Day 8 - If I had a fitbit it would have exploded!

Today we took an uber out to a part of Lisbon called Belem which is just about 8 miles down river. Being Lisbon, you can't get there easily.  I mean, you can get there easily but you can't get there quickly.  Our 6 mile uber which only cost about $10 took over half an hour.  Our whole time in Lisbon was about getting places.  They have cabs and ubers and a metro and trains and trams but they don't necessarily intersect and traffic is a mess as a lot of Lisbon is not open to traffic.  You could walk places but the hills make San Francisco seem quaint and it seems like someone just threw down a wad of yarn and that's how they designed the streets.  

Below is the tower of Belem.  It's an old 16th century fortification and is just as cool as it looks. From what I could learn (or bothered to learn) it was built to protect the river and did so for almost 2 hours before the guys inside surrendered.  So that's good.

Even fortifications aren't immune to baby heads.

The cannons they found to decorate were cute.

Everywhere you look in Lisbon are these stone seats.  This one faced up river.  I don't know why that would be.

After the stairs in the Clerigos tower in Porto, this stairwell seemed roomy.

Just up river about half a mile is this monument to Vasco da Gama I imagine.  It's rather large.

That's the tower in the distance.

Across the street from the monument is the Jeronimos monastery where we went next.

Very large map at the foot of the monument.  See the wee little people?  Thankfully, the monument had an elevator inside.

Getting close to the monastery.  We had the bright idea to buy entry tickets at the tower.  All of those people are in line to buy tickets.  I can't imagine how long they waited.

Inside the church.

These are pictures inside the monastery.  It really is spectacular.

Baby head.

There were a lot of dragons and demons around.

Up the street from the monastery is where these egg custards were created.  They were by far the best ones we had. The baker is sort of the Cafe du monde of Lisbon.  We found a beautiful but rather unkempt park to eat them in.

Here is a video of the walk we had to our place.  If we had known we wouldn't have tried to drive to it on the first day.

The patio was fantastic.

One of the things they drink in Lisbon is this cherry liqueur.  It ain't bad.

This is just a random shot of a typical street.

We took a little walk before dinner and found a church.  Go figure.

Then we found another with mood lighting.

There are a lot of these arches around.

We happened on a park that over looked the river.  It's surprising how few vistas (or parks) we found.

It was a good day and we walked a zillion miles but the best was yet to come which I will cover in a supplementary blog.