A slow day in Lisbon

I think I babbled on too much in yesterday's blog, so I'll let my camera do most of the talking today.

We walked casually around the city today... took it slow and easy, and simply wandered around taking it all in.

Here's Ruth waiting for a tram on a typical Lisbon street.

Portugal is famous for its cork - Dr Google says 70% of the world's cork production comes from here.  Aussie winemakers wouldn't be very popular with these cork producers, but the use of cork is has many innovative uses.

Here's a photo inside a shop that sells all sorts of items made with cork including aprons, handbags, artworks, and more:

We climbed up to the Castelo de S. Jorge.  You can see it nicely from a distance here:

Along the way up is an interesting set of ruins which gives a little insight to the original construction.  Graffiti artists seem to have made it even more interesting?

The village underneath the castle is clearly of an era when humans were a lot shorter than they are now... I would have to be careful entering this doorway (I'm drawing attention to the height, not the width):

I noticed the outdoor urinal on the way up.  Thankfully it wasn't in use as we walked by.

We see a lot of buildings with tiles.  Here's some tiled artwork on the side of a church at Largo Santa Luzia:

 Here's a close up... This shows the big square on the waterfront called Praca do Comercio (Commerce Square) before the big (9 on Richter scale) earthquake that occurred in 1755.  Some 10,000 people are estimated to have perished at this event.  It was complete devastation.  Apparently the King refused to live indoors after that happened.  A big part of the city of Lisbon had to be rebuilt.  And to add to the devastation, a tsunami wiped out some 850 metres from the shore line.

Here's part of what the square looks like today.  It's a huge space.  The square is surrounded by buildings that all look the same as what you see in the background here - the reconstruction of the buildings after the earthquake was done as efficiently as the country could afford - described as a military style - reducing costs and increasing speed because everything was built the same way.

The guy on the horse celebrates King Josem I... oops, typing a little too quickly...  King Jose I.  He appointed Pombal, the guy who was in charge of the reconstruction.  The arch celebrates Vasco da Gama and Pombal.  Here's Ruth celebrating being married to King Josem.  I suppose that makes her Queen Josem.

Commerce Square overlooks the River, and in the distance you can see the San Francisco bridge and to the left of that Jesus with his outstretched hands just like my Queen's:

The view has been quite hazy ever since we arrived.  I'm not sure why.

I don't want to bore you, but here we are enjoying a royal lunch.

After lunch, we found a church to visit - its what you do whenever you visit a European city isn't it?  But the insides of this one seem quite austere.  I think the Vatican may not have been responsible for rebuilding this for some reason.

Here's a closer look at a side wall... looks to me that some work is required:

There is a huge amount of construction going on here in Lisbon.  Here's an interesting project where they obviously have received the permission to construct a huge building on condition they save the Dragon tree:

Here's the view looking up at the tree.

We arrived back at the hotel in time to enjoy some sunshine.  Here's Ruth overlooking the city from our palace.

I counted 11 construction cranes from this vantage point.

Tonight we catch up with our son, Michael who lives in Isle of Man.  As he said on his Facebook post today - "If Dad and Ruth can travel 90% of the way to visit me, I can travel 10% of the way to visit them."

Looking forward to it.

Bye for now.