, skirt around the hill, then make our way towards the National Pantheon instead. We’d had that as a possible place to visit in the backs of our minds anyway.

We were in Mouraria, the Moorish Quarter of Lisbon, at this point, and we stumbled upon a narrow, winding alley between houses lined with photos printed on boards. At first this looked like a nice tribute to locals but a note explaining the images painted a slightly different picture. Yes, they were tributes, but they were also memorials in a way to those who had left in the wake of, apparently, tourism, and the erosion of community as a result.

The Lisbon locals clearly blamed tourism for a lot of their ills as was further evidenced by scrawled signs on walls, including one that was by someone less enamoured with tuk tuks than those near Praça da Figueira. Ah, that old classic trope of blaming the foreigners for closer-to-home problems. The same the world over, spread by those truly responsible, shared by those lacking much in the brain department.

We’d seen that Lisbon was fond of deadly paving and public squares but that wasn’t all. Lisbon, built on quite hilly land, was fond of scenic viewpoints too and we were soon out from the maze of streets of Mouraria, into the Alfama district, and into an area where several of these miradouros were situated. As we were now closer to the River Tagus and the cruise port we could see our ship, and cruising law dictated that we needed to take a photo of it.

Our walking route continued roughly eastwards now towards the Pantheon and we noticed more street art with some tiled pieces by an artist called O Gringo standing out along with Half Young Panda, a very recognisably Bordalo II mural.

We do like churches – to visit and admire the architecture, not to actually use for their intended purposes – but we merely passed by the Monastery of São Vicente de Fora as we were now in sight of where we really wanted to visit and get out of the sun. Always nice to leave something for the next time you visit.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll take a look inside and from the rooftop of Lisbon’s National Pantheon.

Even though we had an overnight stay in Lisbon on this 2024 Ventura cruise, because we’d spent longer at the palace and treasury museum than we’d expected time suddenly became a factor in our plans for this first day. One thing we’d not taken into account was that for as generally handy as Hop-On, Hop-Off buses are they don’t run very long hours. Checking our map and timetable after emerging into the sunshine in Ajuda we realised that the last bus back from the route that included this part of the city was within the hour and that it wouldn’t actually return to the port but rather to a more central location in the city that under ordinary circumstances would be fine for jumping onto another bus on a port-based route except that there wouldn’t be one of those after that time either.

This was proving to be a day where our plans were getting tweaked constantly and thrown out on the spot frequently. After some dithering about the options available to us we decided that we’d walk down the hill towards Belém, see if we could get to the tower there, then see if we had enough time after that to get the last bus we’d already paid for without resorting to public transport, figuring that the city centre wouldn’t be the worst place to end up and should be easy enough to get to the ship afterwards.

We set off at what we thought was a sensible but not stupid pace and passed by a botanical garden that looked interesting but which we thought we wouldn’t really have time to explore. There’s always next time.

Trams and houses with tiles on the exterior walls. That’s how you know you’re definitely in Lisbon. We’ve still not ridden a tram in Lisbon. Mind you, we’ve still not had a pastel de nata either. Sometimes we do the absolutely typical things every tourist does and sometimes we find ways not to.

The former barracks of the 2nd Lancers Regiment looked interesting with what appeared to be gun ports, but, as the word “former” indicates, this was no longer used for military purposes and didn’t look like the sort of place you can really wander around anyway.

Afonso de Albuquerque was governor of Portuguese India between 1507 and 1515 and a garden with some statues and fountains was set out near the bottom of the hill down from the Ajuda area. We grabbed a spot in the shade to have a drink and reapply sun block before setting off again. Hydration and sun protection. See, we can be sensible.

By now we were close to the edge of the River Tagus and were walking parallel to it, separated by train tracks. We could see the Monument to the Discoveries which we’d seen from the cruise ship on a previous visit to Lisbon. As the name suggests, this monument was for the various explorers such as Henry the Navigator, Vasco da Gama, and Ferdinand Magellan, and they along with many others were represented on a stylised ship’s prow. A temporary monument had been sculpted in the 1940s but the one now in Belém is an enlarged, permanent structure built in the 1960s.

It was about now, while we were wondering where we could find a way to cross over the train tracks to the side of the main road in order to see the monument more closely and get to the tower, that we concluded that we’d vastly underestimated how long it would take us to get to where we needed to be. We likely wouldn’t have had long at the tower before it closed and we were also definitely going to miss the last bus if we didn’t head for it. We knew that if we really wanted then we could come back here tomorrow so we made the decision to call an end to the day’s cultural experiences.

