Lisbon

Too many photos-too little time. So to whet the appetite-just a few of the highlights of Lisbon:

This isn't Lisbon. If you squint reeaalll hard, you can see the Empire State Building. (It's kinda toward the front of the airplane) This is as close to NYC as I got.Departure from Newark, NJ: 6:00 PM
Arrival at Lisbon Airport: 6:00 AM
Sleeping time: Maybe 15 min.

When arriving at our hotel, our hosts inform us DO NOT GO TO SLEEP! Go for a walk! And to prove their point, they inform us that our rooms are not ready until after noon... So we walk to a local park that has a giant Portuguese flag and get slammed with the venders trying to sell us sunglasses and tablecloths (yes-we were suckers!)

Now some various random favorites of Lisbon:
500 year old aquaduct. SO cool. This did not get destroyed in the famous earthquake of Nov. 1, 1755-which pretty much flattened the city of Lisbon.....

Monument to the Discoverers. If you remember correctly from your 7th grade World History....do you remember your explorers???? Yes? Most of them were Portuguese, a fact proudly repeated over and over and over and over and over.......This monument is HUGE. It's hard to visualize on a photo. I saw it from the airplane when we left.
The elevator downtown. This city is built on hills. 7 hills. This is why Portuguese people are skinny-they hike up and down hills all day.

Elevator........
View from top of elevator!

Monastery of the Jeronimos........famous old church. Our guide's English was a little bit hard to understand. In fact, she kept saying Jesus Baby, which kept some of us in giggles.
Inside of the chapel of the Monastery of the Jeronimos. This place is HUGE AND DARK! Thank heavens for my fabulously awesome new camera lens which allowed me to take pretty dang decent photos without a flash...
I told you they worship their discoverers. This is Vasco de Gama....his burial spot....remember from World History? yes? no? He discovered the route to India around the Cape of Good Hope in Africa......ahhhhhh yes!

Tower of Belem. A fortress in the Tagus River to protect the city from invading Moors and various other foreign types. This is another HUGE monument-very, very, very old.

Coach Museum. This was a gorgeous gold plated coach-The coaches were anywhere from 400 years old on up. I thought this was one of the prettiest.....(thank heaveans again for the lens!)

Our FAVORITE tour in Lisbon. The palace at Sintra. This place was incredible. It started out as a monastery in the 1500s and then one of the kings decided he liked it too much to allow the priests to live there so he added on to it and made it his "summer palace." The royalty used it up until about World War II...

This is the western most point of Europe, Cabo Roca......a stone's throw to your left and you are tumbling down the cliff into the Atlantic Ocean....next stop..... NYC.

And finally, who could resist meeting the elders on Sunday at the Benfica Ward. They were so happy to see us-and we were so happy to see them! We hopped on a taxi from our hotel and showed up 15 minutes late.....when the meetings were done, they kindly called us a taxi to take us back because we had no idea where we were!

Stay tuned for more fascinating photos and hair raising stories!