This weekend, Sydney and I planned a day trip to Lisbon. We figured we wouldn’t really come back to Portugal next time we were in Europe, so we should go now while we can take a day trip to another country.
We took an overnight bus in Friday night and got there Saturday morning. Our bus was supposed to get in at 7:45, meaning we would have a quick breakfast and then have plenty of day left to get things done. Well, our bus driver apparently drove like a freaking maniac, because he was an hour and a half late getting to Sevilla, but got us to Lisbon at 6:45…except in Lisbon it was 5:45…because there’s a time change that we didn’t know about until we got off of the bus and all of the clocks were an hour off.
So after a quick laugh at the realization that we were in a different time zone and that our bus driver is on crack, we decided to hang around the bus station until the sun came out and we could get a map and get oriented. The café in the bus station didn’t even open until 6:30, so we sat around and watched The Daily Show, which happened to be on TV. After killing some time and having VERY necessary coffee and a croissant, the sun started to come out. The weather forecast for that day was completely wrong, we were expecting rain and maybe a few breaks of sunlight, but it was mostly sunny all day with a few threatening clouds that didn’t do anything. Don’t believe weather.com.
We tried to find a map with no luck, it was still very early in the morning. Despite the bumpy start, we worked things out. We went to the metro station and figured out how to get into the city center, and from there we walked a little and got our bearings – I had looked at a lot of maps and read up on Lisbon before coming so I knew where we were and where we needed to go. We walked down to the port and found a tourist information center that was closed, but it opened at 9, so we thought we needed to kill 15 minutes before it opened…it only took us 10 minutes to realize that we needed to kill an hour and 15 minutes – freaking time changes…so we just decided that without a map, we could do okay for the morning based on what I already knew about the city.
We wandered up to the old Alfama district where the castle is. Lisbon is spread out over seven hills by the ocean, so over each hill there are awesome views and specific places called miradours are marked off for vantage points, so we wandered this old district which was the old Jewish quarter and we went on a miradour hunt all morning.
Lisbon is a gorgeous city, all of the houses are pastel colored with the same kind of roofs and from each of the miradours the city just impressed me more and more. The entire place has such a Charleston like feel but on a San Francisco type level (complete with its own Golden Gate Bridge, apparently), and it seems so humble for a capital city.
We took our time as well as we could and appreciated the views, it was maybe 10:30 when we wandered over to the Castlo de San Jorge for our first “tourist attraction” type site. It’s only 2.50 for students so we felt it was worth the investment to go check it out – its definitely the most “castle” type castle I’ve been too so far.
Around noon we left to eat lunch at an Indian restaurant we had already picked out…but it was closed…despite saying that they opened at noon. We stood outside for a while and tried to kill time hoping they were just late, but we finally gave up and wandered to a sandwich shop in the center of the city. I thought I wanted to try seafood while I was here but walking past the restaurants and seeing people eat fish drenched in olive oil…I really just wanted something simple and healthy, and a bocadilla did the trick.
After lunch we FINALLY got a map and then took a bus over to Belem, an area of town about 6km outside downtown. This whole district is really pretty, just more pastel colored houses, parks, and the big monastery, discovery monument, and tower of Belem.
We saw each of these and managed to see a Contemporary Art Exhibit
(I don’t get it.)
In Portugal, the typical pastry is called Pasteil de Nata, and in Belem they have a place that supposedly makes the best in town. This place was really crowded but served us extremely quickly – we ordered one and took it outside in the beautiful day to eat.
I have to say, it was different than what I expected, I heard “nata” and thought it would be this cream filled, rich thing, but it actually had a really subtle taste on the inside and reminded me almost of an oatmeal like flavor. The crust around it was delicious and really warm and flakey, and they gave us cinnamon and sugar to put on top.
At this point of the day, I was completely exhausted - that 5 am morning and “sleeping” on a bus was catching up to me. We wandered up go to the Bairro Alto after coming back into downtown, and once we found another miradour we sat and rested for a while, just talking. After getting somewhat of a second wind we walked around some more before making our way to find some dinner.
I would say that the Bairro Alto was my favorite district and I wish we could have spent some more time exploring here or stayed the night to try a nice restaurant or bar – they seemed to have a huge variety of them.
We were looking around at restaurant menus when some man told us that in this building there was a mall type thing with tons of restaurants, so we just followed a bunch of people into elevators and indeed there was like a 6 story shopping center/food court type thing that we stumbled into. I had Isreali food for the first time in my life and had a pita with Tahini, Hummus, and something else I’m not even sure.
We walked around for a bit and then made our way back to the bus station in plenty of time to catch our bus home. We found our bus company and asked what platform our bus would be at, when the lady at the desk just told us “These aren’t tickets.” Ummmm…what? I kind of started to get a bad attitude with her because that’s all she kept saying to us “These aren’t tickets” and I was trying to explain that those were the tickets I was given that got me HERE, and now I really needed to get HOME with them, too.
I have no idea what the problem was with them, she never told us, she just kept saying they weren’t tickets and then grabbed a bunch of things around her desk and kept typing at her computer. Eventually, she printed us new tickets, that didn’t look any more legit than the ones we had, but whatever. I was just upset she let us stand there and try and justify our tickets while she clacked at her computer – who does that? Why wouldn’t she say the words: “It’s okay, I’ll print you new tickets.”
Ugh, Oh well. We got back into Sevilla fine with our new “tickets” and had a very, very successful trip. I loved Lisbon, I really recommend it, I don’t think it’s a city people think of often but its absolutely gorgeous and full of things to do.
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