The bus stop was near the maritime museum and our walk there took us through Empire Square Garden with the Church of Saint Mary of Bethlehem and the Jerónimos Monastery north of it. This all looked fabulous and we decided that yes, if we were to come back to this part of the city the following day or if we were to come back to Lisbon again then we’d have to check all these places out.

We hopped on the last bus of the day and could have stayed on it until it terminated in the city centre but decided to hop off when the bus stopped near the older, smaller cruise terminal at Gare Marítima de Alcântara. There was a marina nearby that could have been an option to look around for bars or restaurants but we could see a bar on the map that was along the shoreline walk towards our own cruise port. The city centre option would’ve led to a shorter walk but this would give us a chance to do something a little different and take advantage of pleasant early evening warmth. Different is good.

As it was, the walk ended up dragging us away from the water’s edge more often than we’d expected as there were warehouses and other buildings frequently blocking what we’d hoped would have been the more scenic route, but our eyeballs were treated to some nice architecture and frequent bursts of street art in spots and these are things we very much enjoy looking out for when we travel.

It was particularly nice to see one of the Big Trash Animals pieces by Bordalo II. Fox, sadly, has since been removed as the building shown below was demolished.

The bar we finally found was Titanic Sur Mer. It had beer, it had friendly staff, it had lovely views out over the river, and the interior space was huge, suggesting it could accommodate a lot of people for late night mingling and music. It was nice and quiet during our visit with only another half dozen or so people enjoying the setting sunshine and the sound of lapping water. A very enjoyable few drinks were had.

We’d already been caught out once before in the day with how long it took us to walk distances – not helped by me stopping to take photos, of course – and we weren’t sure if the temperature might drop considerably once the sun was down so we continued on our way with what we hoped was plenty of time to get back to the ship.

When we reached the Praça do Comércio we knew we weren’t far from the ship and we discussed the possibility of showering, changing, eating aboard, then potentially heading back out into the city in the evening. This large public square – one of the largest in Portugal – was the original location of the royal family’s palace before the 1755 earthquake and subsequent relocation to Ajuda.

We were back on Ventura pretty much as the sun dipped below the horizon, but after our planned showering, changing, and food (and you can see what we had for dinner below) we found we were a bit more tired than we’d expected after a decent bit of walking during the day so opted to stay on the ship instead of heading back into the city.

It had been a day of plans and impulsive changes and the following would continue in the same vein. In the next post in this series we’ll change our minds about what we were going to do in Lisbon during our second day yet again and take the Hop-On Hop-Off bus to the city centre where we go for a walk towards the fortress with every intention of visiting it, then don’t, and set off through the winding streets of Mouraria and Alfama instead.

1755 was a transformative year for the city of Lisbon. The massive earthquake, tsunami, and fires led to a huge loss of life and destruction, including that of the royal family’s residence of the Ribeira Palace. The effects weren’t just physical as the King, Joseph I, developed claustrophobia and a fear of living under stone that could collapse on him, having survived the terrible events in the city as the family had been staying elsewhere. He and his family took to living in a wooden building in the Ajuda area of Lisbon but after his death and a subsequent fire that burned the new royal residence down it was decided to build something more permanent.

Construction of the Ajuda Palace was a drawn-out affair, starting in 1795 but not being considered complete until close to a hundred years later. This was largely due to political and economic upheaval of the early 1800s. Napoleon had invaded, the royal family had fled to Brazil, the British had turfed out the French and been effectively running Portugal, then a revolution had begun in the country to take back control and force the royal family to return to mainland Europe rather than being run from abroad, and the new post-revolution, constitutional monarchy was more severely restricted in its expenditure.

By the time the palace was complete and had become the new permanent residence of the royal family its architectural style had drifted and taken on elements of the end of the Baroque trend and adapted Neoclassicism giving it a unique style of its own. But it was the interior of the Palace of Ajuda that we would be most impressed by and that can largely be attributed to the eye for style of Maria Pia, Italian princess of the House of Savoy and wife of King Luís I from the House of Braganza. With the help of her favourite architect, Possidónio da Silva, she designed most of the rooms and sourced most of the items that would fill them.

