Lisbon by night is as interesting as it is by day. While we were there for work, we went out to dinner every night. I don’t have any photos from then, but here are some from my weekend off.

This made me, Wolfgang and Rosangela laugh for a long time. Maybe it wasn’t an error, though. Maybe resistance does give rise to more resistance.

The streets are lined with orange trees. I’m told these are Seville oranges, which I sometimes see at the grocery store labelled with the warning ‘BITTER ORANGES. Best used for marmalades and cooking’.

Despite the warnings, we decided that we would try them out.

Many people seem to have had the same idea as us because we couldn’t find any low hanging fruit. Damjan and Rosangela, the tallest of the four of us, were tasked with fetching some oranges.

Although Wolfgang is grimacing, he actually seemed to quite enjoy suffering.

 

And here is a view of Lisbon from a lookout that our hostel manager recommended. In fact, he mapped out an extremely detailed itinerary for us for the two days that we were there.

If I have only a few days to spend in a city, I tend to spend those days walking around. I prefer not to visit a big attraction that takes up the whole day.

In Lisbon, I made an exception. We finished up work on Thursday. Damjan was flying in Friday night so I didn’t mind frittering away my Friday until he arrived. I figured I would save my city exploring so that we could go together.

This is how Wolfgang, Rosangela and I ended up at the Lisbon Oceanarium. I absolutely did not regret it — such a wonderful place! It’s the largest aquarium in Europe. It has five massive tanks. The one in the middle represents the open ocean. The other four surrounding the centre tank represent the Atlantic, the Indian, the Pacific and the Antarctic Oceans.

My favourite sight was the single sunfish. I have never heard of this fish before. It is huge! According to Wikipedia, the sunfish has been recorded at ‘up to 3.3 metres (11 ft) in length and 2 tonnes (2.2 short tons) in weight’. You’ll see in one of my photos below Wolfgang standing next to the sunfish.

At the entry, a massive ancient sea creature is made of crushed aluminium cans. There are lots of environmental messages throughout the Oceanarium.

The Oceanarium was full of loud kids.

This is the open ocean tank. I think I saw those funny (serious-looking) fish below the manta ray in ‘Finding Nemo’.

Open ocean

There are schools of fish in the tank. Apparently, when the scientists notice that the schools are getting smaller, they realise that the bigger fish are not getting enough food. The big fish are hand fed. Shrinking schools mean that something is wrong with the nutrient balance.

These are Atlantic Ocean birds.

This manta looks like it’s flying.

The sunfish! The next photos are a series showing the sunfish being fed.

Sunfish feeding

Sunfish feeding

Sunfish feeding. You can see the hand reaching down. How does the sunfish know that the food’s for him?

Squid for lunch.

These birds were in the Antarctic Ocean. They flew around the tourists quite happily and weren’t scared at all.

This is is ice in the Antarctic Ocean. It is an extremely odd smooth texture. It’s because the ice is growing from the inside. It’s growing around an extremely cold pipe of some sort.

This is an sea otter in the Pacific Ocean exhibit. It was very cute.

Some shells encrusted on rocks in the Pacific Ocean.

Wolfgang next to the sunfish.

 

This lady’s talking on her mobile and her baby is watching the fish screensaver.

This photo looks like something you might see in a Chinese restaurant.

Long overdue, here are some photos from my trip to Lisbon, Portugal.

We found a hostel in the very centre of the city. When we stepped out, we were already on a main boulevard, Rua Augusta.

Lisbon seems to be an environmentally conscious city. The police had electric vehicles. Here’s one for tourists.

 

Here’s another example. In Europe, buildings require an ‘energy performance certificate’, which is a rating of how energy efficient the building is. These were being advertised in many bus shelters.

And besides these signs, even the ATMs where you get cash out had a sign telling you how much energy it was using!

This is the view of some rooftops from a lookout in Alfama, which is Lisbon’s old Moorish part.

 

That’s Castelo de São Jorge (Castle of St George) on the hill top.

I spotted this sign and it took me a second to understand what it meant.

And here it is! A very basic urinal on the streets approaching Castelo de São Jorge.

Although this was only a small tourist shop, it still had a large stock of port. Portugal is, of course known for the port, a fortified dessert wine. I used to drink it rather regularly after eating three courses at Cambridge formal hall.

Many houses were drying their clothes high up on the second, third or fourth floor of a building. What happens when a bit of clothing falls from a laundry line four storeys up?

You’d think only scooters could get up these streets but there are also quite a few Smart cars and tiny Renaults motoring around here. I think you need to be brave, driving around Lisbon.

A window sill that caught my eye.

Lisbon is a well developed city but there are quite a few abandoned derelict buildings. The city is still rebuilding after the 1755 Great Lisbon Earthquake.

 

I spotted these mail boxes in a derelict building. Amazingly, one or two of them were still being used.

For my birthday, Damjan and I had a weekend away in Canterbury. I could have asked for the world.

It wouldn’t have cost Damjan that much.

Instead, he bought me pigeon risotto with barley pearls.

And then there were the guys in asbestos suits playing big band numbers. They were really cool. One of them was a girl but it’s hard to tell which one.

Here are some photos from my trip to Belgium and Germany last month.

A gate in the treasure room of the Belfry of Brugge.

The moon over a building in Brugge.

There are secret courtyards dotted throughout Berlin. Mo, our host in Berlin, took us to one that was the urban canvas of artists. We found this giant mechanical bat, which sprang to roaring and whistling life once we fed it a euro coin.

The Jewish Museum in Berlin. The museum space has no windows except for these slits through the metal walls.

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin. The square columns of the memorial ‘are designed to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere, and the whole sculpture aims to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason’. Having walked amongst the looming columns while rain drizzled down, I can say that the architects and engineers managed to create the atmosphere they were aiming for.

The Neptune Fountain in Berlin.

Rooftop statues in Dresden.

In Leipzing, Damjan managed to get a water bell to resonate by running his hands back and forth on the handles. The water shimmied too.

This comes from the Marriage Carousel in Nuremburg, which represents ‘marriage from the first stages of ardent love via exhausting struggles, and right through to the death bed’.

German cities are dotted with public bicycles, managed by Deutsch Bahn. You need to call a phone number in order to get a particular bike unlocked. I only ever saw one person riding a DB bike. I wonder if the bikes are used much?

The very impressive, very Gothic Dom in Cologne/Koln.

And here is on the inside, full of tourists who defy the rules in the hope that they can somehow light the awesome space with their puny flashes. I hate dumb tourists.