After all the steps we’ve clocked on the Fitbit these past four days, it was time to give those tootsies a little break! We had nothing planned for the morning or afternoon (our first meeting with the Rick Steves group was scheduled for 5 pm), so after we dropped off a load of dirty laundry at the 5e dry cleaners located not too far from the Rossio train station we proceeded to the Praça do Comércio to the tourist trap ticket booth. Yep, we were going to ride a double decker tour bus for a couple of hours. We chose the “Modern Lisbon” itinerary of the Yellow Bus Company that traverses the eastern portion of the city in the direction of the site of the 1998 World Expo because we figured that this was the one part of Lisbon that wouldn’t be covered on any of our pre-arranged tours. 
It really wasn’t that interesting- basically the old shipping port area that was the site of the world fair had been transformed into a shopping and residential area with an impressive train station (Oriente station) 
and a gigantic shopping mall that rivals anything you see in the States. 
Since we still had quite a bit of time to kill and we didn’t want to walk around, we stayed on the bus for a second round. The most exciting part of the ride was dodging the branches of the overhead trees! We did get to see a cruise ship (the Aida) in port 
but as our bus tour itinerary was pretty mundane it did not attract any of the cruise passengers! Despite the coolish temperature (70ish) and the brisk wind at the top level of the double decker, I look like I spent the afternoon at the beach without benefit of sunscreen!
After about four hours of riding (rather than walking) around and seeing the bullfighting stadium 
and some interesting street art 
we disembarked near the Rossio train station. Tony was obsessed with sampling the bacalhau (salted codfish) and potato fritter and we still had about an hour before we could pick up our clean laundry. A pitstop at Starbucks (to use the rest room, one needs to purchase an item and then there is a restroom access code on the receipt) was necessary and then he got to try the “interesting” combination of fish, mashed potatoes, and gooey cheese! 
The Italians are absolutely correct that fish and cheese are not compatible 🤮.
After we returned to the hotel, we had a short respite before meeting the people with who we would be sharing the next 11 days. Rafaele, our guide, is passionate about his country and enthusiastic about sharing this passion. We will also be learning some Portuguese on this tour – today’s word of the day: saudade (untranslatable but sort of means the presence of absence – missing someone or something, a sort of melancholy). After going through the logistics of the tour, we convened in the lobby for a walking tour of the Bairro Alto ( which we already toured yesterday with Ian from Context). 
Of course, the St.Anthony feast was still going on and we even got to see some street poetry. 
The highlight was Rafaele’s recitation of a poem by Portugal’s most famous poet, Fernando Pessoa.
By the way, we still walked 15,849 steps today!
Camino Musings 