Okay, that’s the history of the Palace of Ajuda and the reason for how it looks the way it looks so now let’s get on with our visit, and one thing to note is that we mostly had the entire building to ourselves. It was shocking to us just how few people were here on this day. The bus had filled with people at the port and a few had got off in the city centre but everyone else had ignored this stop. To be fair, we’d not been considering it either but I’m so glad we did. There were probably only half a dozen other visitors to the palace which is possibly due to it being a little out of the way, not right on the coast, not near the city centre. It’s a place definitely worth making some time for, though.

The palace is spread out over two floors with most of the “smaller” rooms downstairs and the larger rooms for functions upstairs. I’ve indicated rooms where they’re known and highlighted some of the pieces within but mostly you can now just enjoy the pictures – hopefully – and add this place to where you’d like to visit for the next time you are in Lisbon.

The Hall of Order was where the king typically performed official duties on Thursdays.

In the Music Room below you can see a few musical instruments. Maria Pia was a pianist and King Luís apparently sang baritone accompanied by the cello.

The King’s Bedroom contains the nuptial bed of Pedro V, Luís’s father and predecessor to the Portuguese throne. The portrait above the bed to the right is not Brian May but rather that of King João V who ruled Portugal until 1750. The vases on the table date from the period when the royal family fled to Brazil and are decorated with images of the Monastery of Batalha and the aqueduct.

The Blue Room was remodelled between 1863 and 1865 to be a sitting room to the queen’s taste and had a large arch installed to afford a view into the adjoining room. The queen had requested a chandelier with no metal so an all-crystal one was produced by the Royal Factory of Glass and Crystal of La Granja.

Luís I and Maria Pia had two children, the princes Carlos and Afonso. Carlos would be crowned king in 1889 and would subsequently be assassinated in 1908. The sculpture in marble on the right of the picture below is of Carlos as a baby playing with toys and dates to 1865, created by Italian sculptor Cesare Sighinolfi.

While the Blue Room had been designed with the queen in mind, the adjoining Oak Annex was more for the men, used as a smoking room, and decorated with paintings of the king’s favourite ships. To the left of the arched window below there’s a small painting of the brig, Pedro Nunes, which the then-prince Luís commanded on an 1858 voyage to Gibraltar.

The strangest room in the Ajuda Palace had to be the Winter Garden. The stone that covers the walls, floor, and ceiling was a gift from the Portuguese Viceroy to Egypt and the room brings the outdoors inside with a fountain, bronze sculptures of birds, potted plants, and two large bird cages. The cage that’s partly obscured by the fountain in the photo below was made in 1872 and was designed to look like the Palace of Mafra. This room was sometimes used for dinners and parties when tables would be set up around the fountain.

The Pink Room has a lot of German influence in it with early eighteenth century furniture manufactured in Meissen (later reupholstered then given to the Portuguese royal family in 1864, probably as a wedding present) and the chandelier’s main body made from Meissen porcelain too. The sculpture of a man on a horse is that of King Umberto of Italy and was made by Stanislau Grimaldi, a Sardinian calvalry commander and amateur sculptor.

The large painting on the wall of the Green Room dates to 1876 by Joseph-Fortuné Layraud and depicts King Luís I, Queen Maria Pia, and the two princes in the Palace of Queluz gardens. The writing desk in Louis XV style (like a lot of the queen’s furniture) was crafted by her favourite cabinet maker, Paul Sormani.

The silk damask walls of the Saxe Room are woven with the mottos of the Houses of Braganza and Savoy. The painting on the right wall was a gift to the queen from the artist, Francisco José de Resende, and the girl in prayer is believed to be his daughter. The portrait of Victor Emmanuel II in hunting outfit may be based on a photograph. The desk against the right wall contained papers of the Queen related to everyday duties such as expenses, her dressmaker, charities she was connected with, and articles about the princes.

A three-year-old Prince Carlos makes an appearance in a portrait to the right of the gorgeous Napoleon III-style canopy bed in the Queen’s Bedroom.

The adjoining room served as a dressing room for the queen and included a bathroom towards the rear that featured some of the latest hygienic additions of the time, influenced by trends in Britain.

You can usually expect to find Asian influences in royal residences and stately homes particularly if the country they’re in engaged in a little bit of colonialism in its past. One room contained Samurai armour and a horse harness with the latter dating to the seventeenth century and the former a century later. The twelve-panel folding screen here is Qing Dynasty, dated from 1622-1722.

The commemorative jar on the table below, dated 1887, is for the “Friendship and Trade Treaty” between Portugal and China regulating sovereignty of Macao.

The seating in the room below is Brazilian rosewood and was made by Napoléon Quignon, cabinetmaker and supplier to the French imperial house.

An 1880 portrait of Queen Maria Pia dominates the wall in a room filled with 18th century furniture with sea motifs including dolphins, anchors, and shells. It’s believed, but not confirmed, that the furniture was aboard the Principe Real, the ship that took João VI to Brazil in 1807 when the royal family fled to Brazil to escape Napoleon.

A couple of interesting paintings here. On the left is a Zouave, an Algerian soldier fighting in the Imperial French Guard under Napoleon III against Austria, and considered a romantic character in art at the time. Opposite is a rare portrait of Emperor Pedro II of Brazil.

The only known surviving set of four tapestries from the Turkish Customs series adorn the walls of the room in the Aduja Palace below. The portrait on the wall is that of Pedro V when he was sixteen during a visit to England. The chandelier has a main stem made from a bronze amphora with four handles.

The four vases you can see in the following image are two pairs of Qing dynasty pieces, dated 1715-1720.

We now reached some of the grandest of spaces on the upper floor of the palace, starting with the Throne Room. A 180-lamp chandelier dominated the room. The two thrones are eighteenth century, made from chestnut, and gilded.

The Banqueting Hall was a very clean, light space, absolutely fitting for dining and entertaining in style. The one hundred and eighty chairs were ordered in 1903 by King Carlos I for a visit of Britain’s King Edward VII.

The remaining cavernous rooms were used for various official functions and balls.

And that brought most of our visit to the Palace of Aduja to a close, and hopefully you’ll agree that it looks absolutely stunning and is well worth a trip to see if you’re ever in Lisbon. However, since 2022 you can now also pay to pop next door and see the Portuguese Crown Jewels in the Royal Treasury Museum, and we did.

One of the most interesting aspects of the museum was how very modern it was, deeply contrasting with the palace’s elegant and historical feel. Blacks, chromes, ramps, lots of security (understandably), and some lovely pieces of jewellery and silverware. Most of the jewels on display were those produced during the reigns of João VI and Luís I. A lot of crown jewels had been destroyed or stolen during the 1755 earthquake and in 2002 six of the most important jewels were stolen during a robbery at a museum in the Hague where they were on loan.

My wife was very taken with the emerald bow. Her wedding ring is an emerald and it would have worked well with the bow, I’m sure, but no, we can’t afford it, as I made clear at the time.

The Diadem of the Stars and the Necklace of the Stars were commissioned for Maria Pia.

The Crown of João VI is the only surviving Portuguese crown, made in 1817, present at the coronations of subsequent kings, but never actually worn. In fact, no monarch of Portugal ever wore a crown following the consecration of the crown as a symbol to the Virgin Mary in 1646. You can also see the Mantle of João VI below.

Something my wife was also very interested in was all the silverware, taking plenty of photographs. This was mostly just to send to her dad who collects antique silver items and that was largely just to make him jealous.

In the next post in this series we’ll make a little more use of the Hop-On, Hop-Off bus and plenty of use of our feet as we make our way back to the ship along the shore of the River Tagus.

The thing we decided we’d like to do was visit the Belém Tower, something we knew was popular and often had long queues, but since we were under no real time constraints we thought would be a sensible target to aim for. We didn’t want to take a taxi there if there were better public transport options, having already discounted walking the nearly nine kilometres there (and nine kilometres back) in Lisbon’s warmth. There was a train option not too far from the cruise ship, and this was what we were going to do until we saw the bus routes offered by the Hop-On, Hop-Off operators in the terminal and realised one stopped at the tower. We’d be able to buy a ticket that lasted through the next day too so could get our money’s worth of it the following day, and we’d get to sightsee some of the capital city. And we’d never taken a Hop-On, Hop-Off bus before either, so a new experience to check off the list. Of course, you’d already worked all this out because the post’s title has somewhat given it away.

So this first post of several that will cover what we got up to during a two-day stop in Lisbon will feature sights from the top deck of the Hop-On, Hop-Off bus we were on. Gray Line, if you need to know. There were a few operators, there were different routes available, and the pricing really depended on what you wanted to do so there’s no point mentioning any of that even before you factor in how things will likely have changed by the time you read this. This is a travelogue to give you an idea of what happened to us, not a guide you should actually rely on. This also isn’t one of those infuriating articles that treats you like a salivating imbecile by saying things like “read on to see if we made it to Belém Tower.” We didn’t.

