Lisbon, 21.12.2024: Ancient Grottos and Pickpocket Warnings

Alfama scene

We continue to find touring daunting. As we did yesterday, we slept this morning until 9 A.M. and then got up, still feeling somewhat jet-lagged. I got wise and put earplugs into my ears last night, and had a more restful evening that I had the previous evening, though even so, at 2 A.M., some absolutely gormless lout slammed a door so loudly near us that the floor in our room shimmied in response.

Lisbon, 20.12.2024: Black Cats and Closed Churches

So yesterday on the 19th, after breakfast we figured out how to take the subway to the Gulbenkian Museum, and spent several hours there before lunch. Following the directions in Steves’ guidebook proved a bit more complicated than we had anticipated, and as we exited the subway (blue line) at the São Sebastião stop and tried to spot the El Corte Inglés store that’s supposed to be at your back as you walk down Avenida de Aguiar, it proved difficult to find. As we were pondering that matter, a couple, French I thought, came up with their guidebooks and asked if we knew how to find a certain street. Turned out that when we finally got to the Gulbenkian, they were there, so they, too, were trying to follow evasive directions to the evasive entrance to the museum. (Video above: an accordion player on the blue line of the Metro to Bairro Alto, 20.12.2024.)