The weather was terrible, and we didn’t enjoy ourselves much. Maybe we were just blase after we had seen so many beautiful things in Spain and France, but nothing about Lisbon really grabbed us.

We arrived in Lisbon from Evora on an express bus. The subway quickly took us from the bus station to where our hotel was supposed to be. (Don’t buy the books of subway tickets, the machines malfunction – we purchased 10, it popped out 7 good ones, and there was no one to help us).

The top-rated Let’s Go hotel had cancelled the reservation on us, despite our having put down a credit card. Unlike Faro however, no yelling would get us past even the intercom system at the front door. We were lucky enough to find another (more expensive) hotel not too far away.

Lisbon was almost entirely under construction. We heard this might be due to the cash infusion Portugal received when it joined the EU, but it’s been a while! Every central square was undergoing some sort of construction. Not much effort had been made to keep the city beautiful or accessible for tourists.

Lisbon’s tourist sites are not very well set up for the do-it-yourself tourist. Despite the fantastic subway system, most of them required train or tram to get to (or a coach tour dropping you off at each!).

We saw the Mosterio Dos Jeronimos on our first day in Lisbon. This monastery, a 20 minute train and then a 20 minute walk outside downtown, is a UNESCO site. It is beautiful, but the memory that stays with us most was seeing a recently cleaned wall of an outdoor courtyard side by side to an uncleaned wall. Night and day! There is also a church that can be seen inside the monastery with some very, uh, vivid depictions of the execution of Jesus.

Next we visited the Torre De Belem, another 20 minute walk in the rain. This harbour fortress is not much to see in this sort of weather. We snapped our photo of the outside and pressed on.

We wanted to see the Gulbenkian Museum, or the Arte Moderna Museum. Both were supposed to be open, but they were closed until 2007 or something. We saw the Museu Nacional de Arte Antigua instead, which had an interesting (considering it was cold and rainy and all the other museums were closed) collection of art, and a lot of cool pottery. It beat sitting in a cafe, although we did end up doing that, in the museum. The coffee wasn’t very good. Anyways…

Wandering around the city, other highlights included buildings with beautiful azulejo tiles on the facade (although it was sad to see so many once beautiful buildings falling apart). We even saw a McDonalds with these beautiful tiles!

View of Lisbon's skyline.

The Castelo de Sao Jorge has great views of the city.

The Alfama district is great to get lost in – and despite all the warnings, we never felt threatened. This area has narrow, twisty streets with clotheslines everywhere! A street car to the top is a wild ride and will save a lot of effort climbing.

Finally, we visited the Park of Nations, a modern shopping and commercial district built for Expo 98, 30 minutes outside the city (excellent subway links drop you right there). It’s worth the trip, if only to take a break from historical buildings with the ultra-modern architecture you’ll find there. There’s an aquarium and IMAX theater here, neither of which we checked out. (No time!)

Eating vegetarian is almost impossible in Lisbon (and more generally, in Portugal). We ended up with a lot of take-out pizza. We found one gem of a restaurant though (thanks to our trusty Let’s Go – which recommends you learn to cook your own food if you want to eat vegetarian in Portugal!) "Hell’s Kitchen". Foreboding name, but great veggie food.

There are many nightspots to check out Portugal’s famed singing, Fado. We wandered around for a while but eventually passed – most clubs were very expensive and seemed aimed at tourists.

Our next stop was Evora. The train left on time, and we had to change trains once. The second train was the smallest train we’ve ever been on: only one car/engine, noisy, and breathing in exhaust for the entire trip.  Ah, the joys of backpacking!  The scenery was beautiful, however.

The train station in Evora is about a 30 minute walk from town. No taxis to be seen anywhere. We left our bags at the tourist bureau (very helpful!) in town and set off to explore this UNESCO village.

We visited the local museum (nothing too exciting – except for the excavation work they were doing under the museum). The Roman temple was nothing special, although there was an interesting view of the old city aqueducts just beyond the temple.

For us, the highlight of Evora was the Igreja de Sao Jao Evangelista, which is a private church full of azulejo tile (blue and white tile). It was absolutely beautiful, and a "must-see" in Evora. No pictures allowed, or postcards sold! Capitalism obviously is not alive and well in this city.

We stopped by the "Temple of Bones" – a temple created exclusively from human bones. It was truly creepy. We stayed long enough to check it off on our list and got out of there. (Here, an extra admission fee gives you the right to take photos – no thanks).

We left Evora the same day via an evening bus to Lisbon. We were glad we hadn’t planned much more time in Evora. We saw everything we wanted to, and even had time for a bit of shopping and a coffee.

Faro is mainly a jumping-off point for the Algarve coast. There isn’t much to see or do there, and we’re glad we didn’t stay that long. We had hoped to see a bit of the coast, but the views from Faro weren’t those you’ve seen of the Algarve.  We’ll have to make it back there some day – hopefully in better weather! 

