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| PHOTOS: Buses in & around Lisbon (including Europe's westernmost bus stop) (289044) | |||
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PHOTOS: Buses in & around Lisbon (including Europe's westernmost bus stop) |
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Posted by WMATAGMOAGH on Wed Jan 15 16:32:29 2014 I was in Lisbon back in November for a week of vacation. I wrote extensively about the trams, funiculars, Metro, and commuter rail in two posts over on Subchat, and there is also a brief description of how fares are paid that applies to the buses as well.The Lisbon bus fleet has some variety to it, with MANs, Volvos, and some Mercedes-Benz artics. I only rode one bus within Lisbon itself, which was on a Mercedes artic, and I'd say the ride was fairly uneventful. As is often the case in Europe, bus stops are given names and they were announced on an LED screen at the front of the bus so one would know what the next stop would be. Boarding was at the front door only and the driver collected fares upon boarding.        I also took a day trip out to Sintra, which is just west of Lisbon, and from there, took a bus to Cabo de Roca, which is the westernmost point in continental Europe, to watch the sun set into the Atlantic Ocean (think about that one for a moment). Bus service within Sintra (and also Cascais and Oeiras) is provided by a company called Scotturb. I rode two Scottrub routes. The first is the 434, which is a hop-on-hop-off loop route that connects the train station to the Sintra National Palace, Moorish Castle, and Pena Palace. The hills leading to the Moorish Castle and Pena Palace are steep, and the roads are narrow; it is impressive to watch the drivers navigate their buses up and down the roads this route traverses. I misread the timetable for the 403 bus from Sintra to Cabo de Roca (on account of not really knowing any Portugese, so I got the directions confused) but luckily the mistake didn't mean missing the sunset. The Scotturb timetables are interesting. They list the time the bus leaves the origin point for the route, and then have a strip map showing how many minutes it takes for the bus to travel between timepoints. To figure out when the bus reaches an intermediate point on the route, one has to add up the travel time and then add that to the time the bus leaves the origin. The 434 is a 5 EUR fare per person that allows unlimited boardings for most of the route. However, if you board the route at certain stops on the "downhill" portion of the route returning to Sintra, your ticket is punched, and it is no longer valid. The fare for the bus to Cabo de Roca is based on how far you travel, you tell the driver your destination and he tells you fare. Drivers can make change. There is also a 10 EUR pass that allows unlimited travel for the day, and is valid on Route 434 to the castles, but I didn't buy it and it ended up costing us a few euro (we ended up paying more than 10 EUR each for our Scotturb rides over the course of the day). There were Viva Viagem readers on the Scotturb buses but I didn't see anyone using them, when I tried using my card on the Scotturb buses the card was considered to be invalid. The bus to Cabo de Roca traverses some hilly terrain and country roads. Although the route only operates once an hour, it seemed to be an important lifeline for the residents in the area, in addition to the tourists who wish to get to Cabo de Roca, and at one stop, many schoolkids boarded only to get off a few stops later. After watching the sunset at Cabo de Roca, my traveling companion and I boarded another 403 heading in the same direction to go to Cascais, and we returned to Lisbon from there.   Europe's westernmost bus stop:  Returning to Lisbon, I paid a visit to the Carris Museum, which is a transit museum run by Lisbon's transit operator, Carris, at their active tram depot. Unfortunately, it is being renovated (there is no mention of this on the museum website) so while I was shown a few static displays (they have a policy of saving the first bus of each type for the museum, I didn't see much of the collection, nor was I able to ride the historic tram that they use to take you between the various parts of the permanent exhibition within the depot. Oh well, can't have it all. I did get photos of these however:    That's all for this trip, but I'll post some long overdue photos from when I had a day long layover in Budapest in the coming days hopefully... |
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