I took a day of rest yesterday and Phil had fun at the Maritime Museum. Today we walked around the center of the city in the morning and spent the afternoon at the beautiful Gulkenbian Museum. We are slowly learning how to use the underground Metro and how to find our way through the several large plazas that are near our hotel to get where we want. We have ridden trams and Metro trains so far. Lisbon had kept many of its old trams (like San Francisco) and also has new ones running on the same tracks. My first pictures below are of trams on the large Commercial Plaza near the waterfront, and in the background is the yellow building that was once the palace for the king, prior to the big earthquake in 1755. After the earthquake he didn't trust concrete and stone buildings so spent the rest of his life elsewhere in wooden buildings and tents. The palace is now used for municipal offices. I included a larger second picture of more of the square.
The second picture is of the entrance to the Gulbenkian museum, a lovely, contemporary oasis in the middle of all these old buildings. Gulbenkian was originally from Armenia, made a large fortune in oil and spent some of it creating a fabulous collection of art objects from ancient times to the early 20th century, including tapestries and rugs, ceramics, furniture, coins and oil paintings. Because of WWII he had to leave Paris, where he was living, and ended up in Portugal, where he donated his collection and the funds to build the museum. It is a lovely series of spaces around gardens, with very stunning displays of all the objects. It is very spacious, with room on the floor to display several very large rugs. We quite enjoyed it. I didn't take pictures inside...just enjoyed the art works. My picture is of the entrance, lovely on its own.
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