Another page from Janet's diary

Thursday 4th September 2014

Lisbon and, hurrah, the sun is shining!

We've been here a few times before and so I'd done a bit of research during the last month as we wanted to see something new.  Two areas of the city interested us, the Eduardo VII park and the Oriente district (formerly an EXPO site). Both are quite some distance from the city, even for seasoned walkers like us, so we'd decided that a Ho-Ho bus could be the answer.  My research showed that the City Sightseeing buses called at both places, so our mission seemed simple.  Unfortunately, we somehow managed to buy tickets for a rival firm 'Lisbon Sightseeing', whose buses have almost identical livery to the City Sightseeing ones, but appear to operate at far less frequent intervals.  So we spent almost an hour waiting for a Blue Route bus to arrive, and then, once on board, didn't dare to Hop Off in case we had trouble getting back!  Still, we saw both the sites and NEXT time we come here, we will take a taxi or the train and visit them properly.

We've been docked at the worst of Lisbon's docks - the Alcantara, close to the suspension bridge.  It's a long way from the city centre and is incredibly noisy, as it's a busy container port.  We drew the short straw too and our balcony is overlooking, and overlooked by, a huge crane which is continuously grabbing containers and loading them onto a constant stream of lorries.  Further down the river, at the more conveniently situated Apolonia dock, we saw HAL's Ryndam, a ship called Ocean Majesty and one of the posh three masted cruise ships (Sea Cloud?).

[Note for Julie - we thought Ryndam looked lovely, but Dave may put Sea Cloud on his bucket list, despite the lack of balconies and, I suspect, baths.]

Before we returned to the ship we bought Lisbon essentials... Six custard tarts.  :-). Consumed as we sailed away down the river.  Half an hour late we'd the glassy, flat-calm Atlantic, where we spotted a pod of dolphins

Caravan, Aurora's Filipino house band, played an Eagles tribute in Carmen's this evening before dinner.  It was a full house and they received a well deserved standing ovation.  We didn't get to any of the after dinner entertainment as nothing really appealed (female singer doing songs from the shows,  a race night, or the quiz.)  So back home to B253 for TV and reading until lights out!

Xx
Janet