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Lisbon

With a new regular service from the real capital of Ireland, you won’t have to trudge to Dublin for a flight to see...by senan

molony

oN the wide waterfront of Lisbon, facing the mighty Tagus river, stands the imposing Discoveries

monument.It’s as outward looking as the Portu-

guese themselves, celebrating the voy-ages of the likes of Vasco da Gama and Henry the Navigator. Indeed Da Gama’s tomb is nearby in the Church of St Jerome.

But it is Lisbon itself that holds a wealth of discoveries for visitors, and which marks it out as richly deserving of exploration by the Irish, now made much easier by the opening of a new regular air route from Cork by Aer Lingus.

And they’re doing something right. Just this month Portugal came out on top at the 2018 World Travel Awards, scooping a host of prestigious awards, i n c l u d i n g ‘ Wo r l d ’ s L e a d i n g Destination.’

Like many urban centres here, Lisbon is highly user-friendly, and must posi-tively scream out to be sampled on a city break with its mixture of down-at-heel elegance and Latin charm.

Rickety yellow trams wheeze their way up its seven hills as citizens dander down the terraced streets, popping into age-old tobacconist shops or sitting at a side-walk café to watch the world go by.

There’s nothing nicer than a Sunday morning sojourn at the Ladra flea mar-ket, from the word for ‘thief,’ reflecting the far-off days when pickpockets would relieve the gentry of some of their trin-kets in the central streets and then dis-pose of the loot in a quieter spot.

Walk down by the Alfama district, one of the oldest quarters of Lisbon, where a Moorish influence is still felt – even as wonderful vistas open up and allow a glimpse of a cruise liner moored below.

The nearby cathedral, atop a tree-lined summit, is one of the few survivors of the 1755 earthquake, the most devas-tating in European history, which also

– this neoclassical formal entrance to the Baixa, the prime shopping and retail sector. One can take a lift to the top and look out over the russet rooftops alongside monumental angels with toes as big as shopping bags.

Descend to pop across to the Lisboa Story Centre – an innova-tive space dedicated to the history of the Portuguese capital, inspired by the wide array of events that have shaped the city. There’s a shudder-inducing video that rec-reates the day the city shook.

Take in a lunch at the Espelho d’Água, or Mirror of the Water res-taurant at Belém, and wine of course, and then stroll by the sweep-ing Tagus, the current the carried Portuguese explorers from home waters on their voyages to probe the periphery of the known world.

Nearby is the Jerónimos Monas-tery where Vasco da Gama rests, built during the 16th century, and which withstood the tremors of 1755. It is now a UNESCO world heritage site.

If you see a queue, it will be peo-

ple patiently waiting for entry to the Antiga Confeitaria de Belém to taste the famous custard tarts (Pastéis de Belém). It was here in 1837 they were first baked to a secret recipe.

Passed on ever since and known exclusively to the master confec-tioners, the mix has remained unchanged to the present day, even if much imitated by other outlets. This is a real local favour-ite, a national dessert that per-fectly polishes off a meal of cod-fish, which also seems ubiquitous in Lisbon restaurants like the fam-ily-run Riba d’Ouro.

Lisbon engaged in large-scale building for Expo ’98 and you can take a cable car along the river-front for a bird’s eye view of the busy waterway, before getting upfront with some inhabitants of the underwater through a visit to the Oceanário aquarium, where even otters are to be found, hap-pily grooming their fur before entranced onlookers.

Fans of big engineering, and there are many, can stop at Expe-rience Pilar 7, the interpretive cen-tre for the 25th of April bridge, named for the date in 1974 when a democratic revolution toppled the old Salazar regime.

The bridge in Alcântara is

nearly 300ft from the ground and there’s a glassed walkway over-looking the river for the full effect of tummy-queasiness. It’s impres-sive – as is the ancient aqueduct built by the Romans to plumb water ot the city.

Lisbon is a city of street art and graffiti, and the old red light dis-trict – a haunt of sailors from the seven seas in past centuries – now boasts a string of bars named for far-flying places that supplied much of the clientele.

IT’S also the perfect base for your own expeditions to the nearby resort of Cascais (take in a dinner at the bou-

tique Farol Hotel), or to Mafra, the village hosting a vast winter pal-ace of the Portuguese kings, or even Ericeira, a small and tradi-tional fishermen’s village that is buffeted by waves, huge swells being thrown up by the stormy Atlantic.

Back inland, make sure to visit one of the widespread wineries and sample the produce.

And while there maybe reflect when they uncork the wine that

And definitely do Sintra – another UNESCO world heritage site. A

wooded mountain, it is home to a collection of chateaux and follies that seem to belong to the weird world of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

See in particular the Pena National Palace, a consummate specimen of Portuguese romantic architecture (with nods to India along the way), dating back to 1840. It was built by King Ferdi-nand II of the Saxe Coburg-Gotha Dynasty and is a bewildering con-fection of styles that must be experienced to be believed.

