Fodor's Travel Talk Forums - Trip Report My Greek Adventure

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I spent a wonderful weekend in Lisbon two months ago. Not Greece, but I hope you enjoy it. Thank you for your trip report and amazing photos.

Bom dia. Enjoy your time in Portugal.

Since our plane got into Lisbon so late we slept in the on Tuesday. We are staying at Dear Lisbon - Palace Chiado. It’s a historic building from the 19th Century. Which means no elevator. This wasn’t a problem for me - I had my husband to help lug my suitcase upstairs, and our driver helped also. But just a warning for others who might not want to walk up two flights of stairs to get to your rooms. We started the day in Placa do Comercio listening to a Rick Steves audio walking tour. It was really informative- except my husband has been having problems with his phone and cannot connect to the internet . We joined a walking tour ( I’m not going to name the company - but their location is Rua dos Douradores 16). It was fun at first, only us and another couple from Germany. But - and this is too bad- our tour guide was not good. I got more information about Lisbon and Portugal in the 45 min of Rick Steves audio guide than during the whole 2.5 hour tour. Fabio just rushed through the basics of every site, could not remember important names in Portuguese history, or even the basics of what his country produces for goods. He seemed intent on showing us where all of the bars were and we did stop at some beautiful sites overlooking the city. Interestingly no mention of Portuguese maritime history that brought them enormous wealth. I’m wondering if that is a touchy subject due to their prominence in the slave trade from Africa. At times we were running uphill to keep up with him.
So on to dinner - we followed in the footsteps of Mai Tai Tom and had a really great chicken dinner at Resturante Bonjardim. A quick note - they now take reservations- Maria from our hotel was able to call and get us in that evening. Had a lot of fun chatting with the couple sitting next to us from South Africa.

Onward and upward to the castle of Sao Jorge

Wednesday we ventured down to the Tourist information center in the Praca de Comercio because we wanted to buy Lisboa passes and ride the famous #28 yellow tram. Haha bad idea, we stood at the Tram stop and watched two full trams pass us, then we went back to the square where the tram started - Martin Muniz. The line to get on the tram at 10:15 am snaked all around the square. We gave up and took a taxi up to the Castle. Again another line- except our Lisboa passes allowed us to cut in front of the line - but we still had to pay entrance tickets. All in all, I don’t think the Lisboa pass is worth €22 a day, unless you can manage to get to 4 or 5 museums in one day. We had lunch and then took off for the National Tile museum which was on our pass but only cost €5 for entrance fee . We ended up
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National Tile Museum
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Fun photos- amazing that I can still smile after our torture hike in the heat. I blame my husband
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Old Lisbon. This tile work is from before the earthquake and subsequent Tidal wave and fire of 1755 which basically leveled the city
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taking the metro and then there is a miserable 1 mile walk to the museum- pro tip grab a cab at the subway station. After reviving ourselves with a cold coke we started our visit to the Tile Museum. Wow, so lovely- well worth a visit. Pictures below.

Enjoying your report - we found the tile museum was easy to reach via the 759 bus.