The western end of the main city of Lisbon contains the neighbourhoods of Belém and Ajuda, closely connected with the Portuguese royal family since the eighteenth century, and if you’ve read the first two posts covering this first of two days in the capital city then you’ll know that we’d planned to visit Belém when we took the Hop-On, Hop-Off bus at the start of the day but then we’d been sidetracked by the incredible Ajuda Palace. The law of probability states that you haven’t read the first two posts but I live in hope.
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 Alfama instead.