Today we left Valencia and Spain - but only for a while; we'd be back after spending five nights in Lisbon, Portugal. But because of the odd choice made by Portuguese politicians (as I learned from a tour guide) there are very few trains that go from Spain to Portugal, and none that you'd consider intercity, i.e. the kind of very fast trains that criss-cross the rest of western Europe.
That meant we had to go by bus. Handily, we'd been to the bus station the day before to go out to the Roman amphitheatre, so we knew where to go. The tickets were booked through Flixbus, so when we went down to the parking bays we were looking for a bright green bus with 'Flixbus' on the side and got a bit confused when we didn't see one (or anything resembling Lisbon as a destination on the departure board); luckily I decided to check the side of the bus that had an 8.50 departure listed and saw a small Flixbus sign on the side. I asked the driver if he was going to Lisbon and he said yes.
Once again (I can't remember if I've mentioned it, but this is not the first time) I had to ask myself why organisations/companies/governments do so little to provide useful information to people in the form of signs or details in things like the tickets they issue you. In this instance all it would have taken is the ticket to say that the bus was an affiliate and we would have gone straight there.
Anyway, we got our luggage inside and jumped on board. It was about a six-and-a-half hour drive to get to Lisbon - not long for me since back when I lived in Queensland I was regularly doing 20-hour trips up and down between Bowen/Townsville and the Sunshine Coast.
Flixbus specify on the ticket that there's wifi on the bus (there wasn't) and that they have toilet facilities (there was one, but it was broken) - but I suppose that, because it was an affiliate, they could say that they didn't falsely advertise. Still, the cost for two tickets was, so we can't complain too much.
The non-working toilet was somewhat of a concern for a six-hour trip, but I looked up that EU law says a bus driver has to stop after something like 4.5 hours for a mandated break - and this turned out to be true; we stopped at a roadhouse in the middle of nowhere at something around that time, whereupon we all piled out of the bus to use the toilets there.
Got back on the bus and kept on going. Eventually we started hitting the outer reaches of Lisbon and after checking the map I got a bit excited since it looked like we were going to be crossing the huge Vasco da Gama bridge. And we did.
Fun fact: Lisbon is really, really hilly in parts.
Thankfully, we were on the flat part close to the river. So, while we had to noisily wheel our luggage along the streets for about 15 minutes to get to our apartment, it didn't involve much uphill travel. We unpacked a bit, had a rest and then set out again to meet up with our tuk-tuk driver.
Yes, Lisbon has tuk-tuks. Like, hundreds of the things. Since the hills require a lot of strenuous walking, they make a lot of sense here, and they're mostly aimed at tourists. It does make traffic quite chaotic, though.
On the streets of Lisbon. They also have cable cars here, hence the wires above the street. They're quite small and usually packed like sardine cans.
Now wandering the streets back to our apartment.
We found a place not far from us that was doing mostly traditional food, so we stopped there for dinner.
Cheese, chouriço, cod cakes, bread. And a big beer for me.
Day 2 we got ourselves up several hills - the first of them is right next to one of Lisbon's three funiculars, which tells you that even people here think it's steep enough to warrant a machine to take people up and down it - to a square to go on a walking tour. I read the email wrong and thought it was 10.30 when it was actually 11.00, but we didn't mind too much, since it meant we got to sit down for a while and just enjoy being there.
The Santa Justa lift. We were near the top of it before (some of the above pics are from up there), but we walked down instead of actually using it.
Saw this watch advertisement - they're doing Muppet-themed designs, so that's the 'Kermit'.
A sculpture of three metal...things.
I think we'd finished our tour by now. It was quite brief as walking tours go, but I think that's because it's so hilly here you can't actually go very far without taking your tour group up or down some very steep inclines, and given that a lot of people on tour groups aren't necessarily fit enough for that, they likely realised it wasn't practical to do it.
We went for lunch at the Time Out Market. There's some good traditional Portuguese food vendors there, as well as more introduced stuff like burgers and sushi and pizzas and such.
We got a pork fillet burger with the now-standard potato chips. There was also a piece of banana cake, with ice cream - I just forgot to take a picture.
We also had some Portguese custard tarts. Because they're even better here.
Off walking again.
There was some kerfuffle on the street with police and flashing lights and such; turns out a tram carriage had broken down and needed to be hauled away. Can't say I've seen that before.
After seeing some huge churches in Spain it was somewhat of a step back to go to a more modestly-sized one.
One side of the stops.
And the other. I was wondering if 'SEXQUIALTERA' might be Portuguese for saxophone...
They had some interesting crypts. I didn't want to get too close in case one of them started moving.
Outside of the church for more wandering. Found a plaque with my name on it.
More walking about.
Road-legal in Lisbon is obviously a much broader term than in Australia.
Oh, we'd seen a bunch of teenagers in robes wandering around from the first day we got here; we thought they were doing some sort of wizard school cosplay but we looked it up and found they're just university students.
Main dish was cod fried with onions, white whine and a grated-up boiled egg. And the kind of chips we'd had all over Spain as well. It'd been a long time since I'd eaten fish with bones in it, so that was somewhat of a challenge. But I managed to not swallow any.
Eventually we found our guide (Bruno) and set off.
Now we're just wandering the streets by ourselves again.
But there was what looked like an old manual for a pipe organ upstairs. I've been in a lot of churches on my travels and I've rarely been able to see one this close up.
We decided to stop for coffee and to try the local spirit, ginjinha, made from cherries. It's a bit like cough syrup, to be honest, but not as bad as, say, Jägermeister.
Entertainment for the evening was some fado, the traditional Portuguese folk music. They use an instrument called a Portuguese guitar, which is tuned unlike anything I've seen before.
That done, we went in search of some more local food and, not finding many options near our apartmentment, went back to the same place as the previous night and just had different dishes - a kind of steak with shaved ham, and grilled chicken. Plus a jug of sangria.
And that was our first two days in Lisbon.
