Exploring Lisboa

We went on a walk around the capital of Portugal. In English we call it Lisbon but here in Portugal they call it Lisboa. You pronounce it like leezh-boh-ah. First we headed to Castelo de São Jorge but on our way we stopped at a few souvenir shops. We got salad tossers that were designed to look like they have tiles on them. The blue and white tiles are a part of Portuguese architecture. They are a way for artists to express themselves and it’s part of their culture and it makes things look nice. We also got little sardine keychains, because sardines are a national symbol representing Portugal’s amount of sardines, cultural identity, and culinary traditions. Sardines are also celebrated in festivals like Lisboa’s Festa de Santo António.

Once we got to Castelo de São Jorge we started exploring the area. Castelo de São Jorge was built between the 9th and 10th centuries. The Moors who built the Castelo de São are Muslims from North Africa who occupied much of Portugal from 711 to 1294, they built the castle as a military fortress to defend Lisboa from invaders. In the courtyard there were tons of wild peacocks, we even spotted three babies! The species was the Indian blue peacock, these peacocks had a rare condition called leucism that results in a partial loss of pigmentation in their feathers, causing them to have white patches, these types are known as pied Indian blue peacocks.

After we left we looked at a few shops, our parents got a tin of lemon flavored sardines for us to try, we have not tried it yet and I’m not looking forward to trying it. I do really enjoy trying different foods though, so I’m keeping an opened mind. We also got ice cream and I picked cinnamon Biscoff and blueberries and cookies. It was mouth watering!

We walked to Pink Street to see the pink road and umbrellas hanging over the street, there were lots of restaurants and hotels on the street. They started painting Pink street pink in 2011 as an urban renewal project to make Lisbon’s former red-light district into a place you can enjoy all day.

The day before we got to go look at the monument called Cristo Rei which means Christ the King. Cristo Rei was built between 1949-1959 and is one of Lisboa’s most important landmarks which stands on the southern bank of the River Tagus. Cristo Rei was built to look similar to Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro. Our bike tour guide told us that the statue was built as a symbol of Jesus’ protection over Lisboa.