Explore the Heart of Lisbon on Foot and Gloria Funicular

Once our cruise ship arrived in Lisbon we walked off the ship and met up with our tour guide for a walking tour of the city. We got to wear those radios around our necks with the one ear bud. This is a surefire way to look like a tourist especially with the numbered stickers the cruise ship gives you identify what tour group you belong to. So much for blending in.

 We started the tour in one of the oldest parts of the city called Alfama. The streets and alleys are quite narrow as you can see.

Our guide told us all kinds of stuff about the area and it's history. The houses in this part of town have multiple families in them now and sharing the space with so many people makes it easier to afford.

We like the way that the buildings in Lisbon look with the different colours. There seems to be a lot of colourful buildings in Lisbon.

Notice the tiles covering the building on the left hand side.

Lisbon is famous for having tiles on their buildings which comes from when the area was controlled by the Moors. 

Lisbon Cathedral looks a lot different that other cathedrals we've seen in Europe. It looks like it is a fortress or a castle. It's not going to fall down anytime soon.

There seems to be hills all over in Lisbon. We were walking up and down hills on the tour.

Lisbon is the English way to say the name of the city. It's really Lisboa.

 Next we took a walk to a part of town called Baixa.

 We walked along Rua Augusta which is one of the iconic streets of Lisbon. The big arch there is in a lot of tourist photos of Lisbon. Arco de Rua Augusta.

There were shops and restaurants all along Rua Augusta not to mentions lots of people.

Down one of the side streets is an elevator called the Santa Justa Lift that was made by a one time student of Gustave Eiffel the man who built the Eiffel Tower.

We walked through Rossio Square and there was relaxing music playing everywhere.

D. Maria II National Theatre

Rossio Train Station

Street vendor selling roasted chestnuts

One of the guys from our tour group stopped and got some roasted chestnuts. Apparently they are really good so try some when you go to Lisbon.

We saw many beautiful squares like Restauradores Square.

Gloria Funicular

 We made it to one of the main attractions on our walking tour. The Gloria Funicular is one of those iconic sights in Lisbon. We road the Gloria Funicular up to the section of town called Bairro Alto.

We saw these vehicles everywhere. If we ever come back to Lisbon we are going to have to take a ride in one of them. They are called tuk tuks. The Tuk Tuk tours looked fun.

We all crammed inside the car and rode to the top of the hill.

 The Gloria Funicular brought us to a park called Sao Pedro de Alcantara for a view of the city.

 There was a man playing guitar in the park and it was really nice to listen to the guitar and look out over the city. Lisbon has tons of hills so there isn't really a view point where you can see all of the city but this is a great place to go.

 We took a walk down to another part of town called Chiado.

 The streets were pretty neat. There was an Irish Pub playing the baseball game for tourists. The Portuguese don't watch Baseball they like soccer (football).

There was many really cool looking independent stores in this neighbourhood but there wasn't much time to go inside being on a walking tour.

This was Luis de Camoes square or Praca Luis de Camoes.

 Our tour guide did give us some time to roam around on our own though. We walked down the street and did some shopping in our free time. There were quite a few places to get different products made with cork which is pretty unique. You could get wallets, purses, braclets, you name it, all made with cork. We had no idea cork is such a versatile material. It seems like a good vegan friendly material to make accessories out of though.

 After shopping in our free time we met up again with our group and walked back down to Rua Augusta.

Our guide told us about Lisbon's history of earth quakes that have cause havoc for the city over the years.

We hung out for awhile in Terreiro do Paço enjoying the good weather. A guy walked up to us and tried to sell us some Cannabis but we declined. We talked to him for a bit because he asked us some questions about Canada. Interesting enough Portugal has decriminalised all drugs and they've had a lot of success with this policy.

 We then walked back to the ship.

Here is a few video clips from our walking tour. Sorry for the shakiness of the camera.

All in all it was a nice walking tour and it was such a beautiful day as well.

Thank you for reading. If you enjoyed this post and want to see more excursions from our cruise, check out our post on "Cartagena on Foot"