Day 5: Before even leaving the hostel this morning we got to experience an interesting view outside of our hostel. There was some military parade going on down the main avenue which Ness noticed as she went out on the balcony for her after breaky cig. It wasn't particularly exciting, but it was completely unexpected and an interesting start to the day. We left the hostel shortly after with pretty much no plan at all. When we arrived last night we noticed a sign on the notice board listing a bunch of stuff (museums and so on) that were free on Sundays. But as we looked at it this morning we realised most of it was in Belem, which is somewhere we had already decided we would do tomorrow when we need to move the car (free parking on Sundays). In the end we basically just walked around to where ever looked interesting.

The direction we chose to start walking lead us to the seaside. Along the way were a few statues, an elevator tower lookout (for 5 euros, no thanks) and an arch. Of these the arch was easily the coolest. Built to commemorate the 1755 earthquake or something like that from what I could gather. Around this area was a large plaza with another statue in front of it. And at the base of this statue some guy doing some really interesting poses for a camera. Some weird stretch poses, a few attempted break dance movies and topped off with some handstands. We saw him a bit later on in another part of the plaza getting a bunch of photos taken as he walked away from the camera. I can only conclude he was taking some photos for his album cover or something.

The plaza itself was also rather interesting. There stores along the sides and the first one we went into was advertised as the sexiest WC in the world. As we walked in the walls were decorated with pictures of semi nude people and behind the counter (yes, there was a counter) was a bunch of different coloured toilet paper. It turns out that this place is basically a huge advertising campaign for a toilet paper company. For 1 euro you get to use the toilet and part of that experience is that you get to choose your toilet paper from a massive variety on the wall. I didn't go in myself, but Gabrielle did and took some photos for me and Ness to see. The toilet paper wall seriously must have had at least 50 colours of toilet paper. The toilet itself however didn't really look very sexy at all.

Right next to this place was a restaurant called The Can which advertised that they made canned food gourmet. How did they do this, I have no idea. By charging 20 euros and serving it at a fancy looking restaurant would be my guess. So yeah, we had a sexy toilet and gourmet canned food. After these two the beer museum up next was rather bland. By museum they really meant micro brewery where they charged to show you the process. Seen that enough times in other breweries to not bother. On the other side of the plaza were some other restaurants and stuff and a wine tasting place with free entry which we were sorely disappointed to find was closed on both Sundays and Mondays. And on the corner of the plaza was a small vendor selling proper Porto Port. I wasn't aware of this, but apparently Port is like Champagne and Cheddar in that it's not proper unless it's from Portugal (wasn't clear on whether it was Porto specifically). Gabrielle helped herself to a few shots of that, served in a chocolate cup which you then eat afterwards.

Then we made the trek up to the cathedral, and after that even further up to the castle. The cathedral wasn't really much to see, but the castle was cool. It gave great views over the whole city from along the walls which negated the need to bother with going up the elevator tower thing in the middle of town since it looked tiny from up in the castle. On the inside of the castle we could walk around all the walls in there too and up to the towers. When we first entered the keep though and started walking around the outer walls we discovered that much of it seemed to be fake. It sounded like plywood or foam or something when tapped. I guess it was just some reconstruction to make it look better. No real need for defense anymore I suppose. We got told off a couple of times for walking on some parts we weren't apparently suppose to even though later on we were walking on perfectly valid parts which seems just as old and even more dangerous. So whatever.

After the castle we just walked back towards the hostel. Along the way we had to stop at one souvenir store in particular. It was this one store out of probably 20 or so we had looked in that just happened to have one particular bottle opener. It was in the shape of a yellow tram which is apparently a large part of Lisbon's tourism marketing. It was the coolest one I had found, enhanced by the fact that it only seemed to exist in this one shop. This isn't the first time that I've walked in and out of dozens of souvenir places only to see the same stuff over and over again to eventually find one place and that one place only which has the perfect bottle opener that no other place had.