In that respect, it’s like Portugal itself – a tale of twists and turns, charming features at every hand, and arresting sights of bewitching beauty. Lisbon with its seven hills is really the new Rome and now much more accessible than ever before.

Cast off the wintry Irish gloom. Make a dash to the western coast of Iberia and the special style that gives Portugal its surging sense of chic. You’ll come home liberated by langorous Lisbon!

@ For more on what to see and do in Lisbon, visit www.visitlisboa.com. Aer Lingus operates a twice-weekly service from Cork to Lis-bon, year-round. Fares start from €39.99 one-way including taxes and charges. Visit www.aerlingus.com for further information.

travel factsHOW TO GET THEREAer Lingus operates a twice-weekly service from Cork to Lis-bon, year-round. Fares start from €39.99 one-way including taxes and charges. Visit www.aerlingus.com for further information.

USEFUL WEBSITEFor more on what to see and do in Lisbon: www.visitlisboa.com.

TRAVEL PLUS lisbon

TAKE IT LITERARYIN 1491 Christopher Columbus asked Henry VII to bankroll a sea voyage from Bristol to the New World. Henry, a renowned penny-pincher, declined what seemed at best a shaky plan – sailing to the horizon, if you please, and then just ploughing right on. Idiot!

But of course Columbus knew what he was talking about, and the English monarch thus missed out on all that swag from the Americas. Instead, it trickled into the greedy, foreign hands of the Spanish. Henry was incensed – barely got over it. Although he didn’t know it at the time, he had become the mediaeval equivalent of the man at Decca Records who turned down the Beatles.

Successful voyages did, how-ever, begin on the ancient quay-side of Bristol, including one as significant as any in history. Although, come to think of it, it didn’t actually take place. On May 4, 1699, Lemuel Gulliver sailed out of Bristol Harbour on board the Antelope – bound for Several Remote Nations of the World, and indeed into literary immortality.

Later, across the road at the busy Llandoger Trow pub, Daniel Defoe sat drinking with Alex-ander Selkirk, a shipwreck survi-vor. Little is known of the meet-ing, save that Robinson Crusoe emerged from it.

Further literary fame awaited Bristol with the arrival of Robert Louis Stevenson who used the Llandoger as his model for The Admiral Benbow inn in Treasure Island. It’s easy to imagine the place in its heyday: an ill-lit tavern with stevedores and drunken sailors carousing the night away. Long John Silver, defi-cient in the leg department to the tune of one (© Peter Cooke), would not have been alone when it came to leglessness, in all senses of the word.

And now, with barely time for a swig of grog, I’ll tell you why I was in Bristol. I needed t o i n v e s t i g a t e another travel phe-nomenon – this time a company that connects trav-ellers with local operators around the world.

They’re called Travel-Local (www.travellocal.com) and are an online platform that can tailor-make your journey to several Remote Nations, and make sure everything goes according to plan.

These are, needless to say, not imaginary countries. They range from Kyrgyzstan to Costa Rica, with destinations in the Middle East, Africa, Central and South America – as well as the margins of Europe not yet firmly on the tour-ist map, such as Armenia and Georgia.

The concept is simple – no one knows a country better than the people who live there, and buying direct offers better value, a more authentic experience and a fairer deal for the people on the ground.

Traditional destinations are also served, such as Costa Rica, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, India. The differ-ence is this: if your interest, say, is in the toy trains of Indian Railways, or perhaps the wading birds of southern Cuba, Travel Local will have all the gen. Their Man in Havana* (Columbia*, Jor-dan*, Oman* etc) will be able to sort it.

You may well be off the beaten track, but TravelLocal has a 24-

BRICK IN THE WALL...and in Mexico they’ve just announced they’re building a ladder.

MISTY RECOLLECTIONI MISS the mournful wail of the foghorn. These horns, keening like some bereft soul, were at one time an integral part of the sound-scape of Ireland. But they are no more.

Radar, GPS and other techno-logical wizardry have made them redundant.

A recent visit to St John’s Point’s Lighthouse at the north-erly extremity of Dundrum Bay, Co. Down, brought it all back to me. There they still were – huge red speakers, but now standing mute in the shadow of the unmanned lighthouse.

Further down the coast, not far from Dundrum Bay, stands the fishing village of Kilkeel.

A friend of mine who once took the brave, if not to say quite extraordinary step, of buying an inshore fishing smack to do a bit of lobstering.

And with a fair deal of success, to be fair, although not without a few teething problems.

He tended at first to venture out only on the calmest of days. Calm days off the Co. Down coast how-ever usually mean foggy condi-tions, and thus it was that my friend found himself navigating for the harbour using only his compass. Although a busy fishing port, Kilkeel was not served by foghorns. Search me.

