Wednesday 10th June 2009
This was it, the morning we planned to visit Lisbon. We parked in the underground car park under the Praca dos Restauradores, which put us right in the centre of old Lisbon, in the area known as Baixa. This has lots of cobbled streets in a grid system and is one of the busiest parts of the city.
We took the Elevador de Santa Justa up to the top and were afforded some wonderful views of Lisbon’s main streets and the Castelo de Sao Jorge on the opposite hill. We walked past the ruined cathedral and into the Bairro Alto district, this apparently is Lisbon’s best-known night life area with countless small bars and restaurants among the buildings colourfully decorated with tiles.
We stopped for an expresso and a cake in a cafe I had visited with Alex on my first visit and which seemed to exude an old-world charm, the 1920s Brasileira cafe. Suitably refreshed we continued wandering along Lisbon’s streets - it is a wonderfully relaxing city, seemingly without the mad pace of life normallyWe associated with capital cities. We wandered down to the sea front then back up the other hill to the Castelo de Sao Jorge, taking in a lovely park about half way up with beautiful bougainvillea. 
The Castelo de Sao Jorge was well worth a visit, even if only for the superb and shady observation terrace where we had some stunning views across Lisbon. I’m sure this place is packed in the summer with tourists of all nationalities, but we were lucky and although busy, it certainly wasn’t heaving. After a snack for lunch, where we wrote our postcard to Gramps, and sitting for a short while in a lovely shaded courtyard listening to a guitarist play delightful melodies, we climbed the steps and took a walk around the walls, with even more views of Lisbon. 
The streets here are all decorated for the Lisbon festival with loads of garish tinsel where the main rule seems to be more is more! Unfortunately, the main event of the Festival which is bizarely celebrated on the death of their paton saint takes place Friday evening, by which time we’ll be back in Cardiff. Faulty planning!
We gently strolled back to ground level and along the main pedestrianised street in Lisbon where we saw some very good human statues - especially considering the heat by this time. We decided to go and visit the Parque das Nacoes, which was the area formerly used for Expo ‘98. This was Lisbon gold! A lovely area right along by the river and completely pedestrianised with loads of restaurants (eat anywhere in the world without leaving!) and a Techniquest type museum and the world’s second largest oceanarium. We walked along the promenade following the river, with cable cars passing overhead, through several of the small gardens plotted along the front to the Oceanarium. There were people everywhere! We think that today is some sort of holiday because people really do seem to be out in force :). Weather was really hot by this time and I’ve managed to get a silly shaped tan on my chest where my t-shirt was (again!). We were so impressed by this area, we’ve decided to come back tomorrow and explore it much further rather than try and cram it all in in a few hours, so had a lovely choccy ice-cream before heading for home. 
Still no sign of any wi-fi :(