Nice (and expensive) marina but no wifi!! The marina is trialing a system but it is not working and no likelihood of any change soon. There are a couple of bars in the marina with it but they were not working either when I took the laptop up and are too far from access from the boat. We can just about get a signal from the Hotel Baia (about half a mile away) in the town but only with the antenna half way up the mast and at high water! It’s a bit inconvenient to have to go up to town to get on the internet but you can’t have everything.
Most of the sailing blog sites have oodles of info on Lisbonso I thought I would just put on a couple of bits that may be a bit different after our 6 day stop here (although we have not gone yet!). It is certainly one of the better places to spend some time after a few hard days sailing with lots to see. Cascais also is a good place to base yourself as it broadens the scope of where to go if you want to get outside the city of Lisbon itself. We had a look at the marina at Doca da Alcantra but it is central to the city and not the best place to go to the beach!!
On Friday we headed off into Lisbon on the train. 1.75 Euros each way and every 20 minutes. If you are thirsty after a long day seeing the city sights, stop at the “British Bar” at the end of Rua Da Arsenal – on the right as you walk back from the city centre towards the train station, just before the big roundabout where you cross to the station. Normally we try to avoid bars which are “British” but there was not much choice. Inside, the bar was not very British at all. It was a bar for locals with cheap and not tourist prices. The bar staff were very helpful. Nice steak sandwich and some of the “wet lupin” beans that Pam had been looking for. While we were in there the heavens opened for what was to be about 12 hours of heavy rain. Luckily most of it was overnight.
…now if I have 2 beans and another 2 beans, how many beans do I have? ……er.. some beans.
While we were in Lisbon, we went to the Gulbenkian art museum which was excellent. There are a number of masterpieces in the collection which are well worth seeing. It is about half an hours walk north of the centre of town but can be reached by taking the blue metro line and then a short walk.
On Saturday, once the rain had stopped we decided to take the bus up to Sintra, a town about 20 miles north of Cascais to have a look at the palace of Pena and some of the other old buildings. If you buy a day rover ticket on the local buses, you get to jump on and off them for 10 Euros for the day. There are 2 bus routes to Sintra, the 417 which is direct and the 403 which takes twice as long and runs around the coast past Cabo da Roca (which we had rounded a few days earlier). We went up on the 417 (get on under the shopping mall near the railway station + get your rover ticket there). Get off at the Bus station in Sintra (not the Interchange), then hop on the 434 which does a circular tour of all the tourist sites. It’s worth going round once to get your bearings and then on and off at will. The palace at Pena is worth a visit as is the old part of the town. We didn’t have time to do the castle but that looked interesting as well.
I’m sure we should have gone to starboard after that last east cardinal mark
We came back on the 403 which was a very pleasant run. There was quite a big swell running out to sea by Cabo da Roca, the left-overs of the storm that had moved into Biscay the day before that then went on to cause havoc in the UK.
Cascais itself is a pleasant little town with lots of bars and restaurants but also a nice produce market. There we found a bulk source of the lupin beans!
There's a prize of a weeks holiday down here if you correctly count the number of lemons in the photo
It’s now Monday evening. Sue flew back to the UK this morning – just as the weather turned a bit hotter. We now have around 120 miles left to go to get to Lagos, our destination. The wind has been a bit southerly for the last 4-5 days but that is all to change on Wednesday and it looks like the “Nortarde” trade wind will be starting up. Our plan then is to head off for Sines early Wednesday and then the last long leg of 80 miles from Sines to Lagos on Thursday unless we like Sines that is.
Andy,Pam, enjoying the blog and humour, wish I there in those lovley conditions. so who is the offical bean counter dare I ask ??
Photos are great, and the comments.
I'm still recieving physio for my lower back and hope to be back sailing before the night series is over.
cheers
Ken
Posted by: ken | 10/09/2008 at 02:07 PM