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.

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.

We needed a little bit of freshening up once we got back aboard Ventura as it had been warm enough on the walking portion of our day’s excursion ashore. The view from our balcony across the Tagus – the longest river in Iberia – was pleasant enough.

However, the general noise and smell was less pleasing because Guanarteme, an oil tanker, was engaging in bunkering.

We decided that sitting on our balcony wasn’t going to work as a result of Ventura getting topped up with fuel so we grabbed some food and drink on the top deck, then another drink in The Exchange before the time for the ship’s sail away came around.

The sun was getting low as MSC Virtuosa pushed away from the cruise port and made her way down the Tagus. Ventura pushed away and turned around (as we’d been facing in the opposite direction) very soon after.

It had been a popular day for cruise ships to pay a visit to Lisbon. With Ventura now fully turned around and facing west we could see that AIDAstella had been docked further along the port from us.

And we passed one more cruise ship docked at Lisbon as we made our departure from the city in the shape of Holland America Line Eurodam.

Sail aways are always lovely to be out on the balcony for, but they’re even better when they take place near sunset, and better again when you cruise under a suspension bridge. Our departure from Lisbon on Ventura was pretty gorgeous as you can see from the photos below.

I liked the look of the Padrão dos Descobrimentos sculpture on the shore as we continued cruising down the Tagus. This is a 1960 permanent replacement for a 1940 temporary beacon erected for the Portuguese World Exhibition, honouring the Portuguese explorers. Each side of the monument features historical figures standing, with the lead person being Henry the Navigator. In fact, a lot of what we saw of Lisbon along the shore during this cruise away from the city looked very interesting and it’s a city we’d love to come back and see some more of.

A quick run through the evening aboard Ventura to finish this post off.

We decided to head to Havana just to have a drink or two there and see what the “rock show” by Pulse was like. We all have different ideas about what constitutes good music and good performances so let me be tactful and simply say that I’m sure a lot of people enjoyed the musical experience. Actually, being tactful is not one of my strong points and it’s not like anyone from the band will read this. It was dire. And we know it wasn’t just us who thought this as we would later in the cruise talk to some other passengers who started their conversation with a rant about how bad the band had been. So there.

With a little bit of time left before we fancied getting some food we dropped into the Tamarind Club where there was nothing scheduled, expecting a bit of quiet. However, the ship’s resident jazz vocalist, Nikki Jayne, made an appearance anyway and treated the small crowd to both some fabulous ,contemporary songs sung beautifully and some funny remarks. More on Nikki in a later post in this cruise travelogue series. She was a major highlight on this ship.

Food in the main dining room was okay. Nothing to moan about, nothing to get excited about.

We concluded the evening in Metropolis.

The next post in the Ventura cruise travelogue series will detail the day at sea between Lisbon and the first of the Canary Islands. As is traditional in these posts there will be a walk around the ship taking loads of photos. The evening sees us try another dining venue on the ship for the first time as well.

This second half of the Lisbon tour features a short walk from where we’d emerged blinking in the sunshine from the reservoir tunnels down to where the bus would be picking us up. The relatively short but winding route did take us past some of Lisbon’s historical spots, though, so we picked up some information along the way and here you’ll be able to learn what we learnt and see what we saw.

We began our walk where we’d finished the water system exploration, and that was at Miradouro de São Pedro de Alcântara. This is a terraced spot with a large fountain, popular as a viewing location thanks to its elevation. The annual Web Summit was taking place in Lisbon during our visit and, yes, I too think it’s horribly ironic and clearly the brainchild of people of management levels and above that a summit about all things web takes place in person.

“Let’s get the brightest brains and interested parties to discuss the latest innovations on the internet!”

“Yes! Great idea! Let’s book hotels and auditoria and arrange for people to fly in from all over the world! Somewhere fairly warm. There ain’t no I.T. person like a sweaty I.T. person.”

“So we’re not going to host this online using the internet itself?”

“You’re fired Keith. That sounds horribly like the sort of common sense that comes from the lower echelons of the workforce.”