We were rudely greeted by the hotel owner in Faro. We’d had difficulty booking the room from Spain (Despite speaking French, English, and Spanish we still couldn’t communicate well – apparently Portuguese was her only language, despite being right next to Spain in a touristy area!). She denied we’d made a reservation (this turned out to be a common theme in Portugal), and said all the rooms were full. It was late in the evening by this time, and we didn’t feel like going out and looking for another hotel. After 5 minutes of "discussion" suddenly she found us a spotless room, and it turns out most of the hotel was empty, too. While we were in there "sorting out" the problem, another man came in, had the same problem, gave up, and left.

The downtown area of Faro is very cute, with beautiful tiled pedestrian streets. We wandered around in the morning (confused about the time change, we’d gotten up one hour too early), avoiding the wild dogs which we saw everywhere in Portugal. Nothing much to see that early in the day.  Probably on a nicer day we would have really enjoyed wandering around.

We spent 5 days in Portugal in April 2001. Our visit was part of a 3 week vacation in Spain and Morocco.
We are very ‘focused’ travelers, arriving in each city with a list of places to see, and we’ll move along fast if something doesn’t grab us. Especially in a 3 week tour of 3 countries, we didn’t spend much time soaking up atmosphere in cafes. A second note: We had terrible weather in Portugal. We believe the sun came out a few times in Lisbon, but it was very dreary. That really didn’t help our overall experience. Finally, our chosen guidebook is the "Let’s Go". Overall, we’ve found this to be the most trustworthy guidebook, and has lots of tips for vegetarian eating.

Despite all the warnings otherwise, we entered the country in the south by taking a bus from Seville. Although research and planning that bus trip in advance was a little difficult, it didn’t prove to be a problem booking it once we got to Seville. We had to make a connection in Huelva (Spain), and the bus from there to Faro was very slow, but we eventually made it.

We arrived in Casablanca after taking a morning train from Marrakech. We had 5 hours before our plane left to take us back to Madrid, and so we only had time to see one destination: of course, the Hassan II mosque.

This Mosque is the only Mosque in all of Morocco that is open to the public. It was constructed in about 10 years, and was mostly funded by Moroccan taxpayers (many of whom apparently proudly display contribution certificates in their homes). It is the second largest Mosque in the world. It can hold 20,000 men and 5,000 women.

Getting there

We arrived at the train station. A $2 petit taxi dropped us off at the front of the Mosque.

The Outside

The Mosque is about a 10 minute drive from downtown, and on the harbour. The surrounding area doesn’t look the nicest, and I don’t think there has been much (or any) tourist spillover. At least, we didn’t see any reason to leave the immediate mosque area.

There are benches on both sides of the Mosque, and it’s a nice place to sit down and have a bite while you’re waiting for the tour to start. There is no shade, but the temperature is tempered since it’s right on the ocean. Don’t be alarmed when you hear the police officers with their whistles. They’re all over the grounds, but we never quite figured out what exactly they were whistling at people for.

The minaret is awesome. Apparently, at night, a huge laser-light shines from it towards Mecca. The Visit

Practicalities: The visit is not cheap. It worked out to about $20 per person for a 45 minute guided tour (I believe $10 for students). There are a few tours per day, so make sure you time it well or you’ll be sitting around with not much to do for a while. The English tourguide had pretty broken English, but it was a much smaller group than the French group. Photos are allowed inside, but video isn’t (although we saw people filming and no one seemed to care). You have to take your shoes off and carry them with you. Our visit had a bit of a rushed pace, and didn’t leave much time for taking good photos. At the end of the tour, the guide will expect a tip. At some point there used to be an elevator tour up the side of the minaret but not when we were there.

The Mosque itself is absolutely beautiful. There isn’t a single square inch that isn’t precisely carved, painted, or chiseled. This is the best of the best from Moroccan artisans. (but the Mosque itself was designed by a French architect!) Although the mosque has a retractable roof and a heated floor, it doesn’t really have a modern feel to it. The seating area for the women seems to levitate above the main floor. You can see through the floor to the fountains and baths below.

The Turkish Baths I have to admit I didn’t quite understand. I believe while they’re open for tourists to look at, they’re not actually being used. I believe the cost is too high.

We visited Barcelona in March 2001 for 3 days. It is the most interesting and captivating city we saw in Spain. (sorry, Madrid!)

Getting there

This is Barcelona’s biggest drawback. To get to Barcelona from Madrid takes about 8 hours on train.
Help is coming, however, in the form of a new high speed rail line which will make the trip in just a few hours.
We flew in from Madrid, thinking it would be the fastest way, and the ticket (purchased in Europe) wasn’t that expensive. Oh how wrong we were. Iberia is hell. They were on a "work to rule" campaign, and the plane was delayed for hours in Madrid. They changed the departure gate about 7 times on us, forcing a boatload of seniors to keep shuffling a long distance between terminals. When we finally got on the plane, we had to sit on the tarmac for 2 hours, because the pilot had some earwax (or something). Anyways, turns out we would have been faster taking the train. Bottom line: don’t fly Iberia if there’s any possibility of a work stoppage or slowdown (which is frequent).
On the good side, however, there are many, many flights from Madrid to Barcelona. Flying standby could be an option, and anyways I doubt it’s necessary to buy tickets that much in advance.

