The Tower of Hercules is the oldest known Roman lighthouse to still be standing, dating from the first century C.E., although much of what is seen nowadays comes from an eighteenth century restoration to preserve the core of the Roman structure. The original lighthouse had a spiral ramp around this core and you can see evidence of that in the brickwork.

We were looking forward to our visit of the tower right up until we rounded a corner and saw the crowd of schoolchildren at its base and the sight of another couple of full buses turning up. My wife expressed her desire to perhaps leave visiting the UNESCO heritage site for another day, certain that we’d return. Her actual words, should you be interested, were “Fuck that for a laugh.”

Sometimes you’ve just got to be flexible about your plans, and this cruise had certainly given us many opportunities to demonstrate that, particularly during our couple of days in Lisbon earlier in it. We decided we’d simply hug the coastline a little more and circle around and back towards the port knowing that there would be nice views to see and the opportunity for some liquid refreshment.

One of the first things to catch my eye was a monument across the road from us. This was the memorial to victims of fascism. Memorials like this can be infuriating when you see the same selfish power struggles and political leanings starting to surface once more, as they are now. The people who most need to understand the meaning and human cost of fascism are the ones least capable of it and most likely to be coaxed into working against their own interests by the rich and powerful, thinking all the time that they’re one of them and not simply very disposable tools. Ask me someday about what else I’d like to see next to memorials like this.

Back to cheerier matters and our continuing clockwise wander around A Coruña’s coast. Far smaller than Orzán beach that we’d already seen we next passed San Amaro Bay which had its own beach of golden sand as well as a health and fitness club with outdoor swimming pools, all looking very popular on this warm day.

A mosaic artwork on a viewpoint area along the promenade might have made for a better photo opportunity for the city had it not been obstructed by a street lamp. I do wonder about the mentality of people sometimes. “Ah, visitors will enjoy this pleasing artwork. Not all at once, of course, unless they’re less than half a metre away from it.”

We headed into the city and away from the shoreline once we reached Rúa Veramar and the reason for that was because there was a microbrewery in that direction. This was Malte Atochas and, as we got close to it, we saw that it was popular. However, according to our map there was another Malte place nearer the port so we foolishly decided to bypass this first one. We won’t make that mistake again because a closed and very abandoned-looking building was all that could not be found where the map said the latter was.

The stone structure below is a mystery to me. I’ve seen three different explanations for it as either a guard’s shelter or a shrine or a former water fountain. There was a time when you could simply plug in a few keywords with quotes in the right places and Google would sort you out no problem but these days the same query will produce different hallucinations from the AI (which it isn’t) slop machine that has priority over search index results, and none of it can be trusted. I may as well declare that the photo below is a public artwork representing the majesty of man by a Galician sculptor.

We didn’t look inside the Church of St George, merely admiring the lovely Baroque exterior as we walked the streets, but it’s a place with an interesting note in history attached to it. In 1901 it was the site of Spain’s first same-sex marriage thanks to a little subterfuge by the celebrants, Marcela Gracia Ibeas and Elisa Sánchez Loriga. I’m a big fan of subterfuge when it comes to religion.

If you’re on a cruise ship and you visit A Coruña and you walk around and somehow don’t end up in María Pita Square then congratulations on being weird. Everyone else ends up here at some point. The town hall building on the north side of this huge public space is a beautiful building indeed with metallic tiles on the domes of the towers that gleam like scales on a reptile when the sun hits them.

María Pita, for whom the square is named, is an absolutely fascinating character. Ordinarily, in a post like this, I’d summarise her life and key events, but between this visit recorded here back in 2024 and this write-up now at a mysterious time only discernible if you’re able to read the RSS content associated with it (Ha! That’ll teach you for not knowing about the web standards that underlie the internet!) we returned to A Coruña and looked around the house museum in the city dedicated to her so I’ll leave this until I get around to that account. For now, though, just know that the square is a vast open space with lovely architecture around it and a sculpture to the local heroine created by José Castiñeiras Iglesias who also made the surfers sculpture on Orzán Beach.

This was the point where we headed off in search of that other microbrewery only to discover that the Google Maps information was appallingly inaccurate and so we ended up near the waterfront of the marina in view of our ship in the cruise port instead. We had low expectations of the place and, indeed, the beer was general lager, indistinguishable from any other. And we might have left then if we’d not spotted some people at another table having some sangria delivered. Needless to say but we decided to stay for another drink. Or three. Accompanied by a random selection of crisps and sweets because that’s something Spanish bars like to do. We don’t disapprove.

We never wait until the very last minute before returning to the ship but it wasn’t far off all aboard time before we headed back towards Ventura as we could see her from our seats and had a decent idea how long it would take us to walk back. We like to spend as much time ashore as we can, spending locally if we can. We’re not that type of cruiser who gets off, does very little ashore, then gets back to save money by having the free food or included drinks on the ship. The number of times we watch cruise bloggers posting videos about late breakfasts, time ashore, then getting back to have lunch on the ship. It’s not a good look. Yes, the world does have tightarses in it; that’s the nature of humans. But you’re cruisers. You’re already despised by people who are way too stupid and lazy to know any better. Don’t make it easy for them. Promote the good things you’re doing for local communities while cruising.

Cruise ships at A Coruña typically dock at the southern side of a convention centre which features a pair of male and female sculptures on its northern and southern sides. For some reason those to the north are lying down, and those to the south are standing erect. Well, not erect, exactly. “Are you using your zoom lens?” asked a fellow passenger heading back to the ship as I grabbed one of the photos. Everyone’s a comedian.

And with that we returned to our ship to enjoy the sail away from the final port of call.

We had a sea day before arriving in Southampton but there were few photos and not enough content to warrant another write-up so this concludes our 2024 Iberian coast cruise aboard P&O Ventura.

We’re totally biased because we think all cruises are great, and this one was no different. A great experience to spend two days in Portugal’s capital and to head off into the Douro Valley for my birthday. Ventura’s a lovely ship – she’s Grand-class and we love Grand-class ships – and we’ll be back aboard her again.

This was Aquarium Finisterrae, opened in 1999, just on the coast near the Tower of Hercules, and home to a number of themed areas relating to different oceanic ecosystems.

Upon entering we had the chance to use the toilets then admire a lot of marine-themed photography lining the walls, but we didn’t have too long as we’d been told that the seals would soon be fed outside if we wanted to see them, and we decided we did.

There were some lovely rock formations on the shoreline outside the aquarium, making for plenty of pretty pictures.

A fair-sized crowd of visitors were already crowding around the pool area where the seals were fed as part of a reward system that involved them being given health checks by aquarium staff. It was interesting to see that the seals knew the order in which they would be called up because there were six of them and only two staff members so only two could be treated and fed at a time. The remaining seals swam around and kept an eye on things until they knew it was their turn.

We headed back into the main aquarium building before the seal-feeding had finished to get ahead of the crowd and made our way first to the Nautilus Room. Posters from the book and movie Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea lined the route to a themed environment based on the Jules Verne work and it was nice to sit down in front of the large tanks and listen to organ music playing.

We passed through other rooms in the aquarium with tanks focussed on marine life local to the Galician coast and also others more generally Atlantic. The size and clarity of the tanks in Aquarium Finisterrae was very good.

To finish this brief look at the aquarium from our visit in 2024 here are three photos of the most interesting specimens to me. I think the starfish is Luidia ciliaris given that it has seven arms. We’d not seen one with seven arms before. The giant sea snail was a first for us too. Finally, there’s the gorgeous cuttlefish. We both have a fascination with any creature from the cephalopod class as there’s something so otherworldly and intelligent about them.

In the next and final post in this Ventura cruise travelogue series we’ll complete our visit to A Coruña as we head to the Tower of Hercules and some final sights of the city. If you’ve read the posts from this series where we visited Lisbon then you won’t be surprised at how that turns out.

We were not upset at all about the late change to the cruise itinerary but it did mean that we didn’t really have much time to do any planning. Luckily for us, A Coruña is a very easy and charming place simply to get off and wander around anyway and that’s what we would end up doing.

We had visited this city once before but on that occasion we’d only docked in A Coruña aboard Sapphire Princess then headed off on an excursion. We didn’t fancy any hastily-arranged cruise tour this time around so had breakfast and headed ashore after a quick look at the map to see if there was anything we should head for. The Tower of Hercules (Torre de Hércules), a first century lighthouse, looked like it would suit us nicely so we plotted a route and wandered off in the general direction.

One thing you might see if you look online, watch any videos, read any English language travel accounts of this city, is that it’s sometimes called La Coruña and you might not be aware of the difference. Simply, A Coruña, as I spell it, is the Galician form of the name, while La Coruña is Spanish. The Galician form is the preferred term and the Spanish form is in decline as a result.

A Coruña’s architecture was very varied. While our intended destination of the Torre de Hércules dates to the Roman period, passing through the streets of the city presented us with a wide array of different styles from different periods through history, from medieval to modernist. The city has records of visits (in the euphemistic sense of pillaging) from Vikings, Normans, and Muslims, and its strategic location has led to numerous battles and sieges taking place around it in the latter half of the second millenium. The San Andrés drinking fountain below dates from the eighteenth century while the nearby church is a neoclassical structure from a hundred years later.

