Chris and Jamie opted to do a food tour and a tuk tuk tour among other adventures for their last couple of days back in Lisbon. We bid a fond adieu their last evening on the ship. Ron and I had about 6 hours to frolic in Lisbon before we left again. We had previously decided that we wanted to see the tile museum and the oceanarium (the latter has the honor of being the biggest in Europe).
Both destinations were worth the trip. The museum is housed in a former convent/chapel, founded in 1509 and much of its orginal building still exists or has been rehabbed.
The handle detail is below
This creche was really large.
Below is an explanation of the 3 photos below it (“azulejos” is the Portuguese word for tiles)
I especially like the cat in the mouse mask.
The placard below describes an enormous panorama of Lisbon that was done before the earthquake that changed the city forever. The cards below each section tell which building you’re seeing and what happened to it with respect to rebuilding.
Then, it was onto the aquarium. It’s located in an immense public space, with their own carnation decorations for the national holiday.
I liked that they put the kids who were on field trips in their own color coded smocks. They were adorable.
This is what they were watching (there were big crowds at the sea otter display as well).
It appeared as if the main aquarium was just one enormous tank. Come to find out that they’d cleverly subdivided it into 4 ocean areas but you couldn’t tell. Once you realized you were seeing specimens from different oceans, it made sense. Very impressive. I found this explanation on-line.
“The main exhibit is a 1,000-square-metre (11,000 sq ft), 5,000-cubic-metre (180,000 cu ft) tank with four large 49-square-metre (530 sq ft) acrylic windows on its sides, and smaller focus windows strategically located around it to make sure it is a constant component throughout the exhibit space. It is 7 metres (23 ft) deep, which lets pelagic swimmers to swim above the bottom dwellers, and providing the illusion of the open ocean. The water in the central tank is kept at a temperature that will allow both temperate and tropical fish to live here. About 100 species from around the world are kept in this tank, including sharks, rays, chimaeras, various species of tuna, barracudas, groupers, and moray eels. One of the main attractions is a large Sunfish. Four tanks around the large central tank house four different habitats with their native flora and fauna: the North Atlantic rocky coast, the Antarctic coastal line, the Temperate Pacific kelp forests, and the Tropical Indian coral reefs. These tanks are separated from the central tank only by large sheets of acrylic to provide the illusion of a single large tank.”
And, for a kid’s eye view, this is a short video that is mostly about the aquarium but shows a bit of Lisbon as well:
In closing this day, our last view of the 25th of April bridge as we leave Lisbon, almost just like home!
