I was so moved and grateful to be alive that I forgot to wonder if my mother had managed to get her large case off that bus and up those stairs to the departure desk. Apart from the beautiful scenery the bridge itself is beautiful, it turns and goes up on little slopes and then down again, a bit like a Scalextric™ track, a bit like they just built a little slope up here and put a corner in there just so you could admire everything more. Never mind, I decided it was best to focus on the driving and comforted myself that I could get this view of Lisbon on the way back.
Vasco da gama bridge driver#
Out of the front window was the arse end of a huge truck which I managed to avoid and I reminded myself I was in fact the driver and not the passenger.
Vasco da gama bridge movie#
Indeed this was a bridge too far and Michael Caine would have had some serious driving to do had he had to cross this with a mini (I know that is not the same movie but Michael Caine was in ‘A Bridge Too Far’).Īs we drove on and on I turned around and looked back and the wonderful city of Lisbon was right there out of the back window of my car. It was the most amazing bridge I have ever been on and if it had been one that the Germans were on one side of during war, it would have been 1954 by the time they’d goose-stepped over it in those jack boots. 650 MB of Wife’s videoing of us crossing the bridge, complete with me screaming “stop recording now” when I realised that I had been slagging someone off on camera. I looked ahead and as far as my eye could see there seemed to be bridge, bridge and more bridge. Then all of a sudden the wife said ´hey, I think we are actually on the bridge´. Shorter bridge a bit further alongHaving explained to my mother that there is no airport car parking at Lisbon, which is why they are building a new airport, we dropped her off at the nearest bus stop and let the sat nav lead the way. We figured that the G.P.S would find it, although it is that big I am not sure we could have missed it, but we did manage to take an hour to get from Belém Tower to Jerónimos Monastery that morning and lose an entire car park so anything is possible, and off we went. There are two in Lisbon that are visible, if you have goldfish eyes, one out the right eye and one out of the left. “We are though aren’t we?” So we had lunch, got lost again trying to find where we’d parked the car (we should have left the window slightly open for Mum while we were gone, especially after the Ben and Jerry’s fiasco, but luckily it was parked in the shade), and decided that from the airport we would take a drive out to find that bridge. “Yes, this one is really long, but this other one, it must be, like, four times as long, it looks like it’s near the airport, maybe we should check it out, we are going to the airport soon though aren’t we?”.
“No, not that one, a really long one” she insisted, pointing excitedly at the map. Site of Custer's last standI got a little worried about Wife’s eyesight at this point, as one of the biggest bridges I’d ever seen in my life was staring us right in the face. This leads me intentionally, and rather smartly, to a bridge too far in Portugal. Myself, I would have ambushed them at dawn while they were laying out their beach towels on the river bank, but these army types like to do things the hard way. The movie ‘A Bridge Too Far’, in case you haven’t seen it, was all about an operation during World War Two to seize some bridges and stop the Germans’ advance on somewhere or other. I still raise my right arm and point skywards when my children have a fever at night, and it’s the same when I am in the bakery and the assistant asks ´which one do you want?´ and I find myself saying ‘that’s the one that I want, ooh oooh ooh honey´ or, if the assistant is slightly cross-eyed, my best Robert De Niro ‘are you talking to me?’ comes spilling out as if someone else has said it. Shallow I know, but it’s just how I remember movies. It had no theme tune I could hum to, nor any dance moves that I could practise. The Vasco da Gama BridgeI watched that movie ‘A Bridge Too Far’ once and I don’t think I have thought about it again until now.
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