20261025 Sunday, October 25, 2026; Lisbon City Tour and Maritime Museum
The Corinthia is definitely a step up from the Hyatt Regency Hespira in Madrid. Not only is the room much larger and nicer, but the breakfast is also a big step up. The breakfast buffet is quite complete and not only has a manned egg station to have eggs and omelets made to order, but there is even a gal slicing Iberian ham off the leg.
There are also Pastéis de Nata among the fine selection of pastries and breads. There are also sardines alongside smoked salmon on the cold cuts section and a diverse hot entree section. Our waiter also had no issue with bringing Ben a cappuccino up front to avoid another bad drip coffee experience.
Our included Viking excursion for the day was a bus tour of the tourist core of Lisbon along with a visit to the Maritime Museum on the Lisbon waterfront. The bus drove us around the Portuguese Parliament and presidential residence as our guide, Lourdish, delved into a little of the political and social history of Lisbon.
The entire Iberian Peninsula had passed through Roman, Visigoth, and Islamic rule. In 1095, Portugal broke away from the Kingdom of Galicia and in 1139, Alfonso Henriques proclaimed himself King of Portugal. The southernmost province of Portugal was conquered from the Moors in 1249 and in 1255, Lisbon became the capital. From the Middle Ages, in the 15th and 16th centuries, Portugal became a world power during the Age of Discovery through its naval superiority. They had established trade routes around Africa to the far east, and across the Atlantic to Brazil before a series of misfortunes led to a progressive decline.
The city of Lisbon was also shaped by an earthquake and tsunami in 1755, which destroyed much of the city. Portugal then suffered occupation during the Napoleonic Wars and loss of its largest colony, Brazil, in 1822. From the mid-1800s to the late 1950s, Portugal experienced a significant exodus of Portuguese to Brazil and the US.
In 1910, a revolution deposed the monarchy, but in 1926, a military coup installed a dictatorship that was eventually deposed by a liberal coup in 1974, in which sweeping democratic reforms were instituted and Portugal’s African colonies were granted independence.
Prior to the 1974 “Carnation Revolution”, women had no rights, and the country was a Catholic-only nation where women were treated like they were under Muslim Sharia law. The liberal reforms implemented by the 1974 revolution included religious freedom and the establishment of women’s rights, including the right to vote and have their own financial independence.
The Carnation Revolution was a nearly bloodless military coup led by a group of young liberal military captains on April 25, 1974. Red carnations were placed into the barrels of soldiers’ rifles and tanks as a symbol of peace. This was largely driven by a desire to end the costly and unpopular Portuguese Colonial War, which was Portugal’s equivalent to America’s entanglement in Vietnam in the 1970s.
Portugal’s present government is largely directed by its Prime Minister, who is head of the political party that controls the majority of the Parliament, while Portugal’s president serves a more ceremonial and administrative role. Lourdish did poke a little fun at us by noting Portuguese do not revere their president, or even their prime minister as gods, celebrities, or superheroes. For the most part, most Portuguese tend to ignore their politicians so long as the country keeps working.
We did drive around some very opulent neighborhoods around the Parliament and Presidential residence, as well as under Lisbon’s “Golden Gate Bridge”, which shares the same iconic orange/red color and similar suspension bridge design, although this bridge has a railway deck below the roadway deck and X-braced towers instead of square towers. It had been named after Ponte Salazar when inaugurated in 1966, but renamed the Ponte 25 de Abril after the 1974 Carnation revolution.
This took us down to the shores of the Tagus River, which is the same river that ran around Toledo in Spain. We walked along the riverfront for a closer look at the bridge and Belém Tower.
There is a local version of Rio de Janeiro’s Christ the Redeemer called the Sanctuary of Christ the King in Almada, looking back across the river to Lisbon. It was inaugurated in 1959 to express gratitude because the Portuguese were spared many of the destructive effects of WWII. This 28m Christ stands atop an 82m base and his arms stretch 92’ finger to finger. It is easily visible on the far side of the suspension bridge.
The Belém tower is a 16th-century fortification with a bastion and 100’ four-story tower. It is a symbol of Europe’s Age of Discoveries. Just beyond the Belém tower is the 18th-century Forte do Bom Sucesso which now houses the Combatant’s Museum, honoring Portuguese military personnel who fought in the 20th century and beyond. There is a huge memorial in front with inscriptions of the names of Portuguese killed in the Colonial Wars from 1961-1974, similar to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington DC.
We reboarded the bus and then drove to the Lisbon Maritime Museum, which showcases Portugal’s role during Europe’s Age of Discovery, and how Portugal became a world power through its mastery of the seas. On the way, we passed a bronze statue of Mahatma Gandhi taking a stroll through Lisbon. In reality, Gandhi never visited Portugal during his lifetime, but the Government of India had given the statue to Lisbon as a gift to honor his legacy of peace and non-violence in 1998.
The Maritime museum is located in a building that looks more like a Catholic cathedral than a museum. This is because it is housed in the west wing of the Jerónimos Monastery, which was funded by the yearly Portuguese India Armadas. The nave of the Church at the opposite end of the building contains the remains of Vasco da Gama, who blazed the path for the Portugal-to-India trade route.
