We’ve had a great day exploring Lisbon and areas old and new. Neither of us have been back since our last visit in 2010 and it’s fair to say the city’s changed a bit – and not all for the better.

We started out walking into the centre from Santa Apolónia, then heading over to Cais do Sodré station to catch a train out to Belem, a couple of miles Westwards along the Tagus river. The town has lovely waterfront walks and a few historic sights like the Padrão dos Descobrimentos (Monument to the Discoveries) which is a tasteful and whitewashed celebration of colonialism without mentioning any of the realities or drawbacks. Still, it looks nice. Just don’t ask how many of these idealised explorers had syphilis or other diseases, or how they treated the indigenous peoples of the places they ‘discovered’.

Belem also provides great views of the massive double-deck Ponte 25 de Abril bridge, where the railway runs below the road to span the Tagus.

Having walked miles in the sun we caught the train back into central Lisbon where we played tram Bingo, grabbing whatever service came first that was heading in the general direction of Martim Monez, where we hoped to pick up route 28. The queues we saw when we got there put us off straight away, so we opted to explore the backstreets on foot, which was a sensible move as we loved what we found that way. Except for one thing. It’s painfully obvious why the trams are so unreliable nowadays – the narrow roads are choked with vehicles that never existed when we were here in 2010. Now there’s hundreds of ‘tuk-tuks’, fake vintage cars, golf-buggies and medium size tourist buses clogging every street – many of them empty and cruising the streets looking for trade, or blocking every spare inch of road and pavement. It’s chaos.

As a photographer, I found the old town very frustrating. Trying to replicate atmospheric shots of trams traversing the narrow streets is next to impossible when there’s a queue of cars/tuk-tuks/deliveroo drivers surrounding them. Here’s one of my few successes.

Frustrations aside, we did enjoy wandering the backstreets, especially when we got away from the main routes. The Alfama area is a delight to explore, when you haven’t got a travel guide and just follow your nose so come across stuff like this.

We’ve another day to explore the city tomorrow before heading back South to the Algarve, so expect more backstreet images…

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