After passing through the close streets of the city we emerged at Orzán Beach. The golden sand was bright enough under the sunshine to make the light cloud cover seem darker and threatening in the pictures below but it was wonderfully warm with no fear at all that rain might make an appearance.

It was time to spot some artwork on the shore. Following the coastline around to the north we soon came upon a monument to surfers. The fountain sculpture was created by José Castiñeiras Iglesias and it wouldn’t be the only work of his we’d see in A Coruña on this day.

Most recently restored in 2022, the giant wristwatch sculpture – telling the correct time – we were next impressed by actually dates to 1994 and was created by the artist Antonio Vázquez Liñeiro.

By far the weirdest sculpture was that by Jorge Peteiro. A double-tailed swordfish chicken? Who knows? If you’ve a better explanation then feel free to share it. I liked it, though.

We now came within sight of the tower that had been our destination since getting off the ship a little earlier but we wouldn’t be heading straight for it as we’d suddenly realised that there was an aquarium close by, and we are fond of aquariums.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll be paying a lovely visit to the Aquarium Finisterrae in A Coruña.

Upon our return we found a birthday card for me in the cabin, signed by the captain, James Brown. Not that one. It was my birthday, so that was nice, but I’d not requested any special treatment because I am a shy little thing. You can indicate that you’re celebrating a special occasion when you book a cruise but the idea of having a cake while being sung at in a dining room doesn’t appeal to me and I’m constantly bemused by how many other people seem to enjoy the excruciating attention.

We grabbed some drinks and sat on our balcony in the increasingly clear and sunny conditions at the port while we awaited Ventura’s departure. This gave us a lovely opportunity to admire the architectural delights of the cruise terminal building. The building of glass wrapped in white concrete ribbons was opened in 2015 and has won awards for its design, and it’s not hard to see why.

There are people who don’t like the look of commercial or industrial ports, but I’m not one of them. I love the contrast between the sea – the restful haven that serves as the conduit to new places and experiences – and the functional metal structures that keep the world moving. It also helps that I grew up on a diet of post-apocalyptic movies on video and I can’t help but wonder whether roving gangs are still keeping motorcycles and leather repair workshops operating in there while the rest of the world is rubble and rags.

Just ahead of Ventura getting the okay to sail away from Leixões there was a public announcement made from the captain. No, he wasn’t wishing me a happy birthday. There was an itinerary change to announce.

We only had one more port scheduled on this cruise and that was supposed to be Guernsey after a sea day but the weather forecast was apparently unfavourable for the Channel Islands in 48 hours’ time so the captain had made some calls – well, he probably had someone else do that for him; perk of being a captain and all that – and had arranged to finish on a sea day instead after a visit to the Spanish port of A Coruña.

“Oh, for God’s sake!” came the loud voice of someone on the next balcony. “We’re missing Guernsey again!? Why do they even put it on itineraries!?” It went on in a similar manner for a couple of minutes.

Now, it’s true that Guernsey has a reputation for cancellations on cruises given that it requires tendering into it and wind and sea conditions will often disrupt that, and I suppose some people might really, really be looking forward to setting foot on Guernsey. We like Guernsey too. But we like A Coruña more. Rainy Guernsey, or sunny Spain? Yeah, Spain for the win.

We might have started talking loudly “to each other” about how good it was that we were going to A Coruña instead of Guernsey just to counter the negativity drifting over from our neighbours on their balcony.

After a pleasant sail away from Portugal we headed to a bar as sunset approached and treated ourselves to some fizz since it was my birthday. I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned that yet.

And so to dinner for the evening. People like to search online for dinner menus in the main dining rooms on cruise ships – someone’s even told me on social media that they’ve found this site more than once while doing just that thing – so here’s what we ate aboard Ventura.

The next post in this 2024 Iberian peninsula cruise will be the first of three covering what we got up to in Spain’s A Coruña.

Our destination was a vineyard but just before we reached that we had another short stop, and like Amarante earlier in the day this one also featured a river and a bridge. The river, of course, was the Douro, and the bridge that we had a chance to take a look at and walk along for its views through the valley was the Ponte Metálica de Pêso da Régua.

