{"id":4671,"date":"2024-04-07T16:50:46","date_gmt":"2024-04-07T16:50:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/?p=4671"},"modified":"2024-04-07T16:50:46","modified_gmt":"2024-04-07T16:50:46","slug":"2-lisbon-and-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/?p=4671","title":{"rendered":"2. LISBON AND AWAY!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our ship leaves Lisbon on Friday (tomorrow).\u00a0 But before then, our last day in the city dawns clear and sunny.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But there’s a major disturbance on the roads outside the breakfast room window.\u00a0 6,000 taxis have descended on Lisbon from as far away as Faro and Porto.\u00a0 Fleets of them.\u00a0 Going slowly up and down the Avenida da Liberdade (the broad boulevard up to Eduard vii Park).\u00a0 In a contiuous loop.\u00a0 Trying to jam the roads up solid.\u00a0 Horns blasting – hazard lights flashing.\u00a0 Police everywhere.\u00a0 Apparently, it’s a protest by taxi drivers about the Portuguese government’s slow response to their demands to ban Uber and other similar services!\u00a0 And just as we’ve discovered how much better these call-up services are compared to traditional taxis.\u00a0 Sod’s law, I guess!\u00a0 Maybe the taxi industry has to update THEIR service.<\/p>\n

So, we responded by taking an Uber to the Botanic Gardens – well, there were no taxis for hire anywhere!\u00a0 We had been advised that a serious increase in altitude was involved in what was a relatively short walk to the gardens.\u00a0 Hence the car ride.<\/p>\n

The gardens are an oasis of peace.\u00a0 Well, they would have been if it weren’t for the adjacent building site and the two workers blowing leaves off the paths.\u00a0 In fact, it was a lovely garden with lots of native xerophytes and sculptures.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Who said “…<\/p>\n

and two extinct species”?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Glenda on the edge of the bamboo jungle.<\/p>\n

From these gardens we headed for the Eduard vii Park where “everyone goes to picnic and generally hang out” – except it was all but deserted at lunchtime today!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

… as was the roundabout at the top of the Avenida da Liberdade which leads back down to our hotel.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Two days ago this was jammed chocka when we arrived in town.\u00a0 The Marqu\u00e9s do Pombal\u00a0 watching from the top of his plinth.\u00a0 His full and nifty title was actually Sebasti\u00e3o Jos\u00e9 de Carvalho e Melo, 1st Marquis de Pombal e 1st Count de Oeiras.\u00a0 Obviously a queijo grande (big cheese) in the early 1700s.<\/p>\n

Portugal is famous for it’s wall-hung decorative (often blue on white) tiles.\u00a0 It also has zillions of stone.”tiles” on the ground.\u00a0 Heavy duty parquet flooring.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

On the 500m walk down from M. Pombal’s roundabout there were three footpaths and three roads.\u00a0 Say a total of 25 m width.\u00a0 All tiled.\u00a0 With an average cobblestone size of 10\u00d710 cms (which is probably conservative) that’s 1.25 zillion individually laid bits of stone.\u00a0 And there are literally hundreds of kilometres of mosaic paving in the city.\u00a0 Then there’s the rest of Portugal to consider!\u00a0 That’ll be quadrillions, like i said!<\/p>\n

There’s even a statue just beside our hotel of two guys laying the stones by hand!\u00a0 One guy naps the stones and the other bashes them into place.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Saturday saw us in our third Uber – transferring to the ship.\u00a0 The Seven Seas Voyager.\u00a0 We have discovered that the check-in procedure for cruises is more tedious and repetitive than we feel it ought to be.\u00a0 In this case, we had pre-registered all our passport and health details electronically with our agent and then again with Regent Seven Seas.\u00a0 \u00a0These were then checked manually before security and again as we boarded when we were handed ship’s passes.\u00a0 Then, of course, our passports were checked again and we were asked all the questions about the state of our health once more and our answers recorded manually.\u00a0 Then, to cap it all, we had to register our ship’s passes to say we were indeed on board.<\/p>\n

Time for some alcohol! And a late buffet lunch.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

By then our cabin was ready.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Complete with walk-in dressing room and bathroom with a shower and a bath.<\/p>\n

At 6 pm we set off into the setting sun.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Except we were heading East under the “Ponte de 25 Abril” road bridge carefully avoiding all supporting pillars!\u00a0 So the sun was actually behind us as we left port, not in front.\u00a0 Details!<\/p>\n

The bridge celebrates the Carnation Revolution of 1974 which was a major step in the establishment of a democracy in Portugal.\u00a0 Exactly 50 years ago in just two weeks time!\u00a0 I had no real idea of the political upheaval going on so recently in this part of Europe.<\/p>\n

Our route over the next ten days or so is shown below.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A lot of worryingly open ocean!\u00a0 Plenty of time to record more exciting stories!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our ship leaves Lisbon on Friday (tomorrow).\u00a0 But before then, our last day in the city dawns clear and sunny. But there’s a major disturbance on the roads outside the breakfast room window.\u00a0 6,000 taxis have descended on Lisbon from… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-regent-seven-seas-cruise-travels-in-2024","category-travels-in-2024"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4671"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4690,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4671\/revisions\/4690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tappstravels.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}