The most prominent sight from our vantage point was Saint George’s Castle (or Castelo de São Jorge) and it certainly looks like the sort of place that would be top of our list for a visit if and when we ever return to Lisbon. Prior to being taken by the Christians in what was arguably the only success during the failed Second Crusade in 1147, the castle or other fortifications on the hill had been used defensively by Celtic tribes, Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Suebi, Visigoths, and, finally, Moors. Personally, after the defences had been overrun by the fourth of fifth group of people I’d probably have written this location off as indefensible or just plain jinxed and set up camp somewhere else, but that’s just me, your average know-nothing-about-military-matters Mark.

We began our walking tour, and just before leaving the terrace we passed a memorial statue to Tomás Quintino Antunes who founded the Portuguese newspaper, Diário de Notícias, in 1864.

Very close to the statue was the uppermost point of the Ascensor da Glória, one of Lisbon’s famous funicular railways. We’d seen photos of the funicular trains before, looking pretty and yellow and clean and always photographed in bright sunshine and with high saturation and oh my god no, no these ones were not like that at all. Grim is the word that springs to mind. You think that a narrow, steep incline between old buildings with traditional funicular carriages riding up and down them sounds quaint, and maybe you think that a little bit of street art might add to the uniqueness and touristic appeal, but then you get some truly appalling graffiti instead and you wonder if you’ve accidentally transported something out of the 1970s that might have featured in the movie The Warriors to Europe by mistake. Yeah, if you’re thinking of riding one of Lisbon’s funiculars then I’d pick something other than this one.

Our walking route took us towards Largo Trindade Coelho, a public square for want of a better description, but this necessarily brought into view something you see a fair bit around Portugal by all accounts: tiled façades on buildings. You could probably guess their purpose, but in case it’s not clear, while these are now and always were to some extent decorative, originally, their glazed surfaces provided additional protection from damp conditions that the materials used for the buildings couldn’t adequately supply. Aesthetically, I’m not sold on the look of the tiles, but I imagine that if you’re the sort of person who loves flock wallpaper then you probably have a different opinion entirely.

Into Largo Trindade Coelho next, and the purpose of this was to have pointed out the buildings around it and the statue and marker inside. On the north side of the square was the Jesuit church and museum of São Roque, which is possibly Portuguese for Saint Rocky, portrayed by Sylvester Stallone in a number of movies. I can’t be sure as I’d wandered away from our guide to take some photos. The main statue there, though, of some local interest, was called O Cauteleiro and it’s a monument to the lottery ticket sellers, with the buying of lottery tickets once being a popular pastime for people desperate to escape poverty, and the country’s national lottery having been in existence for well over 200 years. The worn bronze on the hand and ticket of the statue shows you just how much people like to rub statues for luck despite any evidence of it working, and just how little people care about the transmission of germs or whether or not their hands smell like old pennies all day.

The other memorial in the square was the Consórcio de Dom Luís. This obelisk with circular crest was erected in 1862 to commemorate the marriage of Luís I to Maria Pia of Savoy. I’d like to say that they fell in love over their shared adoration of lollipops, hence the shape of the monument, but the truth is that Maria Pia wasn’t even Luís’s first choice for a wife. Following a number of deaths without heirs in the royal line of Braganza there was some rush to get Luís married and starting up the royal family baby production line. He narrowed some possible brides down from a list of noble houses around Europe, then asked his cousin, Queen Victoria, and his great-uncle, Leopold of Belgium, for advice. They both recommended Archduchess Maria Theresa of Austria but her father turned down the marriage on the grounds that she was too young. Thus it was that Luís picked Maria Pia of Savoy instead, and that request for a hand in marriage was accepted even though she was even younger than her Austrian namesake.

More tiled buildings and streets and pavements led us to the next stop.

