Circling Around Portugal

I flew from Porto to Lisbon, since I had found a relatively cheap flight, but I wish I had taken the train instead. The flight was only an hour, but airports are always a hassle and you have to get there early and wait (and pack everything in a special fashion beforehand), so I probably spent almost as much time as I would have with the train. Plus, I probably could have stopped in another place in the way.


When I got to Lisbon, it was easy to take the metro in from the airport, but there was a hugely steep hill between the metro station and the hostel. It wasn't too bad, but with my full pack on, it was some pretty heavy exercise. The hostel was very pleasant. My first day there, I took a walk around the area near the hostel, and it wasn't terribly interesting. But in the next few days, I went to much more interesting places in Portugal's capital. The city is VERY hilly, and if you walk around for a few minutes, the chances are that you will be soon climbing up a very steep hill.


The metro system is easy to use, and if you buy a day pass, you will have access to not only the metro system, but also the buses and the trains as well, as well as more esoteric forms of transportation, such as funiculars (called elevadores) and the Santa Justa Elevator (Ascensor de Santa Justa), which is a unique form of public transportation...it's an elevator that gets you up one of the steep hills. The day pass won't get you on the regional transportation, such as the trains to Sintra or any other regional trains, buses or ferries, but it is great fir getting around the city of Lisbon on days that you will be moving a lot. If you're not using a lot of public transportation on some days, you might want to consider just buying single trips. If you buy a single trip, you have a certain amount of time to change your mode of transportation within the city for no charge. Either way, you'll want a Viva Viagem card which you can load up with either a day pass or money for individual trips. You can also load single trips for some of the regional trains on the card.



I spent three days in Lisbon, just checking out the city. Probably the most interesting neighborhood was Bairro Alto, which is up a very steep hill from the waterfront area. You can either take a series of staircases there, or take the funicular called the Elevador da Glória; I did it both ways over the course of my visit. I had a metro day pass on the day I took the Elevador so it was covered in the day pass. Since Lisbon is so hilly, you can look at Google Maps, and it is hard to tell when you will be climbing very steep hills. Something that is three blocks away on the map might be quite the heady climb. If you're lucky, it might be downhill, but then you eventually have to face the trip back up.


I didn't get to see a whole lot in the three days I was in Lisbon, but I'll be heading back there again soon. I did make it to the top of the Amoreiras Tower, which is supposed to be the highest place in Lisbon, to see the views of the city. It looked from there that there might have been higher mountains surrounding the city, though. I also managed to take the iconic Tram 28. There was a huge crowd lined up for the tram, and people kept cutting in line, so it took a long time to shorten. This antique tram would be difficult to replace with a newer model, because the tracks are very narrow, and it goes up very narrow, winding streets with sharp turns and steep inclines. The tram was packed, and only had small rows of single seats and standing room only in the aisle. It sounded like metal was grinding on metal at times.


On my last day, I took the metro to Sete Rios train station to catch a train to Faro, in the Algarve region at the south tip of Portugal. When I was taking the train from Lisbon to Faro, I accidentally missed my scheduled connection by jumping on the wrong train. The train before mine was late, and showed up a minute before mine, so I thought it was my train. I found it it wasn't the right train just as the doors snapped shut and the train took off, so it was just a second or two too late to get back off. I was bummed. My ticket was reserved on a specific train and was non-refundable, and now there was no way I would make that train. And that was the first specific travel reservation that I've missed in either the last world journey I was on or this one! Which is pretty amazing, considering all the travel I've done in the fast few years. I got off at the next station, asked which train to take to get back to Sete Rios Station in Lisbon, and took the train back.


I went to the ticket window at Sete Rios, sheepishly explained that I had missed my train because I got on the wrong one (it was now about forty minutes after my train had left), and asked what I could do. The ticket seller was very helpful and sold me a ticket for the next train for the difference between the original cheap non-refundable fare and the regular fare, but unfortunately, the next (and only) train to Faro for the day was four hours later. And I definitely couldn't miss that train. Not a huge deal, I just had to wait at the station, but I used that time to plan out some future travel and make reservations, so it was put to good use. And I'd still make it to my hostel in Faro that night.


It was a lot hotter in Faro than it had been in Porto or Lisbon, which were coolish in temperature. Faro is in the Algarve region on the southern edge of Portugal, and the climate is definitely warmer in the Algarve. Faro is kind of a mellow little sleepy town with a small town center.


I took a day trip to Albufeira, which was VERY touristy. But it had some beautiful beaches with magnificent cliffs, so I mostly spent my time walking in the beaches, wading in the water (there were signs saying swimming was prohibited ir discouraged, probably because of dangerous tides). Wish I had spent more time in Faro, because I could have checked out the Algarve area more, as there were buses and trains running throughout the region.


