Lisbon
For years we’d heard great things about Portugal. Finally it was time to check it out for ourselves!
Steep hillside with houses in Lisbon
We took a cab from the airport per usual. At the end of the ride we got our first hint of a problem we’d struggle with across this leg of the trip. The driver insisted there was an extra fee per passenger which hadn’t been mentioned before. But we were tired from the flight, so rather than fight, we rolled with it. Turns out, weird stuff like this kept happening with cabs unless we ordered them on a service like Bolt. Word to the wise, make sure the meter’s running.
Bad vibes only
The neighborhood where we’d rented an apartment was a little rundown but nothing troubling. We schlepped our luggage upstairs in the tiny elevator. Everything was in place, including a little garbage can beside the toilet and prominent signs in multiple languages informing that you couldn’t flush the TP. What? Really? In Europe? This turned out to be common where we went in Portugal, not just a fault of this building’s plumbing.
Lots of cool graffiti though
Another hurdle in Lisbon – quite literally – were the many many hills. We’re very accustomed to walking when we’re traveling. A quick glance at the map often looked reasonable to avoid the cabs. Almost without fail, though, more than a couple blocks would yield steep stairs climbing skyward, hills with charming if ankle-threatening cobblestones, and a sheen of sweat by the time you arrived.
Tiling
Lisbon was, on the whole, a colorful city. A lot of architecture was vaguely similar to Barcelona, but with more bright paint livening it up.
Building with green tiles and a rounded end
Even more distinctive, though, was Portugal’s typical tiling. While not every building was fronted with various tile patterns, almost any walk you’d see at least a couple. In some areas, the tile included images amongst the artistic geometry.
More pictorial tiling
The tiles were common enough, they showed up even in the tourist shops for purchase. Given that Lisbon seemed a little run down at times, this use of tile was a cool counter-balance to what could have been a dreary urban setting.
Tight shot of bright orange tile
Green and red starbursts
Castelo Sao Jorge
In the city, one of the major sights was the Castelo Sao Jorge, crouched on the hilltop. On our second day, we started the hike up to it. Small carts with padded seats kept zipping by us, bringing folks to the castle. Less than halfway up we broke. When an empty cart asked if we wanted a ride, we said sure and hopped on.
View of the city from Castelo Sao Jorge
In the outer courts of the castle, an immediate point of interest was the plethora of peacocks roaming free.
Peacocks at Castelo Sao Jorge
It had been a while since we’d eaten when we arrived, so we grabbed food from a little outdoor cafe inside. This gave us a chance to watch the peacocks. They watched us closely in turn. Hovering endlessly around the area, they clearly expected a hand-out we were quite willing to provide.
Asher feeding the peacocks
The castle contained a museum. Along with that, it also had a camera obscura in one tall tower. While I associate these assemblies of lenses and mirrors to project images with the distant past, this one was only installed in 1998! Still a pretty cool view of the city, though.
Lisbon through the camera obscura
As we were getting ready to go, there was a long set of stairs running downward, the final destination not visible from the top. Asher really wanted to see if it was an exit, even though it wasn’t marked as one. The gals stayed smartly up top, but I trooped down with my energetic son, and guess what? It wasn’t an exit. We climbed back up.
Asher wanted to see where the stairs went
Sintra
Our one big day outside of Lisbon took us to the town of Sintra. There we visited not one but two interesting spots – the National Palace of Pena, and the Moorish Castle. We booked a driver through Bolt at a reasonable price, even going between towns in this fashion.
National Palace of Pena
The Palace was rather busy, with timed entry for folks, long lines for the buses that made the final approach, and people everywhere. However, it was an impressive sight perched up on the hill, with bright yellow walls and complicated stonework everywhere.
Crowded exterior at the National Palace of Pena
The Palace was very much not an ancient castle, “only” dating from the 1850s. This was evident in the size of many of the spaces, which were actually rather spacious. It also showed up in the frequency of bathrooms, which must have been a luxury innovation at the time. The interiors were lushly decorated and a lot of fun to tour through.
Dining room at the National Palace. We weren’t invited to stay.
As we’d seen elsewhere, patterned tiling was all over the National Palace.
Tiled courtyard
Downhill from the National Palace was the Moorish Castle. This was a much older structure, falling apart in many areas. We walked down to it through deeply forested hillsides.
