sandralist

In Porto, I suggest going to the Yeatman Hotel to have a port cocktail and enjoy the spectacular view. They have quite a variety, and they are wonderful. Just tell them you prefer a cocktail that isn't sweet.

I second the recommendation for Bom Jardim (although I skipped the piri-piri sauce). I had a two very nice meals at Ibo (near Cais do Sodre, with a waterfront view), which specializes in the cuisine of Mozambique, but it was aromatic, not spicy -- but maybe I just failed to order spicy dishes. If you know the website Lisbon Lux, you might try looking there for a restaurant serving recipes from Goa, or from Brazil.

sandralist

Maybe this place?

https://eatingtheworld.wordpress.com.../19/goa-zuari/

marigross

<b>Sunday, April 3</b>: the weather was slightly better but far from great. These are the things we did:

- Walked up to Praça Principe Real and moseyed around the stores in there. The Embaixada group of stores looked particularly nice (and warm). In case I forget to mention this further on, there is a good weekly market on Saturdays here with food and artists.

- Visited the outside of <b>El Carmo Church</b>, need to go back in when it is open (or at least I find the correct entrance)

- Walked through Pedestrian Rua Garett (highly recommended for shoppers; something I’m not)

- Could not stop in Café A Brasileira (hey, we ARE tourists) as there was not a seat to be had

- Stepped into the Basilica Dos Martires (of course! I couldn’t get into the Loretto church across as it seemed to be closed)

- Strolled into <b>Praça Luis de Camoes</b> until we saw the line forming outside <b>Manteigaria Fábrica de Pastéis de Nata</b> and made a quick detour to partake of this quintessential Lisbon tradition. These are like individual egg custard pies with brulée tops. They come in sizes from tiny to 6” diameter and are ubiquitous through the city. However, this Fábrica seems like the place to have them and it is the only thing they make. I expected cloyingly sweet, but it was not. The custard is creamy and slightly lemony, and the purpose of the very thin pastry (I would have loved it thicker) is solely to hold the cream together while you eat it. The ones we got were still warm and were delicious, even by my savory-tooth standards.

- Detoured past the Elevador de Bica into the Miradouro de Santa Caterina for more great views of overcasted Lisbon. Funny thing, random guy hanging out before the park offered us marihuana. Really? Us? Now THAT (the being offered part!) hasn’t happened in more than 30 years, I seriously doubt we look like party people. Wondered what made him think we would want any (I know, I find weird stuff interesting!).

- Eventually, and not quite sober, we got back to the apartment and made a rather good dinner from prepackaged turkey brochettes, grilled zucchini and rice cooked with lentils all purchased from the corner mini market.

<b>Monday, April 4: </b>Weather was miserable. Alternating between misty rain and downpours. We stretched breakfast into brunch (sans mimosas) and finally ventured out in the afternoon to find a bank. Somehow we wound up in Lapa for our daily stroll. We found a bigger grocery store and purchased a few cheeses, bread, paté, a few vegetables and a very pretty bacalhao (codfish) fillet for dinner.

Even with umbrellas in hand we got drenched on our way home, so that put a quick end to our wanderings for the day. Warm showers and red wine in hand made it all so much better.

Oh, and the cleaning lady (seemingly the only person in Lisbon not to speak English) and her husband showed up by 7:00pm to come to fix the electricity that had gone out from half the apartment due to a faulty cable. And the washer was not working either, after 2 hours on the phone with tech support she finally got it going and we were free to eat.

The bacalhao fillet stewed with white beans and spinach turned out awesome, so not all was lost in the day. We are so happy that we will have ample time to see the city in the sunshine because this lousy weather was just not cutting it.

lobo_mau

Dear Marigross
I'm loving your TR and waiting for more. Meanwhile:

Cloistres: Try to visit Convent of Christ in Tomar, unless you are affraid of a cloisters' overdose. Imagine a douzen of cloisters of several centuries and styles packed together in one place.
Spicy: After Rossio, there is a twin square named Figueira sq. A little bit north there is another square named Martim Moniz Sq. From the north eastern corner of Martim Moniz sq borns a pedestrian street named Rua do Benformoso. This street is the unofficial Bangladesh town. In Benformoso, 262 there is a restaurant called "Bismilla" offering the best Prawn Curry in town. Bismilla accepts no cards, only hard currency. Be prepaired to pay 10 euros per person.

marigross

Hi Lobo, thank you! I will (eventually) make it to Tomar, once we start the Road Trip portion of the vacation in May.


Thanks for the restaurant rec!


I think you remarked on another thread about the frequent misspelling 'Barrio' when in Portuguese it should be Bairro. I had not even noticed that I was making the mistake, lol. It is -at least for me!- a carry over from Spanish, where the correct spelling is Barrio.


