Yesterday, we learned a little about Lisbon, a place we’d like to visit again and stay longer. We learned a lot about how to see it.
This was a holiday Monday in the Portuguese capital, the 25th of April, Freedom Day. Just how important a holiday it was became evident even before we disembarked from the Celebrity Eclipse. As the ship entered the pretty harbor that frames Lisbon’s waterfront, it crossed under one of the largest suspension bridges ever built, anywhere.
The 25th of April Bridge.
Lisbon is the Eclipse’s first continental European stop after crossing the Atlantic Ocean, following a seven-hour stop at the Azores, almost 1,000 miles out in the ocean. That means, of course, that it 
was the first chance to find a Starbucks, and here’s how you do it: Walk on uneven streets in the heart of Baiza (Lisbon’s Lower Town) and keep your eye peeled for a crushed cardboard Starbucks cup…find it, and you know you’re close.
Of course if that doesn’t work, you can always ask someone, but on the 25th of April that’s not always easy.
But more about Lisbon…
The first thing you notice is that it’s clean and has a lot of trees. The architecture lets you know you’re in Europe, and the style of the never-ending squares tells you it has that flair 
that a few hundred miles away would be called Spanish, even though it was only 371 years ago that Spain lost its hold on Portugal.
There’s a stadium (right) where 8,000 people can watch bull fights in which the bull lives, at least until he’s removed from the ring, and once-palatial homes that have become headquarters for financial and corporate institutions. There’s a Banco Popular and a Banco Big, which seem like oxymorons in these terrible economic times for Portugal, and there is the usual influx of Americana…McDonald’s, Pizza Hut and Burger King.
Seeing all of this turned out to be a little pricier that it has to be. We took a shuttle ($20 for two) from the ship to Lower Town, where we eventually invested another 30 euros 
(about $45) in an open-air, double-decker bus from “City Sightseeing Portugal” — one several companies servicing the 250,000 cruise tourists who arrive here each year.
As we were to discover much later, we could have boarded the same bus when we stepped off the Eclipse, except the shuttle tickets had to be purchased before the ship docked (cruise markers weren’t born yesterday). But that’s the way to see Lisbon, via City Sightseeing Portugal or any on-off bus company.
Our two-hour ride around and to the outskirts of the city could have been four or five hours, had we the time to hop on and off. Alas, on this trip, a couple of on-and-offs and we’d have missed the boat, literally.
Hopefully, we’ll return, now that we know about the 25th of April…and how to find Starbucks.