Woods near Sintra
The day was rather cool at the higher elevation. At the castle that didn’t get much better as the winds whipped through with little of the castle body to block the breeze.
Tree growing within the castle
Perched as it was on a hill, the Moorish Castle used its surroundings to good effect. This meant that the walls were nothing like a simple flat rectangle. They swooped up and down in either direction, following the folds of the hilltops.
Stairs down
Stairs up
All the climbing was worth it for the stunning view from the highest points.
View from the Moorish Castle
After we caught a Bolt back to Lisbon, we had it drop us off at the TimeOut
Market. We got
there late enough the market was largely shut, but a huge open space was devoted
to food vendors. We all got to pick what we wanted. Following my meal, I tried
out a sampler of different ports which was lovely. The rest of the family took
advantage of the gelato situation available. A massive screen in the center of
the tall tables was showing the European Championships (soccer football,
France versus Belgium while we were there, so no one got too rowdy.)
Eating at the TimeOut Market
The Food
As ever, a big part of our time in Portugal revolved around food. We scheduled to take a cooking class. It started with a trip to the Mercado 31 de Janeiro market where our instructor showed us a variety of local vegetables and meats, and gathered up what we’d need for the class. It was a relatively big group, with some hailing from the US and two others from Switzerland (who interestingly spoke the rare Romansh language and filled us in on all the details about it.)
The dishes bore a lot of resemblance to things we’d had and made in Spain, but with some twists here and there. The kids enjoyed blending a gazpacho-like soup and coiling up a fruit rolled cake.
Family at the cooking class
One of the treats that folks talk about in Portugal endlessly is pastel de nata. These are tasty little egg custards in a flaky shell. Easily eaten in a couple of bites, they’re available all over the place. We found a pretty good location for them near the Castelo Sao Jorge. Sadly, we had also just learned of Asher’s egg allergy not long before the trip, which took some of the shine off this delectable treat.
Pastel de Nata
One evening we went to a fado restaurant, which is a classical combination of soulful folk music and good cooking. The spot we chose was probably among the classier places we went on the trip, and the music was engaging even though we couldn’t follow the words which were undoubtedly fraught with meaning. The menu had some lovely steak, pork cheeks, and duck. I also sampled the vinho verde, a local vine variety made with newer grapes giving it a bright flavor.
Probably the highlight of our eating in Portugal, though, was Cervejaria Ramiro. Like many folks, we were aware of this seafood restaurant through Anthony Bourdain who sang its praises for the quality and freshness. He wasn’t wrong. Although it had been many years since Mr. Bourdain visited – and the small spot depicted on the show had now burrowed its way through room after room, level after level of the building it was in – the seafood absolutely delivered. Much of it was offered by weight and there were so many varieties of shellfish it was hard to know precisely what was being picked, but what a lovely problem to have.
Cervejaria Ramiro
It wasn’t uncommon for restaurants to have paper table covering that it was okay to write and draw on. This led to a family hangman habit across the trip. That led to a highlight of my life as a dad when I managed to Rickroll Cora. She then proceeded to respond with games drawn from Monty Python. I may have my faults as a parent, but I’ve done something right.
Can you guess the hangman?
Farewell
That brought us to our final days in Lisbon and Europe for the summer. We encountered then one of the downsides of apartments versus hotels, because our flight wasn’t until the afternoon but we had to leave at eleven. We asked around at a couple of the hotels in the block, but they were rather uninterested in holding bags when we hadn’t taken a room out. Ah well.
Not ready to leave
This led us to the airport many long hours early. We looked at the map and it seemed that a park wasn’t too far away, so the plan was for the ladies to hang with the baggage while I took Asher to get his wiggles out before the long flights began.
Sadly, like many US airports I’m sure, Lisbon had literally no way to walk to or from the airport. We followed every path we could, but there was no way out without walking on huge multi-lane roads that plainly weren’t meant for pedestrians. Defeated, we went back and rejoined the throng of people waiting for their flights.
After that, the flight out was delayed back to Dublin where our primary round-trip tickets were returning home from. We got in super late, and the kids were on the verge of breaking down. We assumed that hunger was part of the reason, but the only thing open was a chippy across the way. We bought a pile of deeply fried, not that appetizing food. It went almost untouched because everyone was so tired. At least we got a bit of sleep before hopping the flights back home the next morning.
Obligatory PDX carpet photo