Thanks mr_&ms_go. I did check out the wine list at Grapes & Bites...WOW! I think I'm going to have to put in some "major study time" on the wine regions of Portugal before my May trip! LOL ;-) Just so I know what the heck to order!

Mr_go...maybe I'll have to swing by the place to check things out before plunging my mom into a pre-dinner wine with 70's & 80's rock tunes...but then again, she's usually willing to "roll with the punches" when it comes to places for having wine...maybe we just need to up the number of glasses we consume! ;-)

<i>maybe we just need to up the number of glasses we consume!</i>

I fully endorse this sentiment.

And with that in mind...

<b>Drinking and celebrating</b>
No matter how you slice it, turning the life-odometer to a nice, round number is always cause for hearty celebration. And I'm never one to shy away from opportunities to discover the local poison when we travel.

As I said before, most of the bars & cafes in the Bairro Alto are friendly little small-scale establishments. Each has its own character and some have live music (of barying quality). On our first night, we ducked into one of these for just a quick drink (and DD was able to try a White Russian for the first time in her young life). But on our second night, we stopped into a <i>really</i> small place on Rua da Atalaia that looked interesting, and was deserted. (We believe the place is called "Be You," but we can't be sure.) Anyway, the barkeep there spoke English and was eager to chat with us and introduce us to his favorite Portuguese beverages. First came ginjinha, the ubiquitous local cherry liqueur that nearly everyplace in town serves for 1 euro per shot. Next came amendoa, an almond liqueur served with a hearty squeeze of lemon juice (an outstanding touch, btw!). And finally came rounds of aguardente, a robust grappa-like brandy. I slept well that night.

The aforementioned wine bar Grapes & Bites was the scene of some considerable wine-drinking (and food-eating) the following night, particularly the rich and earthy reds from the Douro region and, for dessert, a velvety smooth tawny port. The guy playing guitar added to the enjoyable atmosphere, even if he didn't know any REM songs (alas).

Our last evening there was on my actual birthday, which was worth a free drink at another small bar about 3 blocks from the apartment on Rua da Atalaia. It was here that I discovered the caipirinha, a Brazilian sensation that's cachaca, muddled lime, sugar and a few mint leaves for garnish. Yum!

Lastly, I would be remiss if I didn't mention Sagres, the popular local beer. It's darned good stuff.

Great report, as usual.
It seems you did eat well.

You'll love the pics, bob. Lots of great light, every day!

Ah, glad to find this and see you had a great time in Lisbon. I just fell for caipirinha's in Rio, nice to know I can get them in Lisbon too.

Makes me want to get on the next plane to Lisbon.

Go's...so happy that all turned out so well on your quick jump into Portugal. Waiting for pics...
stu

I am ready to go! Thanks for the trip report. I will be saving this for future trips.

Looking forward to the remaining, I have a few comments. First: The Go family displays a perfect spelling of the places in the native language. This shows a great deal of respect for the local culture. Second: it was raining before the arrival, and mostly raining after the departure. You had a perfect sense of opportunity when chosing the time window :-) Third: Nikki, please come!!!

Thanks to everyone for their kind words! While ms_go works out the section on our visit to Belém, I'll post a quick overview of our...

<b>Daytrip to Sintra</b>
If you visit Lisbon for more than a day or two, you must visit Sintra. It’s easy to get to, and difficult to forget!

The journey begins at the historic and beautiful old Rossio Station in central Lisbon. Round-trip tickets to/from Sintra were about 14 euro for the three of us, and the train trip itself was under 40 minutes. When we disembarked in Sintra, the first man off the train bolted straight for the first ‘exit’ he saw, entered the narrow passage… and was immediately trapped as a glass door closed behind him. Apparently, this was the “special access” exit for disabled passengers; and no, that was immediately evident to the rest of us either. But that didn’t stop all the rest of us passengers from standing and pointing and laughing at the man’s attempts to figure a way out of his dilemma (and leading the laughs was his traveling companion!).

When you first leave the station, the Palacio Nacional appears to be about a 3-minute walk away… but it’s not. You have to walk a 10-15 minute route around a small gorge; but the way is lined with interesting modern statuary. The Palacio itself is fairly interesting and well worth visiting, especially the huge kitchens with their massive conical chimneys, and a salon/dining room adorned with highly detailed tilework depicting hunting scenes.

