For a country's capitol city, Lisbon has a great small, old world feel to it. Landing here, for the first time in my life, via bus of course, was a dream come true. I was totally excited. However, during our journey, we, of course, left some crap on the bus (what's new!), and the bus broke down, resulting in us arriving late. Again, nothing new there. Scrambling for somewhere to stay, we immediately consulted the "good book". Well, it wasn't really an anvil (book) anymore as we just riped out the pages of the Lonely Planet guide book for the countries we thought we might be in. Luckily, Portugal made the cut! But so did Spain, Morocco, Italy, Corsica, & Greece. You can see where my brain's at - all over the place! Meow.
Speaking only four words of Portuguese, I immediately went for the "Pensao" that said "English spoken here". Okay, so I'm a wimp, but it was late people, and we were tired. Path of least resistance. Well, it wasn't actually that easy as the pension was not known to the taxi man, nor his posse of co-workers, & very hard to find. Totally worth the trouble as it was in this ultra cool little neighborhood of Bairrio Alto. Stone streets, more like alleyways, mostly pedestrian walks (traffic controlled area), with small coffee shops & cafes by day, and swanky clubs by night. It was, literally, the happening spot. Score! Oh, and best of all, our room was only 30 euros/night. Outrageous, such a good deal.
The next day was ours to explore, as we weren't due at the boat until Thursday. As it happened, with the predicted bad weather approaching, we didn't need to arrive until Friday night. Bonus, and we enjoyed the extra time in Lisbon.
The first day, we did the usual - the hop on, hop off bus. It was fun and informative but bloody cold when the sun went down. That was after I first had my AWESOME cafe ole, or con leche, or in English - espresso with milk, for only 55 euro cents! It was just some dime a dozen cafe next to the bus stop for our tour. Ooo and the Portuguese sweet breads, and Pasties Nada's (custard cups) are o so good too. Brian even started drinking coffee again, well, for 3 days.
After a long day of sight seeing we took a cable car up to the castle for sunset. It was beautiful . Just outside of the castle, we tried to go to a Portuguese-India restaurant but it wasn't open yet. However, the restaurant owner took us to the wine bar down the street, and we sampled a few of Portugal's great wines and cheeses. We had a blast with the host, Nunu, as he treated us right! Later, we returned to the restaurant when it was open, and we were the only ones for dinner. The owner was great in explaining the many dishes and matching wines. The food was terrific too, and we were stuffed when we wandered down the hill hoping to burn off some calories. After a few mile wander we caught a bus to our little 'hood', and wandered the tiny streets checking out the crowds.
So I'll let the pictures do the talking, but this was a great city. It had all the makings - a hilltop Castle, Monuments to Explorers, Museums, Pepper Cathedral, a fort in the bay, a tree lined main avenue, squares, great restaurants, a bull fighting rink, futbol stadiums, parks, old classic streetcars, a world class Ocean (aquarium) center, expo site, gondola ride, wine tasting, and even a Golden Gate bridge (the 25th of April bridge). I fell in love with all the fully titled buildings (outside facades), so there is a lot of pictures of tile.
Enjoy! We did. (Picture to follow. Sorry, out of time!)
