Germany & Portugal Spring 2024

Took a ferry this morning to Lisbon. It cost a fortune .... 1.45euro incl. the bikes.
On arrival we cycled along the waterfront to Belem tower and Padrão dos Descobrimentos monument.the As it was Saturday, the place was full of tourists..... like us...🫢

We decided to have some lunch at a place called LX Factory. It's an old industrial complex that houses now lots of arty farty shops and artisan restaurants. It reminded me of some places I have visited in Berlin. It had a great atmosphere.

After lunch we wanted to ride the famous route 28 tram and decided to go to the start (or end of the line) that was furthest away from the centre. 🚞
The idea was that we avoid these pesty tourist and guaranteed a window seat.
In Google map it was only 4km away ...... so no problem with our bikes..... so we thought ...... however, we found out very quickly the reason for the lack of tourists.
Lisbon is one of the cities that is build on 7 hills.... like Rome ..... and they were steep. ⛰️
I used over half of my bike battery power to get up these hills, .....but it worked .....we got our desired window seats.😋😋
We stayed on the tram right to the end station (10km) and it took us on a great exhilarating 1.5 hours tour through Lisbon.

On arrival at the end station we planned to get back on the same tram again to return to our bikes...... but ..... now we saw were all these tourist were trying to get onto tram 28 ..... the queue was over an hour long ... and Germans are allergic to queues....😞

So, .... this required some germanic thinking!!!! We discovered that tram 12 was running for some distance on the same track .... and there were no queue.
So, ..... the idea was to get onto tram 12 and half way change to tram 28 and thereby skipping the queue. Our plan worked a treat. 😀😀😀 we beat all these pesty tourists.

Back on the bikes to the ferry and home for 20.30.
We had a great day in Lisbon.Lue lisää