We had a plan. It was a good plan, but you know what they say. Even the best of plans never survive first contact with reality. We got away from our apartment early, at least by our standards. If you’re wondering, our apartment is on the far left, second from the top, with the red walls. An all you can eat Pizza Hut is on the ground floor – we haven’t tried it.

But back to the plan. Over the past two weeks we’ve seen many references to the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, which destroyed the city. I have to admit I’d never heard of it, so when I learned there was a museum dedicated to the earthquake I wanted to know more. It turns out that the museum is close to the place where the Pastel de nata was created, and where you can still purchase them. This is also just across the street from the Belem tower, which we tried to see earlier in the week. When Jan figured out how to order tickets to the Belem tower online, we had a plan – Belem tower without the queues, pastel de nata at the original shop, and then the earthquake museum. It was a good plan. It really was.

We took an Uber to Belem tower with tickets on my phone, expecting to beat the crowds. That was when reality hit. Turns out that even when you have tickets, you still need to queue for the tower. When we arrived, the queue was already two hours long. We immediately lost interest, and decided that strolling along the river on a beautiful Sunday was a much better plan. So many unusual things to see, like this cart selling “wine to go” for your Sunday in the park. I love European liquor laws.

And then this, which was so out of context that it left us with vertigo. On the other side of the van it was advertised as an “authentic Canadian experience”. We were almost tempted to try some, since we’ve never actually ordered it at home.

Our random walk brought us to the Monument to the Discoveries. It hadn’t been part of our plan, but it should have been.

This monument was built when Portugal was still ruled by a military dictatorship and still maintained many of its colonies. It was intended to show pride in the conquests of empire. While some of that remains, there is now also a sense of the impact it had on other peoples, and to recognize this, there was a special exhibit of family photo albums from Africans living in Portugal. These were people whose ancestors came from former colonies. It was very moving, and I think, a fair attempt to try to balance perspectives.

As an added bonus, the queue for this exhibit was less than ten minutes. We decided to add it to our revised plan for the day and check it out. We were very glad we did. From the top of the monument (reached by an elevator, thankfully) we had a great view of Belem tower, where we could have been still waiting in the queue.

Here is another picture taken from the top of the monument, showing a convent (old religion?) and in the background, the football stadium (new religion?). I almost missed the juxtaposition, so thanks to Jan for spotting it.

After the monument, we walked to the Earthquake museum, through lovely parks, of course. Much of the damage from the quake of 1755 was because of the tsunami it caused. This sign was a reminder of the danger. The fact that the evacuation route led you to an underpass (going down to escape a tsunami doesn’t seem right) made sense when you realized that you had to get across the train tracks before you could get to higher ground. We both enjoyed the Earthquake museum and would recommend it.

Then it was time for the pastries. The original shop is called Pasteis de Belem, and the egg custard tart pastry is called by the same name if it is from this shop. The generic name is Pastel de Nata, or Pasteis de Nata. We wanted to try the original, until we saw the queue in front of the shop…

This picture really doesn’t do it justice – the line was far worse than this makes it look. We were ready to leave when we noticed there were actually three separate queues. One was for table service, but the other two were for take away. We picked the shorter queue and five minutes later we had our pasties which we ate on a shaded park bench. Unfortunately I have to tell you that the originals are annoyingly tasty, and better than the ones we have had elsewhere. Alas, it is worth queuing to get them.

We considered heading home at that point, but it was such a lovely day that I suggested we go back and check the queue at Belem tower. It was much better – half an hour, but only if you’d already purchased online tickets, which we had. So we decided to visit the tower after all.

We were glad we had the chance to see inside the tower, but to be completely honest, I’m not sure I’d recommend it. The best bit was the sunset from the tower, and if we had visited midday we wouldn’t have seen that. The next best was the view from outside, which anyone can see for free.

On our walk back we spotted this along the river – children taking sailing lessons, towed along behind a boat, looking like baby ducks learning to swim behind their mother. Very cute.

Then it was time to take the tram back to the apartment. This time we made sure we caught the right one that took us back all the way to Baixa.