Saturday, September 8, 1979

1979 Lisbon (9/8/1979)

Saturday, September 8, 1979
We pulled into Lisbon at about 11:00, but had to put our one watch back an hour. The train itself was an hour behind schedule. Once in the station we changed money, made reservations for the train back to Madrid that night, and got a map of the city. We knew the stores would only be open in the morning, so we first made our way to the cork shop recommended by the “$10” book. It was quite a hike but it took us past some great sights including what seemed to be the main entrance to the city, a huge square with a huge arch. We saw all sorts of trolleys including tiny ones without glass in the windows; it was a working trolley museum. We saw quite a variety of buses including double-deckers. We turned into some side streets and found ourselves almost vertically climbing the steep hills. We even saw a trolley that was built to fit the angle of the street it climbed. We seemed to have gone in a circle, but found the cork shop, a half-empty dusty old place with a couple cork items in the window and a dirty abandoned workshop appearance within. We decided to skip this wonderful attraction and went back down the hill to the main drag. Here we found an ice cream shop specializing in Italian ice cream. We each got a cup, I had lemon and chocolate which tasted surprisingly good when mixed. We then went to the newly-built shopping mall at one of the train stations. It had a lot of boutique-type stores. There was also a Chinese restaurant where we decided to have lunch; I had sweet and sour pork and Kathy had chicken and almonds, after the traditional egg roll. We followed the meal with several cups of green tea. We went off in search of the old part of the city where we had heard there was a flea market called the Thieves Market. We ended up climbing steep and winding streets, and not having a sufficient map, we really didn't know where we were. At one point we seemed to leave the area habituated by tourists, but then ended up within the walls of the castle of St Jorge, sitting on top of the hill overlooking the city. We explored the castle which had a collection of all sorts of ducks and birds, including swans and even white peacocks. The birds had special areas set behind low hedges, but they weren't caged and were essentially free to go where they pleased. We even climbed higher to walk atop the walls where I re-found my fear of heights, suddenly getting weak-kneed where there was no wall on the downhill side. We wanted to look over the edge of the outer wall into the city in hopes of seeing the flea market, but we didn't see anything nearby except foliage immediately below us. We left the castle and found a tourist information place where we were told to follow the trolley tracks. The tracks split a couple times, but we forged ahead. Suddenly we saw a lot of pedestrian traffic on one of the side streets. We investigated and found the Thieves Market! It was really huge and sold absolutely every type of junk imaginable! Nuts and bolts, old lamp shades, keys, door hinges, screwdrivers, pieces of appliances, clothes, kitchen gadgets, coins, furniture, shoes, buttons, iron scraps, old irons, electric parts, etc., etc., etc. We managed to go up and down every row of booths. There was even an indoor section which was closing up when we arrived. One loud woman proprietor had a microphone (which she didn't need!) to help sell her wares, silverware sets and wallets! When we finished exploring the flea market, we went downhill to the train station. We stopped at a nearby cafĂ© for some nice cold drinks. We had seen the American fellow hanging out at the station, so we bought him a Coke. Kathy and I went for a walk along the waterfront, but it was mostly warehouses. We returned to the station and sat outside for our dinner of tuna fish sandwiches and potato chips, our usual meal! Finally our train was ready and we boarded. We were joined by three young Japanese travelers, all also with Eurail Passes. I mentioned to Kathy I had noticed an auto carrier car attached to our train. She didn't believe me so we took a walk to the end of the train to look out, and sure enough, we could see spooky auto headlights chasing us in the dark. We went to the restaurant car for chocolate milks and ran into the American guy again. Soon the lights were turned off for bedtime.
Next: Madrid again.

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