Since Spanish is my first language, there might be a lot of those typos in this TR. ;-)

marigross

<b>Tuesday, April 5: </b> The sun! The SUN!!!!

Lisbon in the sun is a completely different place. The last few days some of the cafés had tables outside, mostly occupied by Danes and British and a few lucky ones that got a spot next to the heaters. We had even remarked about the lack of little ‘whole in the wall’ gritty joints that DH adores and drags me into. Well, all these places were there! They were just hibernating.

These days we seem to only get late starts in the morning. But that is the beauty of extended stays! You can sleep in, do Pilates a class from YouTube videos, write in your journal, have a third cup of coffee… And THEN go out. This would have been unheard of two years ago, when I was still a trip Nazi trying to cramp as much as possible into the 3-weeks of vacation I was able to wrestle away from my boss.

Maybe I should give some more context. DH, being significantly older than me, has been retired for over 15years. He took over managing the Kid and the house so I could slave away at a very stressful, highly demanding but decently paying job. It was a job I mostly liked, occasionally loved and seldom hated.

Then came the perfect storm:
(a) I got stuck for almost 2 years in a project that I hated, one of those ‘black hole’ things that you just know that you will never get away from.
(b) The Kid decided she was not going to college after all (with the ensuing parental re-appropriation of her college fund).
(c) Even though we had always been very conservative in our spending, I got very much involved with minimalistic living and de-cluttering. It made me take a very hard look at my spending habits and going through the ‘am I really working only to be able to afford to buy all this cr@p I’m just going to throw away / donate?’ existential crisis.
(d) DH was not getting any younger with a landmark birthday coming up and deserved to have a full time wife to go hang out with.

Just over a year ago I quit my job. Have not regretted or even missed it for a second yet.

Anyway, the sun was out so we must follow, and lo and behold! There is a butcher shop a few doors down the street (guess it was closed Sunday and Monday), the grocer across from us turned out to have a lot of nice products and vegetables. The neighborhood had come alive!!!!

After shopping for dinner we took off and retraced some of our steps back down to the Ribeira Market, the Praça de Comercio (now half occupied with tables and people!) and the Baixa. This time we continued up <b>Avenida Liberdades</b> in what is known as a falso piano; a slight incline that looks almost flat but sucks the breath away from you after the first kilometer. The walk was still pleasant in the sunny cool breeze.

The tree-lined boulevard is beautifully paved and filled with elegant buildings… and every single luxury retail chain store in the planet. A few local couture and jewelers ateliers provided an interesting break. Some people might think this is heavenly, but there is no way I’m buying a Furka bag when I could pay another month of vacation with that money. I have my priorities very clearly set!

On the way back down we took to the backstreets. Much more interesting to us! We wound up eating lunch at a small restaurants with a lot of local workers. We had a real good but slightly oily <i>Arroz con Pato</i> (Rice with Duck) and a bottle of wine. We thought we had also ordered some fish but there was a misunderstanding, and by the time we realized we were full with the rice anyway. And we had ordered the half portion of the rice!

Our wanderings took us around to the base of the <b>Elevador de Gloria</b>, which of course we did not ride up but walked on the side taking pictures and little videos. Up in the <b>Miradouro San Pedro de Alcantara</b> there was a small market and we got €1,50 plastic cups of very decent red wine (hey, I might be a glassware snob but I can curb my expectations when needed!) just for the novelty of it. We did go back to guy and bought some creamy cheese, a loaf of excellent bread and this most delicious pastry called a ‘Jesuíta’ (sp?) for the next day’s breakfast.

We got another cup of wine with the purchase. Let’s just say it was a good thing that we were not driving. We happily staggered home and even managed to cook a good dinner of chicken and pasta in our slightly (ahem!) inebriated state.

bilboburgler

I stopped work at 50 having realised I was working to accumulate stuff. It looks like a hard question when you are on the other side, but once you "pass through the veil" it looks like a very simple question. Well done for joining the time rich.

I think Lisbon has an old triereme in the old arsenal. Worth a walk around, while the history of Portugal as told from a port basis is fascinating, for instance did you know the royal family migrated to Brazil and ran the Empire from there (a colony of a colony)

thursdaysd

Welcome to retirement! I retired at 53, the day I hit 30 years with my megacorp, and have never regretted it. I did do part time contract work for a while, but then I decided to try living on my pension. No mortgage + no retirement savings + lower taxes + frugality makes a big difference, even though the pension was only 40% of my final salary. Of course, retiree medical made a huge difference, too. I've found it surprising how things expand to fill the time available.

kanadajin

Loving your trip report marigross. Having been to Spain several times but never managed to make it over to Portugal, your thoughtful reflexions are very informative and entertaining. It is definitely one country on my radar screen.

