According to the ship’s original itinerary, Lisbon was to be a 5-hour stop from noon to 5pm. Not enough time to do much, and not really any interesting looking ship excursions, so I decided to let caching guide me through the area. With itinerary changes, our stay in Lisbon still started at noon, but extended until 9:30pm. Nonetheless I stuck with the original plan, and joined a group going on an “icon run” (meaning see how many different types of caches we could find).
It was lovely to have a leisurely morning. It was incredibly touching and humbling to feel the love and support from other cachers who checked in with me to see how I was feeling after the previous afternoon’s incident. And of course that’s part of why I continue to go on cruises with this group.
Lisbon isn’t quite on the coast, it’s a bit inland on the Tagus River (Rio Tejo), so we actually did a short river cruise to get to the port. The ship opened up the 5th floor bow, a detail to which I’d been blissfully ignorant until I spotted signs when I returned from breakfast and decided to investigate. We got to go under a bridge, the 25 de Abril Bridge, that looked a bit familiar. The paint is the same “International Orange” color as the Golden Gate Bridge, and the design is similar to the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
As the city of Lisbon appeared on the port (left, and in this case north) side of the ship, it was refreshing to see the colored buildings. Having spent time in places where the buildings were either all painted white (to keep them as cool as possible) or not really painted, my eyes were happy to see the variation of pastel colors and tiles on buildings. Definitely European architecture, and apparently I’d missed it.
Don and I disembarked and were headed to the shore meeting place for our caching group. We were fortunate to see 4 of our friends looking for a cache near the ship so we joined them and logged our first find in Portugal which was my 7th new country of the trip and 60th different country in which I’ve found a geocache. I’ve now got a bit of time where I will be at my newly-accomplished goal of having cache finds in more countries than my age. We then proceeded to the event cacher that Glorie and Sue hosted, joined the event group picture, chatted with some local cachers who attended, and connected with our icon run team.
We started with ten of us: Alison & Derek, Colin & Judy, Matt & Julie, Charles, Dave, Don and me. The group of ten found several cache types together — event, virtual, puzzle, earthcache and multi — and most people had gelato before we split into two smaller groups. Alas, it seems that in Portugal the chocolate gelato recipe has dairy in it so eventually I sampled some good lemon and acceptable watermelon sorbet. Six of us walked up(!) a few hundred meters to a nice square from which calculations were done for a letterbox in a library. I would surmise that the librarians were wondering why all of the action on that cache on a Tuesday that didn’t seem to be a date of particular significance. Along the way we noticed a cable car / funicular to use to go back down the hill towards the river.
Only Alison, Derek, Charles and I rode the funicular. A great group, though admittedly an odd feeling to be the shortest, indeed the only one under 6 feet tall. We agreed that we were on a mission to find lunch, and we did well. We spotted a small park that had an area with tables and umbrellas, and a pleasant breeze. My spicy chicken salad was beautiful and quite tasty, though toward the end the cumulative spice began to add up. As a table we shared delicious garlic and olive oil prawns which were definitely the best bites of the day. Our server turned out to be a very friendly Nepalese woman who went to school in Denmark then moved to Portugal both to be closer to family and to live in a more affordable part of the EU.
After lunch we continued our walk, with a few more caches (the grand total was 8 cache types). Throughout the day I took pictures of the tile sidewalks, interesting colored buildings — some with tile, others with paint — and my first set of umbrellas over a street this trip (something we saw several times on the Danube cruise). Interestingly, the primary-colored umbrellas were over a street that had been painted a color that can best be described as pepto-bismol pink, a street color I’m not sure I’ve ever seen before or need to see again. The cobblestone sidewalks were also interesting — often the sidewalks of a block were the same pattern, and the next block would be a different pattern, all with white background and black pattern.
On the way back to the ship we passed a section of the river where people had placed various rock cairns. There was also painted rock art — we saw one “scene” with a mermaid, a dolphin and a couple of ducks; another scene included a pope; my favorite scene had a “jaws” shark next to a peacock, something I’ve never seen in nature. A bit beyond the rock art section was a sand carving section with a huge light green and dark green alligator (or crocodile?) on the ground surrounded by an unpainted butterfly, an unpainted lion(?), and a yellow and black tiger (or was it a zebra?).
I finally used the ship’s swimming pool after returning. As I headed to the water the only three people in the pool got out so I actually had the pool to myself. So decadently indulgent to swim and stretch a bit in the warm but not hot water before showering and meeting friends for a quick bite that somehow lasted several hours because, well, because that’s how we roll. A lovely end to an amazing day.
Yes, Portugal, I look forward to visiting you and seeing more of your sights and secrets one day.
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