Our 59^th wedding anniversary. After breakfast in Infame we walked through a mixed and somewhat threatening neighborhood to catch Tram 28 at its terminus, since all the guidebooks warned that this most popular attraction of the City would be hard to board at any later stops.

The trouble was worth it, though it turned out later that we could board at the stop right outside the hotel. Running every 10 minutes and winding the steep tight curves up and down the hills through the oldest sections of the city, its compact wood paneled cars served local commuters as well as tourist joyriders.

We got off at the last stop and made our way down to the historic waterfront whose grand central plaza was preserved since Lisbon’s central role in the European age of exploration and conquest.

From there the tram took us back to Largo Intendende and lunch at Josephine, outside the hotel’s entrance.

After an anniversary siesta, we crossed the street and walked slowly (and sometimes painfully) up the steep hill that rose along the opposite side.

It revealed a cross section of varied neighborhoods of Mouraria in transition.  Elegant buildings, either in decay or restoration,  tiny cafes and shops, pocket parks, arresting murals, steep narrow streets, wide boulevards all within a quarter mile of the hotel.

After a brief rest, I set off again up the mountain on our side of the valley, driven by curiosity and adrenalin up flights of stone stairs to a little park and viewpoint I learned later was the Miradouro Senhora do Monte.

The viewpoint offered a grand panorama and was filled with happy tourists.

On the way down, I passed a fantastically weathered old building, probably what the Hotel 1908 was like before restoration.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 27th, 2026 and is filed under Miscellaneous, Portugal 2026, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.