The São Jorge Castle in Lisbon

Along with Jeremiah, one of my grad students from UT, Sandy and I went to the Castelo São Jorge (St. George Castle), which figures prominently on the Lisbon skyline and equally prominent in its history, when Afonso Henriques, the first king of Portugal, took it by siege from the Moors in 1147.

It is interesting how widely revered St. George was across medieval Europe, not just England. Here is a replica of a stone carving of him in Portugal from 1398. And as most Brazilians know, he made it across the Atlantic, just in time to get syncretized with the African god Ogum in candomblé in Brazil.

We took a somewhat circuitous route to the castle. We walked to the base of its hill, then took a streetcar, which wound all over the place, including close to the castle, but the driver refused to tell anybody where to get off for the castle. So a bunch of tourists ended up at the end of the line, several miles away, by a nice park and cathedral (lots of those all over Lisbon).

So finally we took a cab back to the castle, where you can see us, at last in this photo.

The castle has a great view out over the Lisbon skyline. They are supposed to have commanding views, by definition, I suppose. Here is a view of the River Tejo, with what looks like a 16th or 17th century cannon in front. We walked all over the castle and then decided to park ourselves in a battlement cafe near this cannon to watch the view more at ease, since Sandy has a nasty bone bruise on her leg from a fall in York a couple of weeks ago that bugs her after a lot of walking.