20th June 2008 - Lisbon

Bali Hai
Neal Stow
Fri 20 Jun 2008 07:39
This morning we awoke to the sight of Rob from Seraphina walking around the marina hawking a pair of shoes.  Apparently, he had had a few too many drinks the previous evening on one of the other boats and woke up to find that he had left wearing someone else's shoes.  He was now prowling the marina trying to locate the owner and hopefully retrieve his own pair.
 
Today was a free day and we headed into Lisbon, a 15 minute train ride away.  Not knowing what to expect Lisbon turned out to be a really attractive city.  Colourful buildings with orange tiled roofs, built on seven hills with narrow cobbled streets and yellow tram cars.  There are not many great landmarks as such and the main attraction of those that do exist, such as the fort and the iron tower built by a follower of Gustav Eiffel, is the beautiful views over the city and river.
 
The city is very pleasant to wander around with lots of street life and hundreds of street cafes.  For lunch we went to a very interesting Portuguese Indian restaurant.  Goa was a Portuguese colony and the restaurant specialised in dishes such as Goan fish curry, chicken piri-piri etc...  The food was excellent - nothing like your local Tandori in the UK.
 
We returned to the boat for a rest (and in Rob's case a swim in the marina pool) and then a meal up in one of the marina cafes.  This was John's last night as he will be leaving us when we get to Sines so there were plenty of bottles of Casa Garcia, his favourite tipple, drunk.  Fortunately it is a wine with only 10% alcohol so by this trip's standards it could almost be classified as a soft drink.