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.

Item 1: When taking photographs here in Lisbon on the first day, against a very blue-gray sky, I noticed that my camera lens seems to have a speck of dust that has worked its way into the lens itself. It doesn’t stop me from taking photos, but until I get to a place where I can have the lens professional cleaned, it means that I will need to do some post-processing in my digital darkroom to get rid of the speck if it shows up (which is does against a light-colored background). Not ideal, but the lens is over 10 years old, and from what I’ve read, this happens.

Item 2: We’re currently staying in a vacation apartment in Lisbon that is on the 15th floor of a building. It was advertised (in the Internet listing) as having a view of the water. Which it does, but  it’s sort of a peek-a-boo view, and one would have to lean out rather far to get decent photos of it. Ah well. We do have a view of some rooftops, but with a couple of exceptions, the buildings in the neighborhood aren’t all that scenic, truth-be-old. As a vista view, it leaves a little to be desired. But, since it is a vista,  I’d decided to take a few photos of those anyway.

And then I left my camera out on the table.

So, when  a very photogenic tree suddenly was perfectly framed by the colors from the sunset, I was able to scoop up the camera and quickly grab a shot of a very scenic view indeed.

Which brings me back to Item 1. Since I knew that the color of the sunset surrounding the tree would probably show that dirt speck, I looked at it in the digital darkroom and saw a bunch of specks. So, I zoomed in, in order to “clean” those from the photo.

But what do you know: all but one (which I removed) turned out to be birds flying around, captured flying near the tree at sunset!  Had I not had that dust speck on my lens, I wouldn’t have zoomed in to take a closer look. Had I not zoomed in,  I never would have noticed all the birds in this photo, particularly the circle of birds above the branch that’s 2nd from the top on the right (click to zoom in yourself to see it).

Enjoy.

Specks at Sunset, Lisbon

On the second train, which was a a Portuguese train from Porto to Lisbon, we had paid to upgrade to first class seats, as it was just a few dollars more. As a result, our ride turned out unexpectedly to be one of the most comfortable of all the trains we’ve taken in recent memory. Upgrading to first class on European trains hasn’t always worked out that way, though, so it was quite a pleasant surprise.

So we’re in Lisbon until next Friday. Internet in our vacation apartment is (predictably, at this point) rather spotty, so I will see if I can manage to get some photos and stories posted during the next week. We’ll see how it goes.

In the meantime, here’s a link to a page with some webcam views of Lisbon. Enjoy.