Me and my roommate had some free time since I finally submitted a part of my project and was more than excited to go outside. I was taking long walks since I returned but just around the area where I live. I think the loss of freedom that we experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic made me not want to spend any more days that I don't leave the four walls of a dearing home.
We decided to go and walk for some hours, but on the other side of the Golden bridge looking like bridge, which I only crossed once, when I was heading to the Algarve region.
Our main purpose was to visit the statue of Cristo Rei that creates the Rio de Janeiro like scenery when one is near Cais do Sodre just staring at the river. Unfortunately, we couldn't enter because we didn't know that it's closed on Tuesdays, but anyways here are some facts about the statue and its history and we might even return someday and the story will be updated with fresh photos hopefully from the observatory of Cristo Rei.
The statue of Cristo Rei is illustrating Jesus Christ and you can find it in Almada, Portugal, right next to Lisbon, on the other side of the Tejo. It has a 82 m tall pedestial and the statue itself highs 26 meters, by this becoming one of the highest buildings in Portugal. The man who came up with the idea of realising such statue is Manuel Gonçalves Cerejeira, who visited Brazil in 1934 and saw their statue that got introduced to the world in 1930. The realisation of the statue was ordered by António de Oliveira Salazar, the prime minister at the time. The construction started on the 18th of december, 1948 and the capping took place on the 17th of mai, 1959 with the presence of 300000 guests.
Story time. We arrived in Almada, the bus stopped at a very strange place, just next to the highway and we started to walk towards where we believed we would find the entrance. Almada is still a part of Lisbon, but a more rural one. The majority of people are the elderly and they live in smaller houses. We passed a presso and decided to stop for a coffee and my first pastel de nata since I returned Lisbon.
This little scene had such amounts of authenticity that we enjoyed the old folks drinking their dose of wine in the sunlight of the small terrace way too much. At one point, they even decided to serenade us and sing us something that we believe it was an old Portuguese melody.
However we had to continue our path and when we saw that it's closed we just decided to walk around.
We stopped at a designer shop and we could not get away without buying something. In my opinion, it's very important to support the small independent businesses because these are the struggling creators whose work might be just as good, or mostly better than what we can see from the fast fashion brands but they don't get enough credit for it. It's always a good way to get something from a culture that isn't necessarily your ordinary magnet or postcard.