Monday, February 23, 2009

Portugal Pt. 1 - Lisbon


Impressive, no? This is the 'Padrão dos Descobrimentos' in Belem, an outer suburb of Lisbon. It's a monument to the age of discovery. I thought it'd be a nice way to start a post.

Well as you may, or may not, know Laura and I picked Portugal as our destination for mid-term break. There's a lot of photos, so I thought instead of just picking a few, I'd pick a few from each city/town we stopped at and split it up into a few posts.

Up on the hill you can see S. Jorge castle. It's on one of the high hills around Lisbon and has variously been the sight of settlement by the Iberians, Visigoths, Romans, Moors and Christian Reconquistas. We went up there and there are some great city views to be had, check Laura's Flickr stream for those.

This is the Elevador de Santa Justa, designed by a student of Gustav Eiffel. It's kinda steam-punk with the neo-Gothic arches, and is really more of a tourist attraction than a practical public transport these days. There's a walkway from the top which is hidden in the photo, and some great views too.

This is one of the more practical 'elevadors'; there are three of these funicular railways in Lisbon. I think Laura did a great job with the lighting in this photo. She's quite the budding photographer ;-)

And here she is from a lookout near Bairro Alto, with the castle and city in the background. (linguistic aside/quiz question: bairro is related to the root of our word 'borough', so what's the translation of that part of Lisbon? It's easy I know, I'll try and find something harder for you next post.):

2 comments:

Estelle said...

Got the answer - too easy. Is Highbury in London on a similar site?

Sumrandom said...

I'll definitely have to find something harder!