Taking a Tour of Lisbon

I have no problem driving between cities here in Portugal, or any other country in Europe for that matter.  But when you get inside a city, things kind of change.  My observation here is that everyone drives as if they are an hour late for some important event and figure that the only way to drive is at maximum speed all the time.  When you combine this with inner city driving and unfamiliar roads, it can get quite stressful.  So instead we decided to take the train/metro into the city and then take another open-top bus tour of the city.

This way we don't have to worry about traffic, and we get to see all the sites that we probably don't know how driver to anyway.  Lisbon has many beautiful parks, monuments, and plazas, along with many different museums.  Just as with Paris, you would need a good week or more to truly see all that the city has to offer.
Some areas like the Torre de Belem and the Jeronimos Monastery pay great tribute to Prince Henry the Navigator and all those who contributed to the discovery of new lands.  While some parts of the city are thousands of years old, others were rebuilt in 1755 after a devastating earthquake leveled major parts of the city.

But from that disaster rose up a great victory when the Marques de Pombal took over and re-planned and rebuilt the city from the rubble.  Even as recently as the 1990's a major part of the city known as the Chiado was devastated by fire that spread through many old buildings.  But just as with the earthquake, the Portuguese have since rebuilt this area to be bigger and better than before.

Check out all the photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/jroberts.px/Europe201002#