Day 12 - Lisbon - City Tours

From Seville we looked into travel options as I mentioned awhile ago and an overnight bus seems like the cheapest and most efficient way of travel. Wow were we wrong. We arrived in Lisbon at 6am as opposed to 8:30am like the bus schedule told us so we were both running on less than 3 hours of sleep.  I didn't think we'd be getting to the hotel at 7am so I didn't think it would be a big deal to check in early if there was a room available.  Well there were plenty of rooms available but they said if you checked into before the check in time, they would charge you something like 50 Euros for the use of the room for the day.  I was taken aback by this since we only paid $60 or like 45 Euros plus some points for the room to begin with!

After ample the guy said he could not waive the fee but he said he would let us use the showers in the spa to get cleaned up.  Looking back I think I preferred what happened because that shower with its 6 body jets was one of the nicest showers I've taken! And then we were tempted to spend the morning napping and got on with our sightseeing and if I would have seen a bed, I'm not sure I could have resisted the temptation of climbing into it!

Lisbon reminded me a lot of San Francisco with its hills, being on the bay and it's bridge.  I love this picture of part of the bridge with the seagull flying into it!

The main plaza in Lisbon, the Plaza Comercio.

One thing I had read a lot about Lisbon was the tram cars and the tram tours you could take.  This is the tourist office but is the same as the tram cars they use here.  They cannot be any longer or they would not be able to go around the curves on some of the streets without hitting the walls!

The curvy and hilly streets of Lisbon.

We then hopped on the bus which takes you outside the city center.  Here is Lisbon's bullring.  Portuguese bullfighting greatly differs from Spanish bullfighting because they do not kill the bull at the end.

The Roman aquaducts that remain.

Lisbon has its own "Golden Gate Bridge" called the 25 April Bridge.  It was actually designed by the same architects as the Golden Gate Bridge and built in the same year and is pretty much the same length.

The city had this neat fountain that had these cone shaped fountains every hundred feet or so in this park and every once in awhile one would erupt like a volcano and water would rush into this small canal and make a huge wave going up and down through this park.  Really cool art!

The Vasco de Gama  tower.

This is the bus station we came into about 12 hours earlier.  We didn't realize how neat looking it was while we were there.  The sun had not come up yet and we were both very tired!

A panoramic view we saw multiple times during the same but it was most beautiful as the sun was setting!