Good morning.
Day one, two, whichever day it is.
I'm feeling rather seedy this morning and I got out of bed too late for breakfast.
As chance would have it I found a shop that sells Portugese custard tarts.
Pastel de nata.
I think that is serendipity.
Who would have thought.
So I'm going to grab one.
Thick, sweet, delicious.
I'm heading down these steep, slippery streets to get to the train station.
I'm going to go to see…
Belem Tower.
Yup, this hungover fool forgot where he was going and had to record a voiceover later.
And as an aside, welcome to the Ash Kyd potentially mispronounces foreign place names blog.
It's so great you could join me.
So the rain's holding out for the moment.
It's supposed to get wet again in a couple of hours but in the meantime I've caught a
train out to (okay I think this one's Algés)
Don't actually know how to pronounce it.
I'm going to go see the famous tower, which is actually fairly significant.
It's a world heritage site because… I'm not sure if you remember this, it was a while back
but in 1755 there was an earthquake that pretty much destroyed Lisbon.
But a few things still stand and this is one of them, so this was built in the 1500s as
a defensive thing along the river and it's pretty impressive.
Alright I'm going to try and queue up. You can get to the top.
Looks like the drawbridge mechanism.
Combined with a portcullis (fun word) and several openings on the entrance ceiling through
which projectiles were launched made access by invaders difficult.
Let's head on up.
Warning: narrow spiral staircase with 93 steps.
Mind the light signs over the doors The sound sign means you have to leave the stairway.
Older French tourist: Go! Gogogogo!
That was a climb!
That's enough of that I think.
I'm heading back down.
[alarm beeping]
It's impressive they managed to build the system of beeps in the 1500s.
[ocean sloshing] Eeee!
Alright, I think I'm done.
Well that was really cool.
I was not expecting to be quite so impressed.
I just got a message from my friend Corina to let me know that the Amsterdam Flower Markets
are on this weekend.
I'm super excited to see how the tulips go.
Hello this is not Ash.
Today is International Tulip Day and we're gonna check what's here.
Should be lots of tulips.
200,000.
Corina I am so excited about the flower markets!
How could I have chosen such a poor weekend to leave Amsterdam and come somewhere much
more blustery.
It's really windy.
So I'm gonna walk down to this one more landmark.
This was a fairly recent thing built to commemorate the age of discovery.
Big limestone thing.
That's the other thing, I looked up everything here is limestone.
I'm not sure why but that's what all the paving, all of that construction, everything here
is limestone.
So I'm just gonna pound the limestone and get to the next venue.
You can also see over there, this is inspired by Christ the Redeemer.
Wikipedia says that 80% of people here are Roman Catholics so yeah.
They built a Christ the Redeemer
tribute.
I get too much joy from the thought that someone was rolling along,
hit that grate and had a terrible scooter accident and swore off Limes forever.
It's bad. But. Funny.
Apparently you can go up there and it looks like it'd be an amazing view but I am getting
hungry and need a battery recharge and some caffeine
and I have all of these hierarchy of needs wot need filling.
Not happy!
We'll be fine.
So that's kind of my day trip to Belem.
I would probably say if you're going to do it maybe check out the town itself
because the walk between the monuments, there's really not much there
and the Monument to Discoveries might be your thing if you want to climb to the top of it
but otherwise it's not a must see in my book So while the Lisbon wet season got the best
of me today, stay tuned because tomorrow I am going to the mountains of Sintra
in search of an ancient Moorish castle.
It's going to be exciting.
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