Portugal/Spain

May 24 – May 27

Lisbon, Portugal

We arrived here a day earlier than planned due to an expected port strike.  The idea was to get in before the strike and then try to get back out as soon as possible.  Strikes are always planned for the most strategic time for their cause and this one was planned for the first big week of the tourist season.  Fortunately, it got called off, but we had a day here where the expedition team had to rapidly come up with plans for the extra day.

Lisbon is a historic city at the hub of the pioneering days of the Age of Discovery in the mid-1400s.  Portugal was the first to significantly discover the Azores and West Africa and in the 1500s had established ports as far as Brazil, Japan, Africa, India and China.  Most of Lisbon was destroyed in a massive earthquake in 1755 and was quickly rebuilt.  The city center is very quaint with lots of trees, museums, historic buildings and hundreds of restaurants and clubs.  Lisbon is actually not on the coast of either the Atlantic or the Mediterranean, but sits on the Tagus River which is completely navigable by large ships. 

A major part of the city’s heritage is reflected in Fado, a soulful genre of music.  We had a performance on the ship, and it was characterized by deep, mournful tones, accompanied by the traditional instruments of guitar and mandolin.  We would normally have spent the day exploring the center of Lisbon on our own, but I was nursing an injury to my calf and needed to stay off my feet.  However, Lisbon and surroundings seem like a wonderful place to come back to where one could easily spend nearly a week with plenty of wonderful things to see and do.

On the first day here, we ended up taking a bus tour that was offered that went through the city, into the nearby Arribada mountains (not really very high) and a quaint fishing village called Sesimbra.

The second day we booked a cruise on a 3-masted sailing boat down the Tagus River.  It turned out to be one of our few cloudy and windy days, but we bundled up and still enjoyed it.

Lisbon and surroundings from the Tagus River

I have only a few photos of Lisbon unfortunately due to the timing of the visit and the fact that we only had time to take a bus tour through the city itself. So, all of these photos come from the Tagus River and many are a bit dark due to the weather here.

An old fortress on the Tagus River on our way to Lisbon that now simply serves as a lighthouse.
We sailed under the 25th of April bridge on our way to dock for the night.
A photo under the same bridge from the sailboat cruise 2 days later. The Sanctuary of Christ the King is shown which is a tall statue that overlooks the city from the southern side of the river. It was inspired by the one in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil due to the strong Portuguese connection.
This time from the middle of shipping containers on the port by the ship.
Belém Tower, officially the Tower of Saint Vincent is a 16th-century fortification located in Lisbon that served as a point of embarkation and disembarkation for Portuguese explorers and as a ceremonial gateway to Lisbon.
The Monument to the Discoveries commemorates the early Portuguese explorers of the 15th and 16 centuries.
The Rua Augusta arch sits on the bank of the Tagus and was built to commemorate the city’s reconstruction after the 1755 earthquake.
Lisbon is decorated with a huge number of amazing murals. The intent has been to encourage the street artists doing graffiti to work with the city and do murals instead.
Sorry to include this but it has to be the worst example of a touristy idea ever. This thing was tossing around in the water and must have been miserable for the people inside.
Our ship docked with a battleship right behind it. We appreciated the extra security.


South of Lisbon: Sesimbra and the Arribada mountains

Eva in one of the corner lookout towers in the Fortress of Saint James
A typical street here of shops and restaurants.
The Fortress of Saint James in the background.
Enjoyed some local sweet wine, Muscadel, while overlooking the beach here
This fortress up on the hill from Sesimbra dates from the 1600s.
Why do I have a seagull as one of my pics? Well, first of all, these birds are everywhere we go and secondly this guy would not move until I promised to take his picture. Note the patient pose.
An old monastery in the Arrabida mountains
A view across the Tagus River and surrounding inlets from the mountains towards Lisbon way in the distance through the haze.

Vigo, Spain and the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela

We left Portugal on the way to a tour of some sites on the west coast of France and made one stop in the town of Vigo, Spain.  Vigo is in the northwest of Spain on the Portuguese border.  In the 16th-18th centuries the town was quite busy with commercial trade and still is known for having many sunken treasures in the waters off the coast.  The area also supports hundreds of mussel farms in the local lakes where they are grown on horizontal systems of ropes suspended in the water by buoys, pipes or floats.


One of the most popular tours here which we attended is a bus ride to the huge Romanesque church in the town of Santiago de Compostela.  In the beginning of the 9th century, a hermit called Pelagius saw a mysterious light shining over a Roman tomb forgotten in the middle of a forest. Very soon, the incredible news spread all over the Christian world: the tomb of St. James the Greater, the beloved apostle of Jesus Christ, had been discovered in a far site near the end of the known Earth, in the northwest of Iberian Peninsula.  A few years later, this site became a famous pilgrimage town, one of the most important of Christianity. Pilgrims came from all over Europe to reach the city born around the Holy Tomb, exercising a great influence on the surrounding area. 

The Way of St James remains a network of pilgrimage routes leading to the cathedral here. Most pilgrims obtain a document called the credencial which gives them access to overnight accommodation along the route.  With a stamp at each place the pilgrim has stayed, it provides a record that the journey was accomplished according to an official route and that they will be qualified to receive a Compostela, a certificate of completion of the pilgrimage and a forgiveness of your sins.  To earn the Compostela, one needs to walk a minimum of 100 km or cycle at least 200km.  Over 400,000 accomplished this in 2022. The large square in the middle of the cathedral and surrounding buildings was filled with people celebrating the end of their journey while nursing their tired bodies.

The church, along with the surrounding buildings and the old town of homes, shops and restaurant was beautiful. Also, something amazing happened here for us – it rained for 20 minutes! One of only a handful of times of rain on the entire trip so far.

These bells rang, and rang, and rang. Apparently practicing for a celebration the next day.

This organ was both beautiful and huge and split into different sections.

That is all for this segment. France is next.