Construction of the Ponte Metálica was ordered in 1863 by King Luís I and was completed in 1872. The bridge is iron, a little over three hundred metres long and eight wide, with six spans over granite supports. For a while the bridge was maintained in good condition but following a period in which passengers using public transport were required to disembark, walk over the bridge, then embark once more for safety the bridge was closed in 1949. Renovation work allowed the bridge to be reopened for pedestrians in 2012.

We enjoyed a stroll in the sunshine along the bridge and a look upstream and downstream along the Douro. The river rises in Spain before meandering through Portugal and by discharge it’s the largest river on the peninsula. From this point over it the view was gorgeous with the winding course flanked by stepped hills given over to growing the grapes for which the region is famous.

On one hill nearby we could see the Sandeman’s Don Statue, a somewhat eerie figure of a caped man, a giant watching over everything in the valley. The Sandeman brand dates back to 1790 and descendants of the family moved to Hayling Island – not far from where we live – and founded the golf club there.

We re-boarded our bus and made the short journey to the vineyard of Quinta da Pacheca. Our timing was such that volunteers were gathering for the seasonal grape-pressing, done by foot, so after a short tour of some of the grounds and cellars we were brought into the large room where the pressing activity was taking place.

It was quite fascinating to see all the wine in the large stone baths and to then see the volunteers enjoying themselves with some grape-stomping. The smell of the wine was as lovely as you imagine.

Our excursion to the Douro Valley included a small port-tasting with some food provided too. The whole point of taking this trip was so we could actually say we’d finally had some port in Portugal which we’d managed to avoid somehow so far.

After we’d enjoyed our drinks we had enough time to take a little look at the vineyard on our own and a chance to look at the vineyard’s shop where we ended up picking up one bottle of ruby port and one of tawny port. My wife prefers the former and I prefer the latter.

The next post in this series of cruise travel write-ups features the short period back on board P&O Ventura in Leixões and the sail away in the evening where we learn some good news about an itinerary change.

The new port was Leixões and it’s the port used by ships typically dispensing their passengers onto Portugal’s second largest city, Porto. A chance, then, to experience somewhere new to celebrate the milestone of surviving another orbit around the sun. And we would be doing that, just not actually in either the port or the nearby city.

The morning after two hot and sunny days in Lisbon was a more overcast one with some light drizzle. That didn’t stop us from enjoying the view of the cruise port terminal in Leixões with the ribbon-like architecture looking particularly modern. It was only opened in 2015 and has won awards for its design.

Our plans for the day would take us deep inland and the first stop of the excursion was to a city called Amarante. We knew nothing about it and the first impressions weren’t great with it mostly seeming to be a market specialising in clothing. The persistent drizzle didn’t help matters.

However, after a short walk from where the bus had dropped us we came upon the sight of the Tâmega river and the São Gonçalo bridge spanning it and we suddenly appreciated this stop a lot more. Not even the weather could affect the beauty of Amarante.

Amarante started to grow from little more than fractured settlements into a place of some importance during the medieval period, largely from its usefulness as a place to rest on pilgrimages. Religious orders had a lot of impact on the building of churches and even bridges to cross the river splitting the city that’s now there.

There were a couple of large churches around the small square that formed at the northern side of the bridge and after a short talk about them we were given a small amount of free time to explore – or get coffee, as our guide was keen to recommend, and I suspect a fair few fellow tourists did so – and we decided to have a quick nose inside the nearest building. Baroque and Romanesque architecture was prominent.

Heading back outside we decided to cross the bridge for some views from it and from the other side.

The impressive bridge we crossed dates from 1790. The previous bridge had collapsed in 1763 after the river flooded. Aesthetically pleasing with its high span and huge arched supports, the São Gonçalo bridge was also the site of an important battle during the early nineteenth century second invasion of Portugal by France. Almost half of the Napoleonic forces in Portugal were held on one side of the bridge for two weeks while Amarante’s defenders blockaded and mined the structure. Although the French forces eventually broke through – they set off their own explosion on the bridge to sever the Portuguese detonation cords – the delay gave British forces enough time to march on other strategically important locations in the peninsula with significant knock-on effects for the war.

As I’ve said, we didn’t have a lot of time in Amarante but we saw enough to know that it was full of charm that would be even more appealing with good weather. Indeed, just as we finished our short exploration of the area around the bridge the sun even made an appearance.

One thing we could have done before we left – but didn’t – was buy some doces falicos from some vendors along the route back to the bus. These are cakes that couples in and around Amarante exchange as tokens of love and affection, which sounds nice, but they’re also shaped like penises which, admittedly, some people might also think is nice, but I’m not one of them.

In the next post in this cruise series we’ll celebrate my birthday with some port in Portugal as we visit a vineyard in the Douro Valley.

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.