Day 19 Lisbon

Today was another slow day, so it was fairly late until we got started. We took the bus up to the Oceanarium which is the Portuguese National Aquarium. It’s second only to the Tokyo Aquarium in size and is very well done. It was Sunday and fairly crowded, but they manage the crowd so well that we just seemed to flow through the several levels of displays that surround one massive central tank. It’s well worth doing and takes about an hour, with kids it would probably take two. The Oceanarium is on the site of the 98 World Expo so it’s in a new attractive park-like setting interspersed with modern apartment buildings, arenas, restaurants, and one very large modern looking mall that we decided to checkout . It was probably one of the largest I had ever been in, but what made it great were the stores. They were very upscale and totally different from what we’re used to seeing back home. Of course the food court was definitely worth investigating, which we did. The Metro got us back to our hotel neighborhood much quicker than the bus did, but was not nearly as entertaining. It seemed as though it was not unusual for the passengers and the bus driver to argue. It was amusing.

For dinner we ate at a local tourist restaurant and Sylvia had a shish kabob with several kinds of meat and I had clams and roast pork. Everything was fair but not worth repeating. We ended the evening with an espresso at a Pastelaria (pastry) shop up the street (no pastries though).