Portugal Travels – Adventures 1, 2, and 3

I am recently back and mostly recovered from a trip to Portugal. As with our Italy trip, I’m going to have to cover this trip in several blog posts. I will try to limit the photos in each post to one of each of the following:

• a selfie and/or group shot
• a drinking and/or eating photo
• a historic site
• a view from a restaurant, bar, hotel, or Airbnb
• an artsy photo

No promises I will keep to my limits.

I will also avoid using the word “amazing”, but the trip was amazing, so again, no promises.

Planning

As with Italy, this trip started with a lot of preplanning. My brother Matt got things going in February encouraging us to buy airline tickets. Over the course of the next 7 months, he developed a multi-tabbed spreadsheet that included a 2-paged color-coded itinerary. The itinerary referenced Adventures he detailed in separate tabs, some with walking maps. He did this in consultation with Talia of Mazepa Travel (well, in consultation with her Instagram, but it seemed a little more personal). Matt brought up Talia over the course of the trip several times. I think he has a crush on her. I have to admit, she was spot on.

Dave also got into the planning. He purchased a Fodor’s book and had his nose in it quite often. He carefully reviewed Matt’s spreadsheet as it progressed and provided input along the way. I’m hoping Matt found this input helpful.

My kids also got into the planning. For our birthdays, they bought outfits and shoes for us so we didn’t have the ASICS embarrassment we suffered in Paso Robles. Since she experienced the embarrassment first hand, Heather filled in as our personal shopper.

I got the impression that all women on the trip (Megan, Megan’s mom Carolyn, and myself) were happy to forgo planning responsibilities as much as possible. I only had two concerns. One was Air Portugal’s luggage size and weight restrictions. They appeared a bit draconian to me, but Matt said that was because I had booked Economy Plus and he had booked First Class. Turns out that wasn’t true. The travelers from CA simply ignored the luggage restrictions.

The other concern I had was sleep. It was an overnight flight and a big time change in the wrong direction. I lost sleep over worrying about losing sleep.

Lisboa Adventure 1

The flight to Lisbon went well, though not as well as Matt’s who was served port. We were served bologna sandwiches. It was a breeze getting through customs and getting our luggage. The first difficulty we had was in locating the Uber driver. The airport was just as crazy as Logan at rush hour, and we weren’t sure where we were suppose to be. There was a lot of frantic back and forth with the driver via the app, and I expected some friction when we finally located the car. He couldn’t have been nicer. That was the first indication of many that the people of Portugal are authentically nice.

When we walked into the lobby of our hotel (Corpo Santo), there was complimentary water, coffee, fruit, nuts, pastries, cookies, and ice cream. Outside the elevator on the floor to our room, there were more complimentary nuts and tiny cookies. The room was gorgeous. The next morning, the restaurant manager gave us a full complimentary breakfast (with extra eggs and bacon because we are Americans and asked for it even though we didn’t need it). We could have gotten a complimentary massage. I asked myself “Why are we leaving this hotel? At all?”

But Adventure #1 beckoned.

We were a tad behind schedule, so we had to skip ahead to Matt’s most important part of any of the adventures: the pastries. In particular, the Pastel de Nata. Over the course of our travels, we took any opportunity that presented itself to have one. They were amazing. During Adventure #1, we sampled them at Mantegaria.

From there, we visited Igreja de São Roque, Carmo Convent, Rua Augusta, and Praca Comercio with the Statue of José I of Portugal along the Tagus River. All on a beautiful sunny day.

Lisboa Adventure 2

Adventure 2 involved dinner at Java Rooftop and drinking port at By The Wine with walking on Pink Street in between. Dinner was tapas, which was a recurring theme and a theme I was in total favor of. Tapas at Java included Octopus Ceviche and Beef Tongue flatbread. So good. And I like port.

Lisboa Adventure #3

The next morning, we kicked off Adventure #3 with a stop at Pasteis de Belem for Pastel de Nata. I think the ones here were my favorite.

Once fortified with eggs, bacon, and pastel, we walked to Jeronimos Monastery which we skipped because of the line. From there, we walked to Jardim Da Praca do Imperio, Monument to the Discoveries, and Belem Tower.

The last stop on Adventure #3 was at Sud for lunch where Dave and I shared Soffi Di Vento Pasta with Smoked Pesto, Spinach, Dry Tomato, Pine Nuts and Burrata.

That brought our initial visit to Lisbon to a close. From there, we took a train to Sintra where we enjoyed Adventure #4 and Adventure #5 which I will describe in my next post.

How am I doing with my promises?