Not all bus tours are created equal – particularly not if it’s raining! While the one in Cadiz took my breath away, the same type of tour in Lisbon not so much – at least not at first. And I will admit my overall impression was mostly not due to the tour itself. Read on! If nothing else, I always seem to end up on some kind of an adventure!
O Once I adjusted to the fact that commentary was not going to be high on the this tour’s priority list, providing more in the way of local flavoured background music – was much more able to appreciate what I was actually seeing.
Lisbon oozes history in places. You have to wonder what would be learned if it’s carved facades and iron worked railings could speak. Who stood on those balconies, what did they see? Who did they love? Or hate? Or both.
Of course, like most cities in Europe, the historic bumps drain spouts with the modern. I had not intended to switch tour loops at that turning point – any part of the city is interesting to me, and I prefer to simply stay on one bus and loop directly back to the port. However, my colleague, whom I had found myself inviting to come along at the spur of the moment, had other plans and somehow ended up convincing me to switch to the red line loop. Which – despite the myriad of incredible museums and breathtaking water front – I later came to regret. I’ll get to that.
Once thing that the switch did offer that was totally worth the price of admission was the free tuck-tuck ride. Only twenty minutes long and not precisely what I would have expected to find in Portugal, it was kind of like a miniature rollercoaster without the tracks! After speeding along those little narrow cobblestone streets you definitely didn’t need a chiropractor!
Once we got back on the bus though – I realized something: the buses ran on two hour loops. The original bus I had boarded would have had me back at the ship in two hours, but since we’d changed lines that added another tour hours onto the time.
And the busses didn’t cross tracks for the rest of the route.
This meant that there was a strong possibility that I wouldn’t make it back to the ship on time for my first afternoon class.
At this point I will admit I became more than a little bit upset, possibly unreasonably so, since it hadn’t been in my plans to be out this long. I was not pleased. I’ll admit it took a while for me to extend forgiveness for that.
However, a taxi ride got us back in time, and gave us time to work out the misunderstanding. Always a good thing! As it turned out we weren’t as far away as we thought we were.
And now I Have a better idea of what I want to see the next time we port here
In the end, we decided that us getting lost was the teddy-bear’s fault (long story)
And only two people showed up to that afternoon class anyway…