Everything being relative, I chuckled when you write about the "awful and cold weather" as qualified, I suspect, from a Puerto Rico perspective no doubt. I think I would find the same actually quite balmy by comparison since where I live, we usually have to heat our homes from September to June (NOT kidding - I wish I were believe me). In fact we are still around the freezing point with a fresh layer of snow on the ground as I write this, and it is NOT exceptional for this time of year. Fully relate to your expletive "the sun, THE SUN" as well for similar reasons.

Congrats on leaving the work world !!!! I did the same one year ago almost to the day and also have not looked back since. Slow travel is now the way to go for us as well.

MmePerdu

I have great sympathy, too, for the need for warmth. I lived in Puerto Rico for 5 years, then moved to Montreal to be near my husband's family. Well, I lasted 2 winters, as if 1 wasn't enough, then convinced him that my California home would be perfect for us.

kanadajin

Thank you so much for the moral support MmePerdu

(Je ne vis pas très loin de Montréal, et oui, maintenant à la retraite des séjours prolongés ailleurs sont à l'ordre du jour !)

Adelaidean

Marigross, you write so well, this is a lovely read.

And I'm enjoying everyone's personal stories, too, nice how a TR becomes even richer with other people's contributions.

marigross

<b>Wednesday, April 6: </b> Lisbon Rim to Rim…. Or we can see the castle from here

The sun was out so it was time to get going. Of course this means slow motion ‘going’ as we might have lingered a bit on the breakfast table eating a good portion of the <i>Queijo de Ovelha Curado Amanteigado</i> that we had purchased the day before. Wow. You just cut a circle through the waxy crust and spoon out delicious creaminess out on to bread. Wow^2. The bread we got from the guy made for a perfect companion. Okay, I’ll go out and admit it, it was almost noon by the time we left.

We intended to catch the Electric Tram 28 by the San Bento stop. There were around 10 people in the stop before us. First tram comes by, no space to breath inside that can of sardines! Only two local elder gentleman opt to push themselves in. Hummmm. We decide to keep walking along the tram lines and see how it goes. Another packed tram passes us by. There were at least 20 people ‘queuing’ (using the word only in the most general terms). So we keep going. By now we have gone up the hill. This time we lucked out with few people waiting and a tram with actual space in it. Within two stops we could sit down.

Tram 28 took us all the way up to the top of Graça and from there we walked first to <b>Miradouro de Graça</b> (with a stop in the beautiful church) and then further (further!) up to <b>Miradouro da Senhora do Monte</b>. The views from both were picture perfect, the second lookout gives you a better sightline to the castle. We finally were able to strip down to one layer of clothes and soaked in the warm sun.

On the way down we made a stop at <b>Saõ Vicente de Fora </b>. This church is impressive from the outside and the inside. Raising from the street in all in white, you enter up a staircase and into a majestically vaulted space. The altar has such a massive Baldachin over it that almost defeats its purpose, touching almost the ceiling.

You know that moment when having a cr@ppy map and the incorrect guide book really do you in? Well, we must have circled that castle at least two times. And it was not exactly fun, but we eventually made it to the ticket office of <b>Castelo de São Jorge</b>.

We have mixed reviews on this one. I thought it was quite impressive, DH not quite so. He said it was because he was born and raised in the shadow of a ‘real’ castle, I think it was because he was tired and a little cranky. Anyway, it is still beautiful with its ramparts and crenelated tops and the park around it quite nice. The restaurant seemed nice but the menu screamed ‘overpriced tourist trap!’. We skipped it. We also bypassed the café; DH was decidedly cranky as he did not even want to stop for a beer and admire the peacocks.

On the way down we stopped at the <b>Largo das Portas do Sol</b> lookout and the <b>Miradouro de Santa Lucia</b>. I opted to bypass all the churches along the way as our appreciation for religious architecture was inversely proportional to the tiredness of our feet.

Contrary to rational thought, we walked all the way home. The steep way. Though we did stop for a glass of wine… or two.

marigross

Thanks to all for tagging along. I love writing TRs, they have proved to be the most cherished souvenirs of all.

Bilbo, I did not know that about Brazil. I saw the trireme from far, will go back an investigate further.


Kanadajin, my tropical-born DD has moved to Maine and contrary to all expectations, is loving it. Even with the two previous record breaking winters and this schizophrenic one. She also has snow on the ground.

thursdaysd

Yumm, breakfast sounds good!

