The end of Europe

Bought this, sold that

Sometimes I wonder about the what we have bought and what we are sold; whilst in Lisbon on one of my tourist jaunts I took a taxi to a prominent monument that meant using the 25^th of April suspension bridge.

Taxi fares are usually properly advertised with surcharges for heavy goods, extra passengers, out of town travel and so on.

The bridge has a toll charge system, but I do not think that applies to taxis, however, when I got to my destination, the driver gave me a figure quite different from that on the meter indicating he had to pay a toll.

I really had no time for an argument but I am sure I should have insisted on the meter price and stood my ground – you really do not want to visit a religious place feeling serious pissed off, so I lived and let live.

Filling in the time

Still on the matter of bought and sold, I returned to town without a bridge surcharge in a taxi and bought a tour to Sintra – to be covered in another blog.

We spent the best part of 90 minutes in the palace and then I realised they had to fill in about 2 to 3 hours to justify the cost of the tour.

We got onto the long and windy roads that reminded me of the trip into the Gran Canarian hinterland and finally ended up at Cabo da Roca [1] or Cape Roca which is supposed to be the westernmost point of both mainland Europe and mainland Portugal.

The end of Europe

It was quite windy and even through we are at height of just 140 metres above sea level we were above a good few low-lying clouds.

The clouds we could see above were moving at speed such that if people visited in the olden days they would be moved with awe and almost definitely have an apparition of something to confirm their dread of the supernatural.

Suffice it to say that I saw the end of Europe as we know it and was almost impressed though quite fascinated all the same.

The slideshow and details appear soonest as well as that of my visit to the fossil cliffs and beach of Costa Caparica.

Source

[1] Cabo da Roca - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia