I went to bed early last night. I had a real problem being coherent. I answered some email and had to dance around the fact that I couldn’t remember the names of relatives I’ve known all my life. I finally caught up on my sleep and was ready to tackle the day. A beautiful day. 29 degrees. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it!
So I attacked it by going on a hop-on hop-off bus tour. The problem with these tours is guessing when is a good time to get off. If you guess wrong, you’ve got half an hour wait for the next one.
For the most part I got off at good points. The first stop I bailed off at was the Marquês de Pombal. There was an interesting statue in the middle of a large traffic circle. Only after the bus was gone did I realize that this particular Arc de Triumph didn’t have an underground passage for pedestrians. So I played Frogger with traffic to get to it.
After, I walked up Parque Eduard VII where I got beautiful views. And the bus would pass by. I missed part of the bus route, but according to another passenger, I didn’t miss much.
There were three British men who acted like they were too cool for the tour. They didn’t like anything and spent time talking about drunken escapades. I was just happy to be in warm Portugal.
The next stop I got off was in Belem; A very nice place. The Torre de Belem was there, but more importantly, it had stairs going down to the river/sea. I waded a bit, but I avoided the 10 meter long beach; It had seven dead jellyfish on it. I wandered around and looked at a fabulous monument with statues of explorers. I will say this, Portugal knows how to do public art. The marble statues seem to be doing something or are larger than life. The closest thing I’ve seen to it was the Gefion statue.
After that, the only other stop I risked leaving for was the Mosterio dos Jeronimos. Honestly though, I’m getting tired of cathedrals.