PORTUGAL, LISBON: CITY VIEWS AND THE CASTELO DE SAO JORGE (ST. GEORGE'S CASTLE)

 June 22, 2022

Feeling fortified by an excellent seafood meal, we continued what had turned out to be a much more lengthy and difficult "walk" to the St. George Castle than we anticipated.  Suddenly stops along the way to take in the view seemed unusually appealing. Of course, how could we say no to this view?

The large dome on the left is the Church of Santa Engrácia, one of the many churches we never made it to.

One of the building walls near the view area had this azulejo (glazed ceramic tile) depiction of Commerce Square, the large plaza facing the ocean we had seen at the beginning of our walk.

The bougainvillea was in bloom all over town. I'd like to copy this look in my backyard, right down to the real bird on the edge of the birdbath.

Still going uphill, we reached another large plaza with a large statue at the center.

This is St. Vincent of Saragossa, patron saint of Lisbon. This sad-faced fellow met a tough end. He made an enemy  of the governor, who imprisoned him, stretched his body on the rack, and tore his flesh with iron hooks before rubbing them with salt. He was burned with a red-hot gridiron before being laid on top of broken pottery in a prison cell, where he died. His body was thrown to sea in a sack, but ravens protected him from being eaten by vultures, and ultimately his followers were able to recover his body.

The church you can see on the far left behind St. Vincent is the Monastery of São Vincente de Fora (or "St. Vincent Outside the Walls"). Unfortunately, we never made it to that church either.

Portugal is no place for someone in a wheelchair or with a walking disability. I've never walked up and down so many stairs anywhere, and there are no accommodations made for those who can't navigate the stairs.

All eyes were on us to see if we could make it to the top.

Another characteristic we would encounter time and time again on this trip are unusual passageways. We would have been sunk without the GPS on our phones.

So why two different doors? One for parents and one for kids? I love the color of the window and the punched fish design under the panes.

This "urinol" sign cracked us up. Since there was no actual "facility" nearby, we assumed that meant it was okay to aim for the wall.

I'll be posting dozens of photos of tiled buildings as I make my way through my Portugal photos. It is the most iconic thing in the country. This one looked newly built or newly restored.

Of all the places we walked to in Lisbon, the St. George Castle was probably the farthest, and truly, it was almost all uphill. It was late afternoon by the time we finally arrived.

We had our first view of the Tagus River from a castle parapet. The longest river in the Iberian Peninsula, it starts in mideastern Spain and empties 625 miles later into the Atlantic Ocean just past Lisbon. The first fortifications were built on this hill in the 1st century BC, but people were living here as early as the 8th century BC.

"The St. George Castle Viewpoint, 1963."

There is something magical about doorways, don't you think?

Check out this house. At first I thought it had bamboo siding, but I think it is actually tubular tiles like the ones on the roof. Very unique.

A couple of statues onsite: She's underdressed and he's overdressed. I don't know who she is, but he is Manuel I, the King of Portugal from 1495 to 1521. His nickname is O Venturoso, or "The Fortunate" because he was named heir to the throne by his brother-in-law, John II.

I was impressed by the array of peacocks strutting around the castle grounds. (Did you know a group of peafowl is called an "ostentation"?)

Up to this point we had been on the castle hill but not in the castle itself. Here we go!

The earliest walls and towers were built during the time the Moors occupied Lisbon during the 14th century. It was improved and enlarged over the centuries until the 1755 Lisbon earthquake left some of it in ruins. By the 1930s, it was almost obscured behind more recent structures, but restoration was ordered by Portugal's popular dictator, António Salazar, who was in power from 1933 to 1974.

This was one of the few places that we saw the Portuguese flag. 

Bob is so a-door-able.

I don't know what kind of tree this is, but it is HUGE. Look at the staircase on left for perspective.

There were several trees that caught my attention inside the castle walls. You can only appreciate how large this tree is . . . 

. . . by watching this video.

I wanted to climb as high as I could. How often do you get to wander freely over a castle this size?

There's Bob on the left, waving at me from down below.

More magical passageways. I just can't resist.

It was definitely time to start the long walk back to our hotel. At least we knew it was all downhill.

I will I had a clothesline like this. Pretty practical, if you ask me.

Sadly, the store with this nativity scene in the window was closed. (Note the monk on the ATV in the background.)

Let's get a close-up of the tiles on the second story of this apartment building.

So amazing.

This is unusual graffiti. The two Italian artists who make up Urbansolid are known for their plaster and concrete human anatomical casts often installed on the walls of dilapidated neighborhoods.

Down, down, down. 

Note that few of these photos are taken on a city street with vehicular traffic. I'm glad we visited Lisbon in the GPS Era.

When we finally made it back to our hotel, look what we discovered across the street--an award-winning ice cream and doughnut shop!

Back in our hotel, the hotel alarm went off three times. I went down to the lobby to see what was going on and discovered that they had a leak that had hit the electrical system, triggering the alarms in every room on the 4th floor--our floor. They had to dismantle the alarm, which was a bit disconcerting.

When we finally got to bed 30 hours after having left our home in the U.S., we slept soundly all night. We had logged 6,726 miles in the air and six miles on our feet during those hours, and neither one of us had gotten much sleep on the plane. The cure for jet lag and an eight-hour time change is to be completely exhausted when you finally go to bed in the new place. It works like a charm.