Lisbon, Day Two

This was the day I learned everything I ever wanted to know about Lisbon. Well, not quite but the tour guide was pretty passionate about his country and provided lots and lots of background. This was a walking tour of the city and as it was a rather chilly day, there were only two of us brave (or silly) souls on the tour. The other was an Aussie (I have met so many Aussies out here, I'm wondering if the last person out of there turned off the lights!). We started with about a 30 minute Portugal history lesson just standing there in the square. Beginning back in Roman times. . .yes, it had that familiar ring. The city is this old but the stuff isn't quite that old because one conquering army torn down or built over the previous etc, etc. But here's the thing with Portugal-since the early 1200s---never been conquered. The reason Lisbon doesn't have much left to show for its Roman and subsequent design styles is cuz of the 1755 earthquake that lasted for, I think, more than 10 minutes and had been guessed to have been about a 9 on the Richter scale. It was on a Sunday. The very devout were in the churches whose roofs collapsed. The trembler shook the embers out of the fireplaces so lots of folks were than caught in the fires. The ones that escaped the initial collapse of everything around them and outran the fire to get to the river were caught in the tsunami. Must have felt like Armegeddon. Well, that was the Portugal/Lisbon 101. After that we meandered through town looking at how they pulled themselves up and became the city that they are today. They took advantage of the sort of clean slate they now had and didn't just rebuild what they lost but improved on it.

Long before the earthquake though, Portugal had lots going for it. It was a hugh empire and still today you can see it's influence around the globe. If you've eaten Indian food, specifically Tandoori, that's Portugeuse. Do you like tempura? Portuguese. Peanut Butter and Jelly? I have no idea where it comes from but I'll bet there's some Portuguese influence in there somewhere.

There are of course several churched in the city but the most incredible one, I think, is St. Nicolas'. It was the richest church and was filled with all of the kind of trappings a rich church of that era would have---lots of gold ornamentation and incredible painting and stained glass and all of it lost when the church burned. Rather than try to rebuild and fall short of the previous splendor, the rubble was cleared and the ceiling was painted in ochre. Pews were brought in and that was pretty much the extent of the restoration. You either hate it or love it. I'm in the latter category.

I didn't do much more after the tour except find my way back to the metro station and headed out to the main train station because I had a night train to catch to Madrid.