In the first photo below you can see how close the Hop-On, Hop-Off bus boarding area was to the cruise terminal entrance and to our ship, Ventura, just beyond.

The first part of the bus route took us away from where we wanted to end up, heading north-eastwards towards the Viaduto da Cruz da Pedra which crosses over the train tracks that side of the cruise port. Buildings were in various states of disrepair here with nothing particularly noteworthy but we did come within sight of the dome of the National Pantheon rising up the nearby hill and we would be visiting that the following day.

While we drove past buildings with the typically Portuguese tiling over their exteriors and other buildings of architectural interest – at least to me – we could listen in to some commentary of the city’s history as well as fado music. I’d never heard fado music before and I can confidently say that if I never hear any fado music again it will be too soon.

There weren’t many buildings of historical interest that we passed, or if there were then I tuned out the commentary because of the accompanying musical torture, but I was happy enough to see modernist architecture butting up next to older styles; Art Nouveau and Art Deco existing side-by-side.

The Marquis of Pombal Square, despite its name, is a roundabout. This endeared it to us because we live in a city with a place still known to us as the Johnson & Johnson roundabout even though it’s a huge, multi-lane, four-way junction. The marquis atop the monument is Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, a rather unpleasant politician who was a big fan of autocracy and despotism – you still get them – but who did bring about some reforms that the Portuguese people were pleased about – port production in the Douro region, for instance – and who was praised for how swiftly he was able to arrange for Lisbon’s reconstruction following its terrible 1755 earthquake. The monument was erected in the early decades of the twentieth century.

A familiar sight greeted us after a pleasant drive through a long avenue shaded by trees. The Teatro Eden, now a hotel, was something I’d been very impressed by when we’d been taking our walking tour on our previous visit to Lisbon. This area was a square dedicated to the restoration of the independence of Portugal in 1640 following a period of rule by the Spanish. The 1886 monument lists the dates of battles leading up to independence.

Another familiar sight was that of the terraced area with fountain and viewpoint, Miradouro de São Pedro de Alcântara. We’d actually started our walking tour of Lisbon here after emerging from the tunnels of the city’s reservoir system.

Our Hop-On, Hop-Off bus continued down to the coastline now, following the train tracks and passing under the Ponte 25 de Abril bridge that we’d cruised under before, and would be cruising under again the next day.

The Belém Tower was now only a few stops away but you already know that we don’t make it there. When we reached the Palace of Ajuda we decided to actually hop off and visit that first, reasoning that we could simply walk to the tower afterwards or catch the next bus if the timing was right. We were the only people to get off the bus. In fact, other than at the square dedicated to the restoration of independence I’m not sure anybody hopped off at all. Now, perhaps everyone was just waiting to get to the tower too, but I suspect a lot of tourists simply ride the bus and return to the ship. Although I will concede that maybe everyone had decided that continuous fado music was all they really needed in life. I didn’t spot anyone getting clonked on the head by trees on the open top deck but it’s certainly possible that I missed it.

In the next post in this series we’ll pop inside the Palace of Ajuda and the Royal Treasury Museum next door to it. These were fantastic.

Vigo has a hill overlooking the city and on that hill stands the Fortress of El Castro so after a morning wander around some of the interesting architecture and art in Vigo we made the decision to see if we could get to it. Because we were in the middle of the city and surrounded by buildings we didn’t really have a firm idea for how high up the fortress would be but we’d not seen a mountain towering over the cruise port earlier in the day and guessed it likely wouldn’t involve too much uphill-walking since we’d already had to do a little by this point anyway.

Wrong.

There was quite a bit more uphill-walking than we’d anticipated, which isn’t really surprising as we always underestimate this sort of thing, and because we weren’t approaching by the most direct route there was quite a big of zig-zagging up roads and paths through more tree-lined areas. We stopped often to take photographs and to rest, and we almost gave up the ascent when my wife’s knee suddenly started causing her a lot of pain. She’s a trooper, though, and after a decent break near an area of street art we were able to continue.

The fortress is really two fortresses and a city wall joined together to provide defences and it was built in the middle of the seventeenth century. Its actual usefulness was less than ideal as there were plenty of places that any invading force could land well out of the range of the guns and the subsequent history of El Castro is one of defeats, occupation, and ransacking.

