Portugal. Part 1. Lisbon.

An easy and short flight from Bristol to Lisbon meant that I visited another country that was new to me, despite it being relatively close.  I’d anticipated a couple of weeks of sunshine and warmth as the UK has had a pretty horrible couple of months weather wise which is typical for January and February.  The day I left the sun came out here for a whole week, and it rained nearly every day for two weeks in Portugal 🙁  Oh well, can’t win ’em all !  Despite the weather it was an enjoyable visit, and here are some of my images from its capital, Lisbon.

The first thing that struck me whilst walking around was the amount of art and graffiti on buildings and walls.  Some of it is nice to look at, but there’s a lot of ‘tagging’ which in my mind is just pure vandalism.

Many of the residences have colourful facades in either brickwork, paint, or tiles.

Nearly all roofs are red.

I walked up to this bronze to take a closer look, and realised that as I walked around it it changed gender.  Very clever.

Sometimes picking out just part of a scene creates a nice simple image, and whilst I mostly prefer colour photos, this one worked much better in B&W.

Walking around Lisbon involves a lot of hills.  I found the shape of this building below very interesting.

There are a lot of dilapidated and derelict buildings which are very characterful.

I assume that very few people in the city have a garden, and there was washing hanging out to dry on the fronts of many buildings.  I write ‘to dry’ but I saw an awful lot of it hanging there in the rain.

Like many European cities, there are a LOT of churches and we went inside two or three of them just to have a look at the architecture.

I always enjoy walking through cloisters and the light is often very conducive to a nice image.

The same covered walkway as above, but from the opposite end.

Down in the crypt and I was really drawn to the statue below.  It conveys so much emotion and grief.

Quite a few orange trees were bearing fruit which I didn’t expect in early March.

In a street full of old buildings was this very modern ‘hole in a wall’ with a very odd statue of a purple woman holding what appears to be a mini vacuum cleaner.  The only thing I’ve been able to find out about it is that it’s entitled  “Sofia the fearless woman” and was created by the mysterious artist Superlinox (sometimes referred to as The Portuguese Banksy)

Finally, a visit to Lisbon wouldn’t be complete without having to be aware of the trams trundling around and seeing the street that the funicular tram runs up and down.