Today on Travel Tuesdays we take a walk along the Tagus River in Lisbon, to see some  unexpectedly familiar things.

There’s quite a nice walkway set up along the Tagus riverfront, popular in the evenings for folks to stroll, hangout, and enjoy the view.

Here’s the Friendly Tourist and his photographer in a tricky photo showing them in front of the river.

Friendly Tourist & Photographer, along the Tagus River, Lisbon

That’s “tricky” photo, not a trick one;  the windows in a structure next to the path were incredibly reflective.

From the position in the photo above, if you turn around and look down the river to your right you’ll see this:

Bridge across the Tagus River, Lisbon

Here’s another look at that bridge, taken on a different day from the other side of the bridge (on the same side of the river):

25 de Abril Bridge, Lisbon

That’s the 25 de Abril bridge in Lisbon. By design it looks remarkably like the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.  Oddly enough, according to Wikipedia, it was built by the same American company that built the San Francisco-Oakland bridge, but not the Golden Gate Bridge. This Lisbon bridge looks like the Golden Gate Bridge, but it’s not quite as long and, unlike the Golden Gate Bridge, the 25 de Abril bridge is a two level bridge, with the bottom level carrying trains, not cars.

A taxi driver pointed this bridge out to us as we zoomed along the river front one day. It was a bit surreal at that moment: here we were in Portugal, and a local taxi driver was describing a Portuguese landmark to a couple of Americans while talking to us in our common language — Italian.  And no, not everyone in Lisbon speaks Italian – we just so happened to keep running to people (waiters, taxi drivers) who did.  Too funny.

Anyway, the taxi driver commented that while he thought this bridge was pretty, he didn’t really approve of it. He still preferred the other bridge in town, the Vasco de Gama bridge, which he considered a more properly Portuguese landmark.

Unfortunately for my photos, though, the Vasco de Gama bridge is not as photogenic from the riverfront walkway since you can’t see easily see it from there — it’s at the other end of town. Ah well.  I’ll just have to leave you today with 2 more views of the 25 de Abril bridge:

Sunset along the Tagus, Lisbon

Twilight along the Tagus

BTW, the statue that’s lit up off the left of the bridge? If it also reminds you of something, that’s understandable. The Portuguese copy of the Golden Gate Bridge leads to the statue of Christ the King (Almada), inspired by the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio.  The bridge was built decades after the statue, but now you could say that in that little corner of Lisbon, you have different parts of the world coming together.

Odd, but a fun place to visit for on a Travel Tuesday.