Afterward, we stopped into the tourist info center and consulted with them about how to get to all the sites we were most interested in up the hill. Weighing our options, we decided just to grab a taxi up to the Moorish Castle and then to walk to the Pena Palace and (eventually) to hike down the hill back into town. But first, we wanted to fortify ourselves with some lunch. Note: we didn’t do any research into lunch at Sintra, and that was probably a mistake. The place is overrun with vastly over-priced tourist traps. We spent over 40 euro on mediocre snacks (but at least the beer was cold). Anyway… be advised.

One of my coworkers had been to Lisbon & Sintra just a month or so prior to our visit, and she’d given me the name and number of a nice, English-speaking cab driver… but frankly, I didn’t see any reason not to just take the first guy in the cab cue in the middle of town. And hey, he worked out just great. It was a fairly quick and smooth ride up the hills, and cost us about 5 euro. He gave me his card and, wouldn’t you know, it was the same guy that my coworker had recommended! Go figure. Anyway, I would definitely recommend avoiding the long queues for the local bus and just taking a taxi.

The old Moorish Castle is amazingly scenic, perched high on a hilltop overlooking the town. It mostly consists of ramparts and parapet walls, interspersed with guard towers, walkways and large, colorful flags. On a sunny day, your picture-taking finger will get a workout! After about an hour of climbing over and exploring the walls, we set off for the Pena Palace, about a 15-minute uphill walk from the Moorish Castle.

When we arrived at the Pena Palace, we all said the same thing at once: ‘I didn’t know there was a Disneyland in Portugal!” It’s huge, colorful, visually striking… but ultimately kind of fake. That’s because it was built in the 19th century by an Armenian oil magnate. Nevertheless, it’s well worth your time and effort to go and see it. Again, we indulged our photographic desires with reckless abandon.

We hiked all the way down to Sintra from there, about 35 minutes without stopping. And we all thanked our lucky stars that we’d remembered to bring proper footwear for the day!

Back in town, we did a little souvenir shopping and poking around town. After a quick round of 1 euro shots of ginjinha served in edible chocolate cups (!) we made our way back to the train station… and then back to Rossio station in Lisbon.

Thanks, all. And lobo_mau, we are happy to have brought the good weather with us, although I can assure you we didn't bring it from home (Chicago)!

Ginjinha!
http://onelittleworld.zenfolio.com/p...caca#h5145caca

Having a little more trouble than I thought trying to find it at home (DD wants a bottle)!

The next few sections will be about how we spent our time. To preface all of that, we decided up front that if the weather was nice, we would try to maximize our time outdoors—even if that meant sacrificing a few museums that were high on our list (e.g., Gulbenkian, Tile Museum...but isn't the whole city kind of a tile museum?).

So, going backwards…

<b>Belém</b>

We spent Saturday (our last day) in Belém, which is a few miles outside of the central Lisbon area.

Getting to Belém was easy. From our apartment, we walked through the Praça de Camões and then straight down the hill (10 minutes, tops) to the Cais de Sodre station on the Cascais line. Roundtrip tickets were €3 (or a little less?). Trains leave every 20 minutes (check that it stops at Belém, but that was pretty well signed). Journey takes three stops, seven minutes. There are other ways of getting there by tram/train, but this seemed the most straightforward and fastest from where we were starting.

First stop in Belém was for coffee and the famous pasteis de nata, an egg custard pastry that originated in this area. We peeked in the famous bakery, Pasteis de Belém (no line on this particular morning) but opted to have ours at a smaller shop on the corner, which advertised an old family recipe (if I translated the sign correctly). They were quite good, but perhaps not so good for the diet!
http://onelittleworld.zenfolio.com/p...afee#h51e2afee

Now fortified and caffeinated, we proceeded to one of our primary destinations, the Mosteiro (monastery) dos Jerónimos, which dates from the early 1500s and (together with the Tower of Belém) is a UNESCO World Heritage site. Don’t miss this—it’s fantastic, particularly the cloister on a nice sunny day like the one on which we visited. Side note: in one of the rooms upstairs there is a now-permanent exhibit with a timeline that tracks the history of the monastery along with events of world and Portuguese history. Well done and very interesting—you know it’s pretty interesting when you have trouble pulling a 19-year-old away from it so we could move on to the next stop.

At the far west end of the monastery, with an entrance that once was the chapel commissioned by Henry the Navigator, is the Museu de Marinha (maritime museum). Its series of galleries house artifacts and models dating back to the days of the early Portuguese explorers, and it concludes in a large hall housing actual royal barges and other watercraft. Well worth some time if you’re in Belém.