Everything was going well until he heard the unmistakable sound of another engine ahead of him. Terrified of a mid-channel colli-sion he switched off his own engine and began to shout, ‘Ahoy, ahoy, there. This is the Mourne Harvester out of Kilkeel! Ahoy ahoy!’

There was no response. ‘Ahoy,’ he shouted again, the panic rising in his voice. ‘This is fishing smack Mourne Harvester. Can you acknowledge please.’

And through the gloom, as the engine sound got ever louder he heard the reply, “Ahoy, ahoy there Mourne Harvester. This is the chip van at Kilkeel Harbour. Do you want to place an order?”

hour emergency hotline staffed by a team who’ll put you into direct contact with TravelLocal’s expert locally.

I can applaud that, even as someone who’s been round a few corners. Occasionally I’ve found myself alone and unloved on some foreign shore, facing a travel issue that has arisen unexpectedly. I’m not talking about major emergen-

cies here, but things like last year when I found

myself at Naples Air-port having just

arrived from Dub-lin (travelling independently) but was unable to rent my car – because of a document mix-up. The next day

was a public hol-iday throughout

Italy... Mediterra-nean countries love

their paperwork and their public holidays. Particu-

larly in Italy, so I had a carless but not carefree start to my trip.

Myself, I’m hoping to head for Kazakhstan. Although I have total confidence in TravelLocal’s man in Kazakhstan (or indeed woman) I’ll still make sure I’m not arriving on a public holiday. LENd ME YOUR EARSSHAKESPEARE was a fine play-wright, no doubt about that.

But to be honest, he wasn’t much of a travel writer. If he knew that Venice had canals, he kept quiet about it in the two plays he wrote based in the city.

Similarly, a sail maker in The Taming of the Shrew came from Bergamo. This northern Italian town is over 200 kilometres from the sea – which even today would be an excessive distance for some-one in a maritime business. In the 16th century it would have been impractical in the extreme.

But maybe Shakespeare just made a mistake – an easy enough thing to do in our line of business,

whether writing plays, trave-logues, or indeed obituaries.

I’ve just returned from a jaunt over to Strabane. While there I doffed my hat to a local newspa-per correspondent operating back in the days before emails or faxes. In those pre-digital times a reporter would literally have to phone it in.

So it was that our Tyrone stringer was reporting on the recent death of a Methodist min-ster. He dictated his story over the phone: ‘The Reverend Wilbert Davies was for 50 years a watcher on Zion’s hills,’ referring biblically and poetically to the late vicar’s great piety.

Now it just so happened that the town of Sion Mills in Tyrone was contemporaneously a focus for the linen trade – weaving, tan-ning, doffing, and not to forget scutching, were all everyday jobs. The sub-editor accordingly thought the obituary was: ‘The Reverend Wilbert Davies was for 50 years a scutcher in Sion Mills.’

The only correction the editor made was to add ‘County Tyrone’ as he muttered under his breath, ‘Not everyone knows where Sion Mills is.’

LOST IN TRANSLATIONAN Irish civil servant visiting Japan on a ‘fact-finding mission’ received his business cards trans-lated into Japanese. His title of Assistant Deputy Permanent Secretary, was translated into Japanese as Minor Perpetual Typist.

Those Japanese certainly know what they’re talking about. INCISIvE REpORTWHILE in London I noted a medi-cal research team had announced that tongue piercing can give rise to very serious complications, with ailments ranging from cracked teeth to damaged nerves.

I contacted the Tongue Piercing Association immediately and the spokesperson responded saying, ‘Dat’s jush not twue, the thtupid gobshithhes.’

Want to get legless in the admiral Benbow..? ask a local!

on HIs TRaVelsmal RoGeRsTRAVEL JOURNALIST OF THE YEAR

uncorkedgenerated a fire and tsu-nami, the effects even experienced as far away as Ireland, naturally to m u c h m o r e m u t e d degree.

THAT disaster c l a i m e d t h e lives of at least 40,000 people,

toppling many churches onto their congregations – i t being a holy day of obligation, All Saints Day, November 1.

The cathedral then became all the more crowded, in part because of repentance over the per-ceived wrath of God. Dedi-cated to St Anthony, one of its chapels features the saint holding the rapt attention of fishes as he preaches to the river, some-what trumping the bird-charming exploits of St Francis of Assisi.

The devastation wreaked by the quake, estimated at a nine of the Richter scale, at least allowed the medieval city to be laid out anew, bequeathing wide streets and Comércio square – among the most majestic in the world.

Reminiscent of the heart of Tri-este, it is a huge open space bor-dered by the river. The arcades and splendid façades make up four hectares, and at least a hundred thousand will cram in here shortly to see in the New Year.

Visit the Augusta triumphal arch

Port of call: Lisbon is an explorer’s dream. Inset Henry the Explorer