First fullish day out and about.

Started off by leaving the memory card from the camera in the computer, such a cool feeling when your down town already.

Found a camera store and blow me down if the card isn't half the price it is in canada, so I bought twice the memory to make up. That's what men do.

It was cloudy and on and off showers in the morning, but by mid-day it was 19 deg c and beautiful blue sky. Lisboans were still wrapped up like a winter storm had blown in

We took the tram all the way out to Belem to see the Torre de Belem (tower of Belem). This tower is one of three built at the time (1515) to defend lisbon from pirates. It was amazing to see and although I though it was a perfect daycare site, with its dungeons, the kids disagreed.

We then moved onto the Museu Coleccao Berardo and although we couldn't see the standing collection, we did see a collection about the famous (in Portugal) fado singer Amalia Rodrigues. I think they pretty much had everything connected to her and the music she sang. It was so detailed you could be left in no doubt of her influence on the Portuguese music seen.

A few observations on the Portuguese. The tram drivers males and females all ware rather large stylish watches. You see very few young children walking with parents. The vast majority of the people out and about, even in the evening are the over 65 crowd.

We then moved onto the Mosteiros Dos Jeronimos, built to trumpet Vasco da Gama's discovery of India in 1498.

It's pretty huge inside although the "silence please" sign seemed a bit of a joke, due to the guy hacking at the marble floor with a hammer, looked like he was trying to lay new wiring by digging under the monastry.

Even though we are not religious, it still takes your breath away, when you think about what it has lived through over the last 500 years, wars, earthquakes and tsunami just being a few of the nasty things to have hit Lisbon.

Take a close look at the gargoyle in this picture. If you look really close you will see it is the might fierce grass hopper. "NO! RUUUUUN THE GRASSHOPPER IS COMING..." it's what nightmares are made of. I tell Ya.

We then came back into the centre of town for dinner. The food was expensive, for what it was, but we were eating dinner outside in the Praca De Figueira 14 deg C at 6:30pm on December 17th. Can't beat that.

As you can see Anwen slept through the whole meal (how anyone can sleep kneeling up amazes me) and G got to watch Futaball for the whole time. All in all a great day, on our travels we also hit two pastry shops both over 100 years old, the shops NOT the pastries. Thankfully no more earthquakes during the day. Ciao.