A larger-than-life statue of Prince Henry, aka Henry the Navigator, greets visitors in the entry lobby to the museum. At his side are statues of the actual navigators that Vasco da Gama relied on to plot out his route around Africa and to the far east. Prince Henry was never actually referred to as Henry the Navigator during his lifetime. His role was in funding, organizing, and directing the 15th-century naval expeditions. He also established a center for astronomy, cartography, and naval architecture. The nickname “Henry the Navigator” was coined by 19th-century German historians and popularized by British authors Henry Major and Raymond Beazley in the late 1800s in biographies of Prince Henry’s life.
The museum does explain the Age of Discoveries through the motivations and technologies that made it possible. There are innumerable ship models demonstrating the evolution from fishing to expeditionary vessels, and on to the modern naval era which also includes modern non-nuclear submarines.
There are plenty of exhibits of navigation instruments and naval weaponry, as well as exhibits explaining trade routes and commodities that this trade revolved around. While the Portuguese were involved in the early slave trade, Portugal was the first European nation to outlaw the slave trade.
From the Maritime Museum, we walked to the riverfront to the Monument to the Discoveries, which looks like a giant marble ship pointed out into the Tagus River. We immediately recognized the wavy cobble stone pattern in the pavement from Copa Cabana in Rio de Janeiro- yet another element tying Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro.
Next, we took a 10 minute walk for a quick look at the Pastéis de Belém bakery, which is the original birthplace of the pastel de nata egg custard tart. There was a huge line around the block for people to get into the bakery. We were content to get our pastel de nata at the hotel’s breakfast buffet.
After loading back up onto the bus, we made a final photo stop at Avenida da Liberdade, which is a broad park-like avenue with a view over the shoulders of the Marquis of Pombal and his trusty lion atop a 40m pedestal to the Tagus River and Lisbon’s waterfront.
We headed back to the hotel and had a quick lunch before heading back to the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum. The museum was indeed free after 2 p.m. There was a bit of a line to get into the museum, which still required a free ticket to control crowd size in the building.
The Gulbenkian Museum’s main exhibition area is like a miniature British Museum housing extremely rare and valuable artifacts from around the world. These included Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Levant, Persia, Turkey, Africa, China, Japan, Medieval and Baroque Europe. These include sculptures, coins, jewelry, ceramics, furniture, paintings, and textiles. These include three Rembrandts, the Portrait of Helena Fourment by Rubens, and René Lalique jewelry and glass.
The museum also has a modern art wing which we also toured. This museum contained many pieces that were puzzling, bewildering, and odd.
The museum had us pretty tired, so we took a brief nap after returning to the hotel.
When we ventured out for dinner at 6 p.m., we were surprised and disappointed that the restaurant next door that Bruno had recommended required reservations and that it was fully booked for the night. The lines to the hotel’s restaurants were also over an hour’s wait. We walked to the restaurant we dined at yesterday only to find it and most other restaurants closed because it was Sunday.
We eventually stumbled onto an open restaurant called Chique that had Portuguese food. Unfortunately, the proprietor did not speak English, but we managed to order soup and a grilled fish dish and grilled pork “Secret”, which is supposed to be an exclusive cut from between the flank and shoulder, which is supposed to be exquisitely marbled and tender.
The soup was a vegetable and bean soup in a savory broth with star-shaped pasta in a decent serving size that could have been dinner had we elected to get some bread with it. But anticipating the two entrees that we ordered, we waved off the bread and butter.
They had run out of sea bass, so the proprietor suggested douradinha, or Seabream. This came out semi-filleted in that the fish had been split in half longitudinally, leaving the spine on one side and grilled with the flesh side against the grill grate. This required some work to pick out the bones from the fins, ribs, and spine, but the meat was well seasoned, delicate, tender, and white with a bit more character and texture than tilapia and closer to sole than halibut. This was served with salad and boiled potatoes.
The pork “secretos” came out looking like a large heap of grilled meat. However, the secret to secretos is that it is 80% fat and 20% flesh. Janet was unable to tolerate the texture of all that fat, and it was even too much for Ben, who can normally eat Chinese pork belly dishes which are probably 40-50% fat.
The grilling seasoning did make for a good flavor, but eating that much fat was just too much for either of us. But with a draft beer and Coke Zero, the whole meal was only 33€. Service was not nearly as friendly or attentive as at yesterday’s restaurant, which was closed today, but it was decent enough. It was probably better than grabbing cold sandwiches from the grocery store, which would have been the only other alternative besides taking an Uber downtown and hoping to find another place open on a Sunday that didn’t require reservations in advance.
We dropped in on another China store which at street level looked just like the other, but this one had floors of merchandise extending below street level. It was also full of Halloween and Christmas stuff. It was like they had an entire Spirit Halloween store combined with Hobby Lobby, Walmart, Dollar Store and Harbor Freight all in one store. Walking into the store was a little like Harry Potter walking into the family’s tent at the Quiditch World Championship and having it magically become enormous inside.
We do have to get up early tomorrow to begin our trip to Porto and look forward to embarking on the Viking Hemming, where we won’t have to worry anymore about finding food on our own. Our suitcases need to be out in the hallway by 6:30am and we board our bus at 8 a.m.
