Motivated by the previous day’s banishment, we set off for the Maritime Museum early to catch the first HoHo out. It would take the rest of the morning for the HoHO to get down to Belem, which is about a 15-minute tram ride along the river.
When we walked down to the stop where we had picked up the bus the day before, we were informed by the attendant that they were waiting on the cruise ship, so it would be up to 40 minutes before they left. So we walked to the stop behind the huge Commercial Plaza to wait. And wait. And wait some more, while the crowd gathered ever larger. After nearly an hour, we decided enough was enough and started walking toward the plaza and the tram, when–wouldn’t you know it–the bus rounded the corner.
Knowing that the HoHO route would take us through the city before going on to Belem, we boarded anyway to see the sights once again. The trip was slow, as traffic in Lisbon is choked everywhere. Major construction is all over the city, not just confined to the riverfront, so the going was extremely slow, and it took all of an hour to get to the Maritime Museum. By now, we had wasted two hours waiting on a bus that went the wrong way. And it started to rain as we approached the monastery where the museum complex is located.
But what a museum. While not Paris, the Lisbon Maritime Museum is huge, spreading out through three wings of the monastery. It displays some 17,000 naval artifacts, including the world’s largest collection of astrolabes. The early sections tell the story of Portugal’s breakthrough discovery of the trade routes to India and the Far East around Africa, sponsored by Prince Henry the Navigator and sailed by Bartholomew Dias and, of course, Vasco da Gama, who is interred in St. Jerome’s Church at the end of the monastery.
The narrative line gets a bit weaker after the discovery century, but the museum is filled with fascinating ship models, some of which are huge by model standards. The exhibits keep going on and on, sending visitors through the long monastery galleries and displays that take Portugal’s naval history right up to the present.
One of the most interesting modern-era displays are the king’s and queen’s rooms from the Amelia 5, the last of the royal yachts. The latest Amelia was built at the end of the Portuguese monarchy at the turn of the 20th century by King Carlos and named after his queen. The exhibit also includes cases of personalized china and crystal from the yacht, which King Carlos used for oceanography purposes as well as pleasure cruising until his untimely death by assassination in 1910, which effectively ended the Portuguese monarchy.
But the grande finale awaits the intrepid visitor–the hall of ships. Inside this huge space is a collection of entire boats ranging from an all-wood Snipe to the last royal barge of Portugal that remained in service until recently. The royal barge’s last voyage was to transport England’s Queen Elizabeth II up the Tagus River on an official state visit.
Also in the collection are three seaplanes, including the aircraft that was the first to cross the Atlantic from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro in 1922. A fitting conclusion to a fascinating museum, the great hall exits right into the cafeteria, where we enjoyed a snack and a cold beverage.
From the Maritime Museum, we walked the few steps down to the Archeology Museum, which occupies another section of the monastery. The Archeology Museum does not tell much of a story, and we passed through in just about a half hour, emerging into a much harder rain storm.
We caught the 15 tram to take us back to the Commercial Plaza and decided to go one stop past there, thinking that the route might take us up the hill closer to our apartment. We were misinformed.
Lynn turned on Waze, which directed us on a half-hour winding trip through narrow cobblestone streets and finally down to our neighborhood. That’s when I realized that Waze is a driving navigation program so could not direct us up and down the stairways that provide the most direct routes around Alfama. But we saw how close St. George’s Castle is, because we walked right by there on the way back. That will be tomorrow’s adventure.