Day 10 continued
We continued our tour of Lisbon by driving to the next set of artwork Pedro wanted us to see.
I love these purple flowering trees found all over Portugal and Spain. They are called Jacaranda trees. Purple is my favourite colour.
Were you perhaps curious how Avengers translates into Portuguese?
Some street art that was commissioned to honour the year of the woman (I may have that slightly wrong, I can't remember)
Then Pedro asked if we would mind stopping briefly as he wanted to see if he could meet up with Vanessa Teodoro, the artist who designed the artwork of the van we were in. So we went off on a jaunt to find her; she was working on artwork on a pedestrian bridge somewhere in Lisbon; Pedro had a vague idea of where but we weren't exactly certain. It was quite fun just to walk around like locals.
Eventually we found her, but apparently I only took terrible pics of her, whoops. Anyway, here's the really cool bridge she was working on:
Really cool to see this bridge get transformed, and Vanessa was super friendly even though she had been working very long hours to get this project done.
We decided to stop somewhere for lunch, and so Pedro found us a restaurant right below the pedestrian bridge:
and he also ordered for us which was very helpful as the menu was entirely in Portuguese. He went back to retrieve the van. Inside, I spotted these:
Universally popular, that Mickey!
We ate outside to enjoy the nice weather and here's what we got. Everything was yummy although I'm not the biggest bean fan. My kids love rice so we ended up getting one more plate of the beef, rice and potato chips (soooo good).
After lunch, Pedro met us with the van and we went off to tour a bit more of the city's street art and such. On the way we passed by this building (sorry for the drive-by pics)
This is Lisbon's bullfighting stadium, Campo Pequeno. If you look closely you can see that it has Moorish style designs on the exterior. Pedro told us that bullfighting is still allowed in Lisbon although it is starting to fall out of favour. Apparently it is "less cruel" than in Spain because the bulls are not put down after the fight and may in fact get to "live a life of luxury" after a fight. However, reading between the lines and hearing what may be his true thoughts, I'm guessing that many Portuguese still oppose bullfighting as it is cruel and the idea that the bulls live in luxury afterward is a rumour. I don't know. I gather the building is also used for concerts, which seems a better use!
This is a very blurry picture but this street art commemorates the 1974 revolution (the bridge that we passed under bearing the name of the date of the uprising); this is the army captain who helped to lead the revolution restoring democracy to Portugal, which for over 30 years prior to 1974 was essentially led by a dictator (Salazar).
We passed under a historic aqueduct built in the 1700s to bring water to Lisbon:
More cool street art:
After this, we decided to venture to the Belem district for some more sightseeing:
It was a tad windy at the Belem Tower:
That's a lot of people lining up!!
Belem is right on the water, as I mentioned earlier.
Here we are getting right up to the Monument to the Discoveries - it's massive!
Up close:
The entire square is just beautiful, with limestone/tile work depicting a map of the world in the time frame of the discoveries (14th century or so, I think) in the centre of a giant wind rose.
We then ventured close to the Jeronimos Monastery where we considered going in... but the lines again looked pretty long.
So instead, we decided to hit up one of the day's biggest attractions:
Pasteis de Belem. It's already been mentioned by others, but the pasteis de Belem (custard tarts made in Belem) are one of Lisbon's most treasured and talked about food items. Portuguese egg tarts are very, very popular among Asians, probably in part due to Macau and its proximity to Hong Kong, so in Vancouver these are fairly prevalent treats, but I figured nothing could compare to the original treat. The recipe is hundreds of years old, and Pedro told us that Pasteis de Belem sells upwards of 20,000 tarts a day. On their biggest day they sold 100,000! (I think that was during some sort of soccer event).
Here's where having a private tour was amazing: Pedro dropped us off close, but suggested he could watch the boys so that DH and I could run across the street and join the lineup. Maybe it might sound crazy that we agreed to this, but if you met Pedro you would agree it was very safe
A picture of me at the end of the line (although in this picture I already have my treats!)
By the way if you have more time, you can sit down in the restaurant as it is quite large inside with many, many seats.
Pretty tile work inside:
The line is long but it does move rather quickly. However, it is really chaotic inside and there isn't much time to decide what you want, so be prepared for that.
And here's what you see on your way in:
I ended up buying a dozen, which came in two sleeves like this:
If only I could recreate the smell and taste of this pure deliciousness:
Gleefully chomping down:
Okay this post is getting rather long so I will finish off Lisbon in my next post (or so I keep saying).