I have to agree with DH on the castle. Finally made it up there my last trip and the views were fine but the castle wasn't worth it (but I grew up in England and I've sen a lot of castles). There are good views without paying to go in.

lobo_mau

Saint Georges castle and Jeronimos Monastery are examples of public buildings badly damaged after the earthquake of 1755 and extensively rebuilt in the 40s of last century. I guess some or the original feeling was lost forever.
The exception is Carmo Convent which was left as it was after 1755 (with some consolidation works) as a memorial.
You might find fun (interesting?) a text of 12th century written by a crusade named Osbern who took part in the conquest of the city (http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/source/cap-lisbon.asp).

marigross

<b>Thursday, April 7: </b> The return of the clouds

The forecast was not great and the temperature was in the upper 40’s. One look at the overcast sky and we re-snuggled in bed. We did nothing the whole day long. We did not even go out. I started this Trip Report and DH watched the news. We drank tea in the morning and wine in the afternoon. It was blissful. With one caveat: I missed our cats, lounging without kitty purrs is never as satisfying.


<b>Friday, April 8: </b> Unfinished Business

During one of our previous wanderings we had found, under very fortuitous circumstances, a great shortcut. DH had wanted to get another USB Plug charger and the exact gadget he had in mind had failed to appear so far. So we were walking through the Baixa and suddenly I see a sign for fnac (sort of a Best Buy type of store). It is above the Baixa-Chiado metro station and we actually had to ask for directions because we just could not figure out how to get in. ‘Go to door #89, inside there is an elevator, go to the 4th floor’ said the nice lady from the café across the street, probably for the 100th time that week.

So we go up, still did not find the Perfect USB Thingie but we did find out that when you exit the store through the mall you find yourself in Almacenes Chiado and just a few steps away from the Praça Luis de Camoes and saving quite a bit of walking/climbing along the way.

Maybe I should insert here the other shortcuts we have found so far. We were in the Baixa, waiting to cross the Rua de Prata street across from the church and I see these massive amounts of people going into a building but quite few coming out. The sign said something like ‘municipal center’ and inside it looks like a gift shop. However, it has two elevators that will take you 5 stories up to Alfama, into a little square off Rua de Madalena and just at about the right elevation to see the Cathedral (which is where we were heading anyway. But let’s finish with the elevators first.

A couple days later we found out that on the other side of the street is ANOTHER elevator that will take you up to Castle level, the aptly named Elevador do Castelo. This is the one that, I believe, has the big supermarket in the basement.

Yesterday we also found that if you go into the very pretty Estacion Central, which is connected to the Rossio metro station, you can go up the escalators and exit from the top, saving yourself a few stories. However, you still have to go up the C. do Duque pedestrian street / stairway if you want to go to Barrio Alto. If you don’t need to burn all those calories acquired from drinking wine at ungodly hours, the Elevador de Gloria might be a better bet.

Now, going back to today’s meanderings we went up that magic elevator and found our way to the <b>Sé</b> Lisbon’s Cathedral. Entrance is free but they charge €5 regular and €2,50 seniors to see the Treasury and Cloister. I can see how people would be tempted to skip it, but don’t. The church has a very elegant Romanesque ‘hull’ but was rebuilt after the 1755 earthquake. It started out as a fortress and it shows. The true gem of this compound is the <b>Cloister</b>, what a beauty! Very simple Cistercian gothic. The center is excavated to show archaeological levels ranging from medieval Lisbon, the Moorish mosque, the Roman period to the Phoenician early settlers. I have warned about my love of cloisters, so I’ll shut up about it and just say thoroughly enjoyed it.

The <b>Treasury</b> is quite nice too, with its impressive setting in the old Chapterhouse rooms. It is not a huge display of objects but certainly worth a half an hour of detailed examination.

Next on the ‘agenda’ (ha! As if.) was a walk through the lower levels of the Alfama. This is area where Lisbon turns quaint and you start to taste a little of that Old European flavors. This area of the city largely survived the earthquake, so it only stands to reason.

We found a bar by the wall, just under the Casa de Janelas Geminadas and watched the world go by for a while. DH thought he might have preferred to stay in this side of town but when he saw all the fado joints and bars he retracted and said that quiet Principe Real was just fine. There are a number of guidebook ‘walks’ but this is really a neighborhood to wander, and we did so for the afternoon.

Dinner that night was at <b>In Bocca al Lupo</b> a stylish BIO (their claim) pizzeria. They advertise their thin crust pizza. We both love pizza. We both love wispy thin crust pizza. So we had put this place on the list as soon as we saw it. Well, it was thin and tasty. But it got soggy very quick. There is nothing sadder than a ‘wet’ pizza crust. But I do have to admit that mushrooms in pizzas are very treacherous as they can release a lot of water after coming out of the oven. I’m willing to give them that leeway. But at €51 for coperto, two pizzas and a bottle of wine, it was not exactly cheap either. So I guess we are not really going to be repeat customers.

luz_de_lisboa

I'm enjoying your report!

Adelaidean

Another great update, thank you.

lobo_mau

Try Pizza na Brasa (http://www.pizzanabrasa.pt/).
Unfortunately there is none in central Lisbon. The nearest is in Restelo (a short distance from Belem, if you intend to go there).