I took the train from Faro to Évora, and it changed at Pinhal Novo, a few miles southeast of Lisbon. But the first train was running late due to some delay along the way. It was a very fast train, running over 200 kms. per hour, but for some reason it only ran about 20 kilometers per hour for about half an hour. It was supposed to arrive at 5:22 pm, and I was supposed to catch my connection at 5:48 pm at Pinhal Novo. But 5:22 came, and then 5:30, and we still hadn't arrived. I was getting a little nervous about whether we were going to arrive on time. When one of the train ticket checkers came by, I asked him what time we were going to arrive at Pinhal Novo; he shrugged his shoulders and said he didn't know, but it was the next stop. It didn't help that Google Maps was completely malfunctioning for me, and showing that our location was hundreds of kilometers from where we actually were. About 5:42 we hadn't gotten there, and there was no announcement, so I was afraid I was going to miss my connection. I gathered my backpack and put it on so I could dash out the door when we got there. Finally, there was an announcement. We stopped at 5:46; I had two minutes to spare. I just jumped off the train, full of adrenaline, and started running as fast as I could with my full backpack on. Luckily, I passed a screen saying that the train I needed to be on was arriving at track 2, so I sprinted to track 2, running and puffing up the stairs. I got to the train that I needed to change to with about twenty seconds to spare. All that leisure time; I guess you could say I ran too fast. Of course, I wasn't on the right car, but at least I had made it on the train. I found my car and my seat and sighed a breath of relief.



I arrived in Évora, and it smelled like rain, so I put the rain fly on my backpack. Sure enough, it started pouring like crazy. I took out my umbrella, and it was about a half hour walk in the rain to the hostel, mostly uphill. Not crazy steep uphill like it had been in Lisbon, though.

Évora is a beautiful, small, sleepy town, and the town center is completely encircled by an outer wall, and an inner wall that is mostly gone now, but there are still some remnants of it. The town center encircled by the wall is very compact and small, and there are a lot of narrow, snaking alleys thst are barely big enough to allow a medium sized car; some even won't fit car traffic. There is an ancient aqueduct that passes into the town.  It seems like it has more buildings built into its arches than most of the aqueducts I've seen. It also gets lower and lower in the town until it disappears.


In the town square in the center of Évora, there is a Roman Temple constructed in the first century to commemorate the Emperor Augustus. It is called the Temple of Diana, though it really has no known connection to the goddess Diana. Across the street, the Garden of Diana offers some beautiful views of the town from atop a hill. And right around the corner, bordering the same square, are the Cathedral of Évora, on which construction started in 1280, and the town museum, with many interesting archaeological remnants.



One of the highlights of my visit to Évora was an archaeological tour I took just outside the city to three megalithic stone sites. Mario was our guide, and he was supremely knowledgeable about not only the archeology of the area, but also about much of the geography and biology of the area. The first site was the Cromleque dos Almendres site. It is near the village of Nossa Senhora de Guadalupe. This megalithic stone formation is built in a symmetrical ellipse, but has many stones missing. It predates Stonehenge by about two millenia. The line that bisects the site leads due east to where the sun rises during the equinoxes, and there are two marker stones some distance from the site that indicate where the sun rises on the summer and winter solstices.



Next, I went out to one of the standing stones of Almendres (Menir dos Almendres). This single stone is several kilometers away from the ellipse of stones that make up the Almendres Cromlech, and is the marker stone that signifies where the sun rises on the summer solstice, as viewed from the main site.


And, finally, I went to the Zambujeiro Dolmen site. This was a burial mound for Neolithic people of high status, constructed around the time Stonehenge was built. It has been shored up and supported due to problems with structural integrity. There are bricks and wooden structures supporting the stones, and a metal shelter covering the site. The site is close to collapse, and these were meant to be temporary support measures constructed in the 80s, but have stayed there since.



I took a train back to Lisbon after four days in Évora. I have had some anxiety for about a week and a half due to the fact that my debit card was apparently cloned, and somebody tried to use it in Houston to take money out of an ATM. Fortunately, the attempt was unsuccessful, so I didn't lose any money. But the bank cancelled my debit card, and is sending me a new one. I had just taken out some money before the card was cancelled, but now my reserves are dwindling. I checked the tracking on the web, and apparently an attempt was made to deliver the card to the hostel in Lisbon, which I will soon return to, but the delivery was refused. I'm pretty sure that the delivery person rang a bell at the site (there are several bells there and the hostel is on the third floor), and some person from another floor unrelated to the hostel answered the door and refused it. Also, there is rarely someone on site at the hostel; it's not one that is staffed full-time, just when needed to greet new arrivals. So I contacted the carrier, and hopefully I'll be able to pick it up at their delivery warehouse when I get back to Lisbon. I still have butterflies about it a bit, though.