Exploring Lisbon

if I learned one thing today about Lisbon, it’s that I want to come back and spend more time here.

This really is a charming city. It’s got a rich history, great food, very friendly people and cobblestone everywhere.

My day started walking to find a grocery store for breakfast and snack items. If there’s a town that Lisbon reminds me of from a geographical perspective it’s San Francisco. there are hills everywhere! i’m staying in an older residential district near the city Central core. It’s a steep climb up or down in any direction for anything. The first grocery that I attempted to go to turned out to be torn down. I didn’t find a convenience store a little further up a hill and came home with the supply of fruits, cheese bread, and some dried apricots for trail food.

after eating my breakfast, I decided to take a stroll and try to find the Lisbon cathedral before my scheduled 10 AM walking tour of old town Lisbon. According to my mapping software, I found the cathedral, but it was not open despite the fact that scheduled hours suggested it should’ve been opened by 9:30. Time was getting short for me to get to my walking tour so I decided to try to find the cathedral later in the day.

my tour guide was named Thiago and he was a Lisbon native and a historian by trade. There were approximately 20 people in our group about half of which were US citizens. We also had couples from Canada, the UK, Germany, Czech Republic, Serbia, and Greece.

among the things we learned was that Lisbon was actually the second oldest city in all of Europe behind Athens. It’s history dates back to over 3000 years ago that said, there is very little in the city that is over 300 years old because of a massive earthquake, tsunami and fire in 1755 that leveled the town and killed over half of it inhabitants.

When the town was rebuilt, new reinforcing techniques were used and most buildings were built using a common plan so as you walk around, there are hundreds and hundreds of buildings that basically look the same.

Lisbon is known for its tile work and cobblestones in Mosaic patterns. 

Following the tour, I wandered around the city on foot, putting in a total of almost 12 miles on my non hiking day. I eventually found the Lisbon Cathedral. It was two blocks past the cathedral that I had stopped at mistakenly. I went in and got my pilgrim stamp so I can begin my walk tomorrow before the cathedral opens at 9:30.