Lisbon

Portugal was one of my must-see countries on my trip, in particular Lisbon. It may also have something to do with seeing Carrie's (WishWishWish) frequent posts about the city, but something always drew me to Lisbon. I left Zürich at a ridiculous hour with the intention of arriving early and having a full day ahead. Shortly after we arrived at the hostel, the people at reception told us about the free walking tour (tips based) and off we went! The tour guide was so lovely! Very engaging and informative of course. We started off at a bar selling jinjingha and I tried some at 10.30am in the morning. Ha. I'm not a big fan of alcohol, but it tasted ridiculously sweet.

Ginjinha  is a portuguese liqueur made by infusing ginja berries, (sour cherry) in alcohol and adding sugar together with other ingredients. Ginjinha is served in a shot form with a piece of the fruit in the bottom of the cup.

Portuguese tart



Lisbon was amazing and so different to all the other cities I had visited in Europe. Sure, each city is different from the other, but after a while some do blend together. But Lisbon was radically different with the one carriage trams, super steep cobbled roads and flights of stairs one after the other. It was also 16°C during the day which was amazing.

I don't really like going on tips based tours, especially after reading about Sandeman's (see here). Partly because I don't know how much to pay, and I feel guilty if I don't leave something reasonable. At the conclusion of the tour, this American (from Virginia) was the first to ask how to pay, and then proceeded to pay the guide 1 Euro. One. Euro. Being a busybody, I saw that people all paid around 4-5 Euros. One. Euro. Still baffles me considering she was decked out in moderately expensive brands and seemed to quite enjoy the tour.






Sunset

The following day, we headed to the historic neighbourhood of Alfama. It was super hilly. The aim was to visit the flea market that was held every Saturday. I am always on the hunt for secondhand film cameras and I thought it might be the place to find some. There was one vendor who had a whole table of pretty awesome cameras, but I passed them up. They seemed to be the same price as on the bids on eBay which was disappointing.






Afterwards we headed to the other side of the river to see Christ the King. It took a while to get there since the wrong path was taken (a wrong path which meant a very steep road had to be taken). Does this look familiar?



It was inspired by the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro and it was erected to express gratitude that the Portuguese were spared from WWII. 



Also the bridge is pretty much identical to the one in San Francisco due to colour and type. 


This sunset photo looks similar to the previous one, but it was insanely difficult to reach (I believe it was Miradouro de São Pedro de Alcântara). It required climbing up a hill that was almost at a gradient of 45°.