Lisbon, Portugal

Hi there! Welcome to our cram-everything-we-possibly-can-into-our-forty-hours-in-Lisbon blog post!

Thanks to ridiculously cheap European flights, we are taking a six-day vacation to see a bit of Portugal and Spain.

We were only in the city for less than 2 days but we saw and did so much (even against the advice of our hostel host).

From the moment we landed we were doing something. We had our first Portuguese lesson from our Uber driver into the city, he didn’t speak very much English but he was very good at using Google Translate while driving. He taught us “thank you”, which is “obrigado” and he tried to explain that there are masculine and feminine versions (“obrigada”) but we’re still unclear if it’s the sex of the person saying it or the person you’re saying it to that matters… I guess we’ll need another lesson.

We got to our hostel and had the world’s longest check-in process, it probably took up at least 1/16th of our time in the city. Then we headed out for some Portuguese dinner of fried pork that was so good!!

In the check-in process they sold us on the hostel pub crawl that night so after dinner we had a quick change and partial hair curling (before the adapter overheated) and met up with some new friends. Of the group of 20, there were 3 other Canadians, one went to St. Lawrence College in Kingston, one that’s from Apsley (the tinniest town just north of James’s house), and one that’s a medical resident in Toronto. The others in the group were from the UK, the US, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland or Australia. We were asked how it feels to be “almost invaded by the US” and that ironically came from the German guy.

We pub crawled to 3 bars and a club on “Pink Street” and managed to get a full 4.5 hours of sleep before our jam-packed next day.

Rested and rejuvenated, we started our day in the neighbourhood of Belém. We had a breakfast of the best-rated pastel de nata in Lisbon, and we too would rate them very highly.

We walked in the pouring rain to the Jerónimos Monastery and the Tower of Belém, which were both stunning pieces of architecture.

Then we hopped in a 40-minute Uber to the foothills municipality of Sintra. Our first stop here was Peña Palace. This colourful castle is the most famous of Sintra’s landmarks and dates back to the Middle Ages. It started as a monastery, then it got converted to a summer home for King Ferdinand II and Queen Maria II, and now it’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site that you can tour and see the beautiful antiques and tile work.

When I told you that this was a jam-packed day, I wasn’t exaggerating. While we were waiting for our call time to enter Peña Palace, we were buying tickets for the second castle and planning our route to get there.

We went on an ambitious little hike through Peña Park and almost made it to where we were trying to go! The sign at the entrance called it a labyrinthic system of paths and narrow roads and I would definitely agree with that description. The park was beautiful and had North American sequoia trees, Chinese ginkgo trees, ferns from Australia & New Zealand, all because the King ordered it be that way. The sky was clearing up by this time so we got a nice view of the Moorish Castle on our way down the hill.

We left Peña Park and we were about to go down into a particularly confusing part of the trail system just as the rain started again and this nice taxi driver saved us from getting lost and gave us a ride to get closer to the second castle. She was super helpful and pointed out a couple of castles in the area and gave us some good tips!

The next castle was Quinta da Regaleira, another UNESCO World Heritage Site and this was more of a park with a lot of historical points of interest and oh by the way there’s a palace here too. But it was stunning!! There was a cave, a waterfall, a well (two actually, one incomplete and one initiation), a tennis court, a massive greenhouse, many fountains, many tunnels, many towers, and many, many opportunities for photos.

The actual palace was the last thing to see here and it was beautiful too. It’s very much a Gothic-style building with gargoyles, pinnacles and a nice tower. We spent a ton of time inside, mainly to charge Georgia’s phone but that meant we learned a ton about the history of this place.

The day was far from over by this point, we then got an Uber back into the city to go to the National Tile Museum. While everything we did up to this point was amazing, the museum was the highlight of Lisbon for me. It houses one of the largest collections of azulejo (Portuguese glazed coloured tiles) and shows the development of the art form since the 15th century.

There were massive murals and altarpiece panels depicting religious scenes, very satisfying pattern works and exhibits showing just how much work goes into every piece. There was a whole room showing how the artists would create the colours used on the tiles. The classic design is all in white and blue, and other pieces feature more colours but only in Portugal, there is the use of olive green.

The museum is in an old covenant but still features the Madre des Deus church. I’ve seen some pretty amazing churches but I think this one might be the most impressive. There’s a Google virtual walkthrough of it here. Pictures (but mine especially) do it no justice. It was incredible.

The entire time we were there, I was speechless. I’m currently listening to a podcast about ceramic tile art and looking for kits to try to make some myself. I’m a changed person after that museum.

26,000 steps later we were back at the hostel to sit down for the first time today. We had showers and took a little break before having a tapas dinner with a bottle of Portuguese wine as a goodbye to Lisbon.