What most people come to El Castro for, though, are the views. There’s a very nice pond with fountain too, and the fortifications are very nice, but the views are the big draw as you can see out to sea, down to the port, and for cruise visitors, your own ship will be there and you’ll be obliged to take a photo of it. You can also get a feel of the height above sea level you’ll need to climb to get here, and if we’d had a firmer idea it was this far up we probably wouldn’t have risked injuring ourselves, so sometimes it’s good to not be informed.

One of those battles that weren’t really affected by Vigo’s fortifications was the Battle of Vigo Bay (also known as the Battle of Rande) when a Dutch-Anglo fleet almost totally destroyed a Franco-Spanish fleet that had made it to Vigo with treasure from the New World. A lot of treasure was subsequently taken whilst rumours abounded that much was sunk and could still be in the muddy waters off the city. Regardless, a monument to the battle in the form of three of the anchors and some guns recovered from the sea bed was erected in 1967 and designed by local artist Desiderio Pernas.

Getting down from the fortress was a lot easier than getting up to it and we were soon back in the main part of Vigo where we decided we needed to reward our exercise and appreciation of some cultural highlights of the city with a beer in the shade somewhere. It was just a lager, so not our preferred drink – we’re fond of trying locally-made craft beers if we can – but we were hot and a little tired so it hit the spot nicely. What was fun here was admiring the perseverance of the pigeons on adjoining tables trying to get at leftover crisps and not really caring if they knocked empty bottles over to do so.

As we approached the cruise terminal we passed by a large bronze sculpture in a very odd pose. This was El Nadador and its name means The Swimmer and not The Faceplant in case you were wondering. This sculpture is supposed to a swimmer in the act of diving into the water while there’s another one to find elsewhere in the city that depicts the swimmer in mid-stroke. The pair are by Francisco Leiro.

In the next post in this Iberian cruise travelogue series we’ll sail away from Vigo.

Blue sky, the Cíes Islands in the distance, and gulls swooping around. Yes, this was all very familiar.

We had a flexible plan for the day with some walkable goals but a lovely, relaxed sense that we’d take it as it came. Our first target, though, was a very specific building that I’d noticed when looking at the map and so we stepped ashore, passed through the very nice port area, and headed in the general direction we’d need.

One of the first things you’ll spot as you walk through the port area of Vigo is an ensemble of sculptures put up in 2011 called the Tribute to Emigration. If you’re talking to right-wingers on a cruise (and you will find them) then just tell them it’s people going on holiday or they’ll get a bit foamy-mouthed. These are by the sculptor Ramón Conde and they wouldn’t be the only public works of art of his we’d see on this day in Vigo.

Our walking route took us past the Collegiate Church of Santa Maria (or, at least, that’s one of its many names) and as it was open our walking route then took us inside. The building dates from 1811 and is simple in appearance without being too overstated. Neoclassical architecture, fairly small, and not too gaudy. Very nice, in other words.

We continued on our way and the next thing to catch our attention was the Neptune Fountain. Its current location wasn’t the original site it was built on but it had to be moved when Vigo underwent expansion in the nineteenth century. The first references to it, though, date back to the early seventeenth century and it with its angel atop are one of the city’s oldest public sculptures.

From something old to something very modern with El Sireno, or the Merman. Francisco Leiro was the sculptor of this 1991 rather surreal blend of man and fish in aluminium.

We were enjoying the various bits of architecture we could see around Vigo and we still hadn’t reached the one building we were aiming for when were sidetracked again after spotting MARCO, the museum of contemporary art. Naturally, we had to pop in. I do know that modern art isn’t to everyone’s tastes and I’d never claim to like all modern art but sometimes you’ll just see something and it will evoke a reaction or positive emotion, and that can be all you need. We’re fond of the surreal or abstract. We saw some pieces that we’d be happy to have in the house and we liked the building too. We couldn’t possibly afford either.

Just outside the museum there was another interesting sculpture. This was a tribute to a well-known newspaper seller in the city known as Manolo Castro. The sculpture apparently used to have a newspaper balanced on the top finger to spin, something he was famous for doing, although it was missing during our visit.

We finally reached the building we’d been looking for. This was the Aurora Polar Building and architecturally it’s from the broad movement that is rationalism, but even though it was built in 1959 it’s clear to see that it’s got all the hallmarks of the International Style or Art Deco here that pre-dates this by a few decades. We do like Art Deco, and Streamline Moderne with its hints of speed and travel leap out at me here too. Basically, this could be the corner aft of a cruise ship with balconies reflecting the blue sea. And we’re fond of cruise ships. As you can probably tell on this site.