Largo do Carmo was another public square with two items worthy of note. On the east side of the square stood the white walls of the Carmo Convent with its impressive gothic doorway recessed into the stone. That’s another historical location added to our “to visit when we come back to Lisbon” list. Although built in 1389 for the Carmelites, much of the exterior architecture facing the square was reconstructed in the early twentieth century to fix some of the effects of the 1755 earthquake responsible for a lot of damage and loss of life in Portugal. I covered some of the ramifications of that earthquake in the previous post in this travelogue series. The convent itself is now ruins and a museum.

The stone structure in the square in front of the arched doorway to the convent is the Chafariz do Carmo, an 18th century public fountain that was part of the city’s aqueduct system. The quality of its construction allowed it to survive pretty well intact when other structures in Lisbon had collapsed in the earthquake of that century, and we could tell from the stylised dolphins that decorated it both that it was connected in time if not physically to the Mãe d’Água reservoir that we’d visited earlier in the day and that stonemasons really didn’t know what a dolphin looked like back then.

Our Lisbon walk took us to the southern end of Rua do Carmo and northwards and downwards along its length is where we headed. Our next stop was visible all along this pedestrianised road and only required a small detour around a couple of different busking groups to reach.

The Santa Justa Lift was fully inaugurated in 1902, and, like the funicular trains, was designed to assist the people of Lisbon with getting up and down the low but numerous hills that made up their city. It was originally powered by steam, but within 5 years it had been converted to use electricity. Featuring neo-Gothic designs in iron, the lift stands 45 metres high and contains two cars capable of carrying nearly 30 people each in them up the seven storeys to the viewing platform and walkway at the top that’s a popular tourist attraction. We’d very likely take a ride in the lift should we return to Lisbon because it feels like the sort of thing a visitor to the city should do, but there was no time on this day’s trip.

Equally as interesting to me as the engineering wonder that was the Santa Justa Lift was the street art near its base. This was Two Pelicans In The Heart Of Lisbon by street artist Artur Bordalo (or Bordalo II), part of his Big Trash Animals collection, made mostly from rubbish as you could probably guess from the photos. Impressive work and a wonderful contrast to the decorations that had blighted the Ascensor da Glória earlier on our walk.

We continued along the Rua do Carmo with a few stops so our guide could point out some old shops along the way. Do you want some gloves? There’s a glove shop! The designs of these buildings were early 20th century in the main, Neoclassical for the main part but with hints of Art Nouveau to me.

Our short walking tour of Lisbon was almost at an end now. Coming out of the north end of Rua do Carmo we emerged at Rossio Square, the popular name for Praça de D. Pedro IV. Pedro IV briefly ruled Portugal, and when I say briefly, I mean briefly. He ascended to the throne in March 1826 and had abdicated by May in favour of his daughter. The reason for this was that he was already Pedro I of Brazil and working two jobs in two different time zones was just never going to work out. I couldn’t do it now and I’ve got the ability to work remotely over the internet. Take note, Web Summit people. Pedro had an interesting reign, filled with suppressing rebellions, becoming emperor, abdications, and scandalous affairs, but he is credited with helping to bring representational governments to power in Brazil and Portugal in place of the absolutist regimes they’d previously been subjected to, and a popular, attractive, open space in the centre of Lisbon named in his honour is the reward for that.

These sorts of walking tours tacked onto the end of other excursions are of necessity fleeting things designed to eat up some time, point out a few things, give you a taste of where you’re visiting, and almost always spending longer than you’d like in one place and not enough time at all in another. You can’t please everyone. We’d have liked to have wandered into the main part of Rossio Square to see the waved mosaic flooring there or the monuments or the fountains but we merely strolled past it and got to admire some of the architecture around the area from a distance. On the north side of the square was the Teatro Nacional D. Maria II in the Palladian Neoclassical style. It sits on the location of what had been the Baroque-style headquarters of the Portuguese Inquisition who, unlike their Spanish counterparts, were never immortalised in a Monty Python sketch. The headquarters had survived the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 but burnt down in 1836. Shame. It was decided to rebuild on the spot a theatre and it was named in honour of Maria II, the daughter to whom Pedro had abdicated the throne, and another member of the Braganza Royal Family who had a life filled with adventure: married off to an evil uncle who usurped the throne in classic fairy tale style is just the start of it.

