Lisbon and National Tile Museum

 A word of advice:  when a well-meaning concierge suggests you drive your rental car into Lisbon instead of returning it to the airport, know that however exhausted you felt getting here, you will be exponentially more exhausted by the time you hand over the keys.  But enough about that -- I got here!  And Lisbon is gorgeous.

I didn't plan on heading immediately into the city upon arrival. but it was sunny, Google maps laid out a level route to the National Tile Museum (in a city of many steep hills, this was key!) and I was off.  The walk took me along the water, past a few enormous cruise ships, followed by shipping containers and those huge lifting cranes for loading and unloading ships, and the Santa Apolonia train station.  Trolleys and buses and cars and taxis zipped by.  I do like transportation and I'm fascinated by shipping, so although it was close to an hour-long walk, I liked seeing the port at work.

The National Tile Museum was so far beyond my wildest dreams of a tile museum.  It's so amazing!  I loved the installations of old tiles in stairways and in church settings (with those blue painted scenes like those I'd seen in Loule and Almancil); the contemporary tiles were fantastic as well.  My only regret is that I didn't really appreciate that after an hour walk getting there (and three hours driving here, plus that city driving) I was running low on energy as I went through the collection.  My apologies to the contemporary artist, whose name I didn't write down, and who created the face below -- I couldn't find the artist's name online so I can't share it and give credit for genius where it's due.

My day will start tomorrow with Devour Tours for a food tasting and markets tour of Lisbon.  I had been on a tour from that company in Barcelona a few years ago and loved the tour so much, I wanted to do it here, for my first full day.