After a quick lunch at a small sandwich shop on Rua Bartolomeo Dias, we spent the remainder of the afternoon enjoying monuments and parks—the Torre de Belém, Monument to the Discoveries, Praça do Império (gardens), and Praça Alfonso de Albuquerque. On this lovely Saturday afternoon, there were many families out enjoying the parks and the walks along the waterfront. We climbed the Torre and took the elevator to the top of the Monument to the Discoveries. I’ve got a little (or not so little) thing about heights—love the views but get very squeamish at the top and when walking down narrow winding stairs. While the monument has a nice, thick, chest-high barrier, there was something about the very narrow area for standing at the top that nearly did me in; I had to leave the photo taking to mr_go (even DD, who has little issue with heights and has bungy-jumped, wasn’t completely comfortable up there).

We caught the train around 4 and made it back to our apartment in time to enjoy a little music and wine on the roof deck before the sun went down.

All in all, a very enjoyable and interesting day. If your schedule allows it, allocate a day for Belém.

Well, look at that! Great timing...I see both of us are equally distracted from work this morning.

Work, schmerk... there are important things to write about!

<i>While the monument has a nice, thick, chest-high barrier, there was something about the very narrow area for standing at the top that nearly did me in; I had to leave the photo taking to mr_go</i>

I haven't seen them yet, but I'll bet those shots turned out well. It was a pretty day, and that's an awesome vantage point.

<b>Exploring Central Lisbon</b>
Our favorite thing to do while walking around European cities is to do just that… walk around the city. Seeing the sights and hearing the sounds, exploring major avenues and side streets, getting a feel for the place. And yes, we did plenty of that on this trip.

On our first day, we explored the Chiado, Biaxa and Restauradores areas of central Lisbon. In the huge Praça de Dom Pedro IV, we saw people from all walks of life walking around and enjoying the day. There was a huge Christmas ornament, maybe 30 feet tall, on one side of the park, and a small-scale funfare with kiddie rides took up most of the north end.

From there we walked along the largely pedestrianized streets of Biaxa south toward the great waterfront arch on Rua Augusta, and then out to the lovely Praça do Comercio on the shore, where we rested for a bit. In the midst of winter, it was nice to have the sun in our faces and the gentle waves at our backs!

On the second day, we visited Igreja do Carmo, the Elevador de Santa Justa, Castelo de São Jorge, and the Alfama neighborhood. And we burned quite a bit of shoe-leather in the process!

The Igreja do Carmo is a beautiful ruined cathedral that dates from the 1300s, but which collapsed in the devastating 1755 earthquake. With its soaring gothic-style supports holding aloft a long-forgotten roof, it reminded us just a little bit of the Elgin Cathedral in Scotland, but with all the exterior walls intact, and it was equally photogenic. There is also a nice, small archaeology museum in the remains of the church displaying artifacts and notable tombs.

From there, we walked out onto the Elevador de Santa Justa for views overlooking the city on this gorgeous, cloudless day. We walked up across the Baixa neighborhood again, and then climbed stairs up the hill toward castle. Along the way we passed some very interesting and creative street art; the entire vicinity looked like a great place just to hang out.

The castle itself offers a series of walks along the walls, with spectacularly good views on to the city. There are also museums on the grounds but we chose not to explore these since we were enjoying the outdoors so much (and the hilarity of the previously noted peacock attack). After an hour or so at the castle, we walked down towards Alfama, stopping for views at Miradouro di Santa Luzia with its lovely gardens and tiles. We then ventured to a café/bar on plaza overlooking area on the Largo das Portas do Sol. With a table in the sun, we enjoyed decent snacks and drinks (and endured a couple of small American children chasing pigeons around the tables for entirely too long).

Next we wandered through the twisting network of alleys in Alfama. It is as scenic as it is jumbled, and (take note) it’s best to do it from top to bottom rather than vice versa. At the bottom of the neighborhood we stopped at the Feira da Ladra (“thieves’ market”), and then made our way toward the Cathedral of Lisbon, known locally as the Sé. Both inside and out, the Sé is gothic and austere, but impressive.

We made our way back along main streets near the waterfront, then up to the Ascensor (funicular) da Bica, which we rode up to the Rua Loreto, just a short walk from our apartment.

We loved Lisbon too and your report is a wonderful peek at this lovely city. Great job Go_Family of seeing and experiencing so much in a few days! I'm guessing that you'll be back, peacocks or not.

Thanks so much, Happy. I can definitely see Lisbon as a departure point after a northern Spain/Portugal trip.


Does anyone have any questions so far?

Enjoying this report so much -- here's my question:

Where are the pictures?!

<i>Where are the pictures?!</i>

Unfortunately, work has had to take precedence. Coming soon, though!

What was your favorite Portugese dish?