It’s all going a bit architecture crazy here at the end of this account of our meander through Lisbon’s streets for which I make no apology as it’s something I’m very keen on and this is my site.

And so, still heading northwards from Rossio Square, now to a style of architecture I’d never heard of before: Neo-Manueline. As its name implies, this is a revival of an earlier Manueline style that is a 16th century Portuguese take on Gothic. The revival period covers the late 19th century when this train station – the Estação do Rossio – was built. It’s impossible to gaze at its façade and not be mesmerised by the doorways formed from overlapping horseshoe-shaped arches. Absolutely beautiful work. This station was the site of the assassination of Sidónia Pais in 1918, another one of late 19th and early 20th century Portugal’s Interesting People. What does his story contain? Military background, politician who helped to create a constitution that he then completely ignored when mounting a coup, and afterwards, becoming de facto President in a country that had no established position for that role, watering down the separation of religion and state to get the support of the Catholics. I mean, damn Portugal! Was there anyone in that country in a position of power from 1800 onwards who didn’t wake up each morning and think “Insurrection? Affair? Subjugation of part of the population? War with someone? Or something a little more old-fashioned and murdery today?”

Our walking tour of Lisbon came to an end at the place where our bus was due to meet us. We were a little early or it was stuck in traffic, but either way that gave me a great chance to be suitably impressed by the building we were standing outside. If you like Art Deco – and what monster doesn’t like Art Deco? – then you can’t help but gasp just a little at the sheer beauty that is the Teatro Eden. Functioning as a theatre above an arcade of shops from 1931 to 1989 it is now a hotel, with only the front-facing elements of the original building surviving. Sure, I wasn’t a fan of the tiled fronts on buildings generally, but the rest of Lisbon certainly wowed me with some of the engineering and architectural styling we got to see on this day visiting the city.

Opposite the theatre, in the middle of Restauradores Square, was the Monument to the Restorers, an 1886 obelisk which commemorated victory at the end of the war between Portugal and Spain in 1668 that had seen Portugal gain independence and its own royal house – the Braganza family – after the union of 1580 had subjected the country and all its overseas dependencies to Spanish rule under the Habsburgs. The two statues on the left and right side of the plinth in the photos represent Victory and Independence respectively.

The final photo I fired off before boarding our bus back to the port was of the lovely lines of the Altis Avenida Hotel, mainly because it just looked pretty against the blue sky over Lisbon. Despite a far older appearance, this was built in the 1940s, but the architect, Luís Cristino da Silva, was fond of the Salazarist style of architecture which borrowed elements from Germany and Italy’s futurism leanings towards impressive, modern representations of earlier, imperial designs.

And with that, and a short bus ride – that had we realised it was going to be quite that short we might have skipped in order to walk back and spend more time in the city, possibly stopping for a beer somewhere (because we’re us and that’s what we like to do) – we were dropped off back by the cruise terminal in Lisbon. The long building opposite the ships was a government building and reviews on Google suggest that being typical of governments the world over it’s not a place where anyone has anything to positive to say about experiences inside. Outside it looked nice, though.

MSC Virtuosa and P&O Ventura looked lovely on the Tagus, and all that surface water at the port from the rain showers that had accompanied the morning part of our excursion had dried out in the very dry, sunny, and warm afternoon of our brief city walk.

Back on board Ventura we made our way to the top deck to grab some lunch and a few shots of the Lisbon city skyline from our cruise ship just in case it was miraculously any different from how it had looked before we’d disembarked earlier that day. Of course it was different. The sun was in a new position in the sky. The colours were brighter. The shadows were elsewhere. The National Pantheon still dominated the view, though.

The next part of this Ventura cruise travelogue series will conclude our port stop in Portugal’s capital city of Lisbon with our departure from the city at sunset, to include cruising under the Ponte 25 de Abril.