Just around the back of the gorgeous modernist building in Vigo we found Plaza Portugal Park, a small green space with a fountain and some street art around the area. It made for a good place to sit and rest in the shade for a few minutes before setting off again.

The street art we’d seen had been okay but the next thing to catch our eye was a huge piece on the side of a building that was absolutely superb. This was Vigo, City of Colour by Louis Lambert.

It was time to check in with my wife to see how she felt about a little bit of uphill walking now. She has a history of bad ankles, knees, and hips, and another point of interest in the city was higher than we were. Getting the okay from her, we started to make our way to a historic point overlooking the city. This required us to double back on ourselves a bit before heading up the wide Gran Via Avenue. The road includes a moving walkway to help people up the hill… which wasn’t working. Still, as we walked, slowly, we did pass a monument to the workers – fishermen specifically – that also incorporated a water feature, and this artwork was also by Ramón Conde. See, I said we’d see more of his work.

In the next post in this series we’ll eventually reach the Fortress of El Castro for some lovely views out over Vigo before making the far easier trip down into the city once more.

We didn’t look around it, though, instead opting to take a cruise excursion to visit two nearby towns to see the local architecture. The first of those was at Comillas (and a rare Gaudí design outside Catalonia) with the second town being Santillana Del Mar. Follow those links if you’d like to see pictures of the towns to compare late nineteenth century modernist works in the former with medieval charm in the latter.

So, Santander looked very nice. The same couldn’t be said of the view from our balcony where I could see someone on the deck below smoking a cigarette. Some ships do permit this vile habit despite it being dangerous while others don’t, and P&O Cruises don’t which is why the woman in question was trying to keep out of view of those above, particularly when she caught me looking over. It’s dirty, it’s dangerous, it’s selfish, and people like this who absolutely know they shouldn’t be doing it deserve to be banned from ever cruising again.

Anyway, we had a very nice architecture-themed day in Cantabria then sailed away from Santander, even catching sight of one of those ferries that runs the route from this port to our home city as we left.

Dinner for this evening was taken in the main dining room and you can see the menu and what we ate below.

The evening was the typical one after that of finding any trivia going on and hunting down venues with music to listen to. With the odd drink, of course.

The next day was another sea day (the first day of this cruise had been spent at sea) which, for us, means doing very little. We like to test our trivia knowledge against others if it’s going on, we like to read, we like to spend time on the balcony once we’re sure the room has been cleaned, and we got to do all these things. If you’d like to see what other sorts of activities there are taking place around a ship like Ventura then there are scans of the daily programme of events below to take a look at. This sort of range of things to do – or avoid – is very typical of most cruise lines.

One unexpected activity – and unwanted for those involved – occurred during our time on our balcony when the ship slowed practically to a stop and the captain announced that a medical evacuation would be taking place. We certainly heard the helicopter from our private outside space but never saw anything. We’ve seen a few of these over our years of cruising and you always feel so sad for the people affected by this.

Formal nights often fall on sea days and that was the case for this day which is why we booked the speciality dining venue of Epicurean on Ventura ahead of the cruise. The main dining room can be absolutely heaving on formal nights and we preferred a more relaxed meal.

Epicurean was fine, no real complaints, and we’ve dined at this venue on ships before and had both better experiences and worse ones. You can take a look at the menu and our food choices below. The starter selection of bread was lovely but then again I’ve never met a bread I didn’t love.

And once again – we are creatures of habit – it was drinks in bars and finding music to round off the sea day evening on Ventura.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll arrive at a port we’d visited once before and on this very same ship three years earlier. On that occasion we’d headed off on an excursion but this time around we would be exploring Vigo on our own.

Santillana Del Mar was a marked contrast in terms of architecture, with everything we saw feeling far more medieval with its warm-toned stone walls and cobbled streets. The name of the town comes from Santa Juliana and its origins date to the eighth century when monks brought relics of the saint to this location. Donations from wealthy people, land acquisition, and being located on the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela all helped the town to grow through the Middle Ages. Despite a general uniformity in the buildings in we saw in Santillana Del Mar the ages of their construction varied widely, though.

Our guide gave us a little bit of an explanation about some of the initial buildings we passed that had some historical significance but this was largely a “look, it’s a pretty place and it’s got tourist shops” kind of visit. We didn’t have too much of a problem with that because it had been the earlier part of the tour that we’d been really interested in, and it was a pretty place, after all.

