Castle of São Jorge

We arrived at 9:30 a.m. local time, somewhat road weary after the overnight plane ride—6½ hours. First order of business was to buy our transit passes at the airport. Second was to get SIM cards, which we forgot to do. Anyhow, with lots of wifi around we can get by without, so a bit of savings there.

Getting around with transit is not difficult unless you're lugging suitcases without wheels, which was us. We were trying to comply with all the regulations posted on the TAPortuguese Airlines website. Little did we know they are not enforced, so we would have been fine with our wheeled suitcases.

Then we had about a 500 metre walk to our hotel, Hotel Lis. It was a bit difficult with seemingly two systems of naming streets and some street names obscured by renovation fencing at some buildings. Then a delivery person sent us in the opposite direction. Not too big a deal, but I was kind of done my workout.

We were allowed to leave our bags at the reception until check-in time at 2:00 p.m.

Meanwhile we found a tourist kiosk to get oriented for a trip to "the castle" on the high hill in the city. We hopped on the #12 trolley, which just does a continuous 15 minute loop around the downtown area, including going around the castle. We did the loop once, realized we were on our second round and got off when the route stopped ascending. Once we got off, it did not take long to find the way to the castle. There was an €8,50 charge. They had lovely generous grounds shaded by red pines outlined by low walls overlooking the lower city and the waterfront— lots of clay tiled roofs. Several decommissioned canons punctuated our walk along the circumference of the castle grounds.

Ruth was tired and did not want to try the 120 steps to the upper levels, so she cooled her heels while I went to catch some further panoramas of Lisbon. The steps were higher than the standard we're accustomed to in Canada — a good workout for the quads. But the day was beautiful and the breeze higher up refreshing, as the day started to warm up by then.

After that we started our descent going by old buildings, interesting shops and the St Vincent lookout, which has a great view of the waterfront.
We stopped there, near our trolley stop for a refreshing, alcohol free Pina colada. But since we got tired of waiting we went down on foot, not too bad going downhill without luggage.

Once at the hotel, we both sank into the bed and set the alarm for 6:00 p.m. and had a restful 90 minute nap.Read more