Leaving, we flew from Barcelona to Granada, and were only delayed 2 hours (for a 40 minute flight)!
From the airport in Barcelona, there are frequent shuttle buses that drop you off quickly downtown.

Personal Safety

Our first experience as we set foot in downtown Barcelona was a disconcerting one. A fellow Canadian we met on the bus had put down his briefcase in front of him just long enough to retrieve his luggage when two youths appeared out of nowhere, grabbed it and ran. Fortunately there was nothing of value in the briefcase, but it was an eye-opener nonetheless.

With an introduction like that, we were obviously extremely vigilant during our stay in Barcelona. We had no problems. Of course, we were there off tourist season, and were rarely in a crush of people where problems are likely to occur.

Walking around town
Be sure to put aside some time for getting lost walking downtown. In particular, check out the narrow alleys of Barri Gotic. We were also impressed with how clean Barcelona is (this coming from Canadians). There seemed to be a permanent cleaning crew just round the corner. There’s a bit of a competition between Madrid and Barcelona, and Barcelona seems to have decided that keeping things clean will help them win the race. Now, if they’d only increase police presence around Las Ramblas….

Accommodation
There are many cheap hotels all over Barcelona. We stayed at Hostal Plaza, with a location that couldn’t have been more central. It was clean, although the proximity to the road and questionable shutters made for a noisy night. It is advisable to reserve ahead: even in March, we had to go through several pages of hostels before we found one that had a room.

Las Ramblas 

After Fort Knox’ing ourselves in the safety of our hotel, we headed down Las Ramblas. This is a pretty pedestrian  thoroughfare through downtown, with souvenir shops, street performers, and Pizza Huts. We started out by El Corte Ingles, a big department store, and walked to the harbour.  It has a big statue of Columbus (even though Columbus was Portuguese, and Columbus is depicted looking proudly towards Libya).

Parc Guell
One of our first stops the next day was Parc Guell.  Parc Guell is a Gaudi creation that was originally envisaged as a "city within a city" for the town’s elite but it never really caught on and was turned into a park. It features many interesting Gaudi buildings, the longest park bench in the world, (and certainly the most colourful!) and some pretty views of the city.  It is not to be missed.

Our guidebook recommended we enter from the rear of the park, which was a great idea. There is a series of outdoor escalators which take you up the hill from Baixada de la Gloria. And don’t worry, the escalators aren’t broken, they turn on when you step on them!

Try to visit this park on a sunny day, as the sun reflecting off all the colourful tiles really adds to the effect. There’s lots of other things to see on a rainy day in Barcelona.  In fact, we ended up visiting this park twice to get better pictures.
Getting back from Parc Guell to downtown involves about a 20-30 minute walk to the metro, but there’s lots of taxis – on our second trip we got a taxi to take us just as far as the metro – very cheap and saved us a lot of time. The walk isn’t so pretty, either.

Casa Mila
This is a Gaudi apartment building. The metro drops you off about a 15 minute walk from the building. Make sure you don’t miss The Manzana De La Discordia, or the block of discord, which refers to the stylistic clashes of three neighbouring buildings. It’s on your way. Casa Mila itself is spectacular – there isn’t a square corner anywhere. It’s amazing to see such a huge work of art right in the middle of such a normal looking city block. The tour will take you to the rooftop, where the chimneys are fantastic.

Palau Guell
Not Gaudi’ed out yet? Try this building just off Las Ramblas. Tours take you through the house with some of the best Gaudi interiors we saw, as well as some more of his famous chimneys. There is fantastic steelwork at the entrance to this building, that was specially designed to let people see out, but not in.

Museu d’Historia de la Ciutat
This museum displays the history of Barcelona. The real charm to this museum lies in the underground excavated ruins of the city. Walk around on catwalks while you look down on the vestiges of the ancient Roman city. There’s nothing in English – be sure to take your Spanish speaking wife!

Museu Picasso
If you’re into Picasso, this is your 7th heaven. We’re not (but we did try to be), so we got confused at his interpretation of Velazquez’ Las Menias and left.

Sagrada Familia
The Sagrada Familia is Barcelona’s best-known site, and deservedly so. This cathedral is Gaudi’s crowning jewel, and construction continues in earnest today. Gaudi is in fact buried in the building itself. Take the elevator (or walk) to the top of the tower, it’s well worthwhile for the view of the church and surrounding area.
The memory of this building will remain with me forever, and I look forward to going back one day to see a more finished product. Whether they will ever finish it, however, is a better question.

Dining out

Barcelona has some good choices for vegetarians. Although I’m not sure if it’s typical Catalonian fare, we enjoyed these restaurants:

Juicy Jones: Fantastic fresh juice. Don’t be misled by the small entrance, there’s a restaurant a few steps below just past the juice bar. We tried a variety of small plates (tapas) for a very reasonable price. Nothing exceptional, but you get to try lots of things.

Terrablava: This buffet restaurant was heaven-sent. We were craving good veggies, and the salad bar served ‘em up, as much as we wanted. There’s also cheese (and meat) pizza and pasta. It’s apparently very busy during the day with business types, but in the evening it’s pretty empty. And how can you beat all-you-can-eat when you’re backpacking?