We had plenty of free time on our own to explore. While the photos here may show some steep and hilly-looking areas to the town we didn’t find it too taxing to get up and down. There had been rain before we’d arrived which gave the cobbled roads a sheen, but I don’t recall it ever feeling dangerous to walk on the surface. Something to consider with accessibility, though.

Our free time in Santillana Del Mar didn’t extend far enough to really allow us to visit anything. We wandered as far the Collegiate Church of Santillana, the former monastery where the religious relics are stored, but there was no opportunity to pop in that we could see so this trip ended up being one for the eyes rather than the brain.

On the walk back we popped into the grounds of a small museum dedicated to some of the works of sculptor Jesús Otero. Animals were his thing. That and helping rebels to hide when fighting fascism during the wars of the twentieth century.

A minor bit of activity was required at the end of the tour as our bus had been moved on by the police so our guide got me to lead everyone to where it was now waiting while he hung around for those inevitably late to return. I seem to get roped into this role more often than you’d think. I must look trustworthy with “that man has a good sense of direction” written in my expression too.

Another day might have been a completely different experience, but we didn’t feel that this part of the tour as a whole was that great. Santillana Del Mar is very pretty and has a lovely feel but from a cruise excursion perspective there wasn’t really a lot to see or do after you’d passed the first palatial house in the medieval town and after you’d passed the first tourist shop. We’d have liked more time to be able to visit some of the museums or churches, but there is that trade-off with trying to just a get a feel and some highlights of an area. So overall, for the contrast in architecture, we enjoyed the day spent in these two Cantabrian towns, but Comillas was our favourite for the dedicated look around Gaudí’s building.

In the next post in this Iberian peninsular cruise aboard Ventura we’ll return to Santander for the sail away and there will be a day at sea before the next port of call.

In 1881 the town hosted King Alfonso XII at the request of the marquis of Comillas who was a close friend. Ahead of the occasion electric light bulbs were installed, making this the first place in Spain to showcase the new invention. In addition, the house in which the king was staying for this period served as the location for a ministerial congress and since the law demanded that this take place in the capital city, for one day only Comillas became Spain’s capital.

None of this was why we chose to take this tour while our ship Ventura was docked at Santander at the start of our Iberian cruise in 2024.

Our excursion would see us visit two Spanish towns and it was the first of these, Comillas, that we most wanted to see but the reason was only lightly connected with what I’ve already mentioned. The second half of the nineteenth century saw members of the Spanish royal family regularly visit the town and this led to an explosion of monuments and buildings befitting people of their standing. We like architecture so this would be great on its own, but there was a specific building we were interested in.

We started this tour with a walk past the Sobrellano Palace – not in it, sadly, but there’s always another time – and then through a few streets of the town where eclectic but enchanting examples of design were clear to see.

When King Alfonso XII had come to visit Comillas the house in which he’d stayed had been prepared by a team of architects with whom the marquis was acquainted, one of whom – responsible for the cigar pavilion – was a relatively unknown Antoni Gaudí. A couple of years later Gaudí was commissioned to design a summer villa in the town for a wealthy client. We were familiar with Gaudí’s later work in Barcelona and had visited his home town in Reus so we were very interested to see what one of the architect’s earliest designs would look like.

This was El Capricho. It was crazier than we’d imagined.

The design of El Capricho is influenced from eastern styles and it’s easy to see some Arabian elements such as the minaret, but the heavy use of natural motifs and symbolism also points to what would eventually become Art Nouveau in Europe. Flower and leaf tiles were everywhere. It was also nice to see a distinct layering of the floors with the exterior brickwork or decorations differing between the ground, first, and top floors of the building.

The interior of El Capricho didn’t have quite the wow effect of the outside view but that’s to be expected; it was fairly plain by comparison. You wouldn’t want to live in a house that constantly challenged your senses. However, there were some lovely elements and one of the most interesting was in the windows. The client who’d commissioned Gaudí was an amateur musician so the architect designed the windows with metal pipe counterweights which emitted sounds when they were opened and closed.

As architecture fans we were not disappointed at all with this excursion to see El Capricho, one of only a very few examples of Gaudí design outside the Catalonia region of Spain.

We finished this first part of the day’s trip with a walk back through Comillas to the bus and had a chance to see and appreciate more of the late nineteenth century modernist architecture on show, including a delightful fountain with three spouts designed by Lluís Domènech i Montaner.

In the next post in this series we’ll visit a town with a different character altogether, Santillana Del Mar.