Month: May 2019

Nice

Nice is a beautiful city. The long boardwalk down the beach is amazing. It’s pretty long, about seven miles, so I rented a bicycle and rode the whole way. The beach itself is made of rocks instead of sand, and they make an amazing noise when the water washes over them.

There is also a large hill, with an old fort at the top. The fort itself is mostly gone now, reduced to rubble, but the view from there was amazing!

Lots of steps though. 🙂 It was a long way up.

Seeing Brenda was great. I slept in their room the first night to save some money, but the hotel owner caught on to us and kicked me out the second night, so I had to find a hostel.

Overall, great city. Decent weather, absolutely beautiful setting, and a great beach and boardwalk. Next stop, Florence!

First Train Travel

Lisbon was fun, but it’s time to move on now. I’m writing this post from a hostel in Marseille, France. What am I doing in France, and why did I skip Spain, you ask? Scheduling issues. Tomorrow I am meeting up with Aunt Brenda in Nice, so I had to skip Spain in order to make it there. Maybe I’ll make time to come back later in the trip, or maybe it’ll just have to be another trip entirely, but either way it’ll be fine. There’s lots to see, and I can’t see all of Europe in five weeks.

The trip from Lisbon to Marseille took me about 24 hours. I don’t have many photos of the trip, because I was trying to conserve battery life on my phone, but I do have a few, so here they are.

Firstly, on the train from Lisbon to Madrid I made a friend. Here he is:

Sorry it’s such a bad photo, he didn’t want to show his face. He didn’t speak English at all, so it was a good opportunity for me to practice my Spanish. He’s Brazilian, native to the São Paulo area, and in a few days he will be flying to Canada.

The Spanish countryside is beautiful, but quite desert-like in places. The train was traveling at 300km/h so all the pictures I took were kinda blurry, but here’s one of the sun rising over a distant mountain.

And one a few hours later showing the countryside a bit better:

The train station in Madrid had some interesting alternatives to escalators:

The French countryside is littered with ruins of old stone buildings or minor castles, but at 300km/h I didn’t have enough time to get the camera out and snap a picture of any of them before they passed by. Here’s a photo of a castle we passed while we were slowed down going through a city:

Over all, the trains were quite impressive. They ran quietly, we’re comfortable, and didn’t rock too much. I was able to sleep fairly well during the ride. The train stations themselves did get a little confusing, but I’ll get used to it.

Finally, here in Marseille taxi drivers demand payment in a strange way…

Talk to you again soon!

Stuart

Finishing up in Lisbon

I’m not going to make excuses this time, I just haven’t gotten around to writing up a post in a while. Sorry about that.

As I write this I am on the train to my next destination. Here’s some of what I got up to during my last couple of days in Lisbon:

There are only so many 500 year old churches one can visit before they all start to look the same, so I decided to visit something a little more modern – the zoo! I’ve \nbeen to zoos before, but never in another country, and I was kind of curious what the differences would be.

As it turns out, over here they consider animals like Bears and Turkeys to be zoo-worthy!

I wandered around aimlessly for a while until I came across the ruins of an old cathedral. This piqued my interest because all the old buildings I had seen before were in perfect condition. Why was this building in ruins?

Going inside, I found out that it was actually an archeological museum, with a bunch of really old artifacts. And when I say a bunch, I mean literal thousands of them! Here are a few pictures, though I must say that they don’t capture the full scale of how much stuff was there.

And best of all, the resident museum cat:

Fun fact: the Portugese have Scientology too!

Apparently, Lisbon has one of the best aquariums in the world. After visiting it, I have to agree!

That's a big sunfish!

That’s it for Lisbon. I’ll post another update shortly about the train travel experience.

First days in Lisbon, Part 2

Yesterday, I spent the whole day wandering around hoping to run across something interesting. Boy, did that work out! I saw a ton of things yesterday. First I went to the top of the highest hill, where I found an old castle and church.

I climbed the bell tower, and the view from there was amazing.

From there, I decided to walk toward the water. On the way, I ran across a museum of cultural and political oppression. That sounded interesting, so I went in. The museum was very interesting and educational. Here are some photos I took while walking around the museum.

After finishing with the museum, I continued walking downhill toward the water. On the way, I ran across yet another detour: another church! I went inside, and this one was even more intricate and impressive than the last. Some photos:

When I finally arrived at the water, I came across a large square.

After reaching the water, I proceeded to walk along the shoreline for a while. Here are some of the things I encountered:

An old man who had built some very impressive cairns:

A grassy plaza or square:

Finally, this statue:

When I reached my destination, the Belém district, I bought a pastry. It was good, but I forgot to take a picture of it.

There are a number of cool things in Belém. First, there is a large monument with 27 statues on it

Second, the Torre de Belém, an impressive tower built to defend Lisbon from pirates:

And finally (and I think most interestingly), there is a monastery, the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos. It’s split up into two sections, a church that is free to go into and the monastery proper, which costs a few dollars. Here are a bunch of pictures.

Overall, it was a great day. Lisbon is an amazing city with a rich history, and I’m glad I visited it.

First days in Lisbon

Sorry about the radio silence! I’ve been having lots of fun, and wifi is hard to come by, so I haven’t gotten around to making a post in a little while.

The first day, I spent most of the day setting up lodging and transportation, so I didn’t do much exploration. That said, here are some photos I took while walking around.

Outside the airport in Lisbon
View from a hill near to the airport
Saw this cool Mural while walking around.
An art piece. I think it was celebrating the anniversary of the founding of Lisbon.
Lisbon’s streets are very narrow and steep.
They are very hard to navigate without a map. I don’t know how the locals do it.
Also, street trolleys run along many of the streets.
Finally, one more Mural I found while walking around. It’s referencing the Carnation revolution, which happened here in the 70s.

Another post to come about what I did yesterday.