Day 45: Still Lisbon

Sunny and beautiful! 28°

Shifting Our Unplanned Plans!

I figured my baccalau cod dinner from last night was a good place to start because I’ve been talking about it pretty much endlessly since we decided to fly home from Lisbon.

Last evening we went in search of a refreshing pre-dinner drink with a plan to walk to a restaurant that I had located on Google maps afterwards. we climbed up to one of the viewpoints where we had spotted a casual place serving drinks the day before. The views of the fortress and the city are quite lovely from this spot.

We climbed up through the trolley cars and street celebrations, but it seemed as though we caught the peak of the street party the night before. That was rather fortunate because last night things were still happening, but not at the same level, though it was noisy on our street until almost 1:00 AM.😴

After enjoying our drink and seeing the rather special church beside the bar (even AM was impressed),

we began to descend through the labyrinth that is Alfama in search of the restaurant that I had picked out.

However, we never made it that far. As we came around a sharp corner and down some stairs, we saw a number of people milling around outside a different restaurant. Some of the folks had lined up, and after checking the menu we realized that we had found just what we were looking for. Not knowing if we needed a reservation I asked the owner and he said no and to just get in line. So we did, and it turned out to be one of the best decisions we’d made all day!

I think that because it was a national holiday, the Portuguese were out in numbers, and most of the people in the restaurant were Portuguese. There were multigenerational families at large tables, and the food was moving fast and furiously, as was the wine!

There was an open brazier where the fish and meat was cooked, and I counted a staff of nine servers. Large numbers of servers is something that I’ve observed in Portugal during our many visits. By contrast in Spain and some other European countries there might be one or at most two people serving this number of tables. The restaurants are usually family run and I guess that’s how they keep everybody working. This was a cash only restaurant, so we had to check to make sure that we had enough remaining euros, and fortunately we did!

Anne ordered two meat skewers, which came with all sorts of extra food. The portions were quite large as you can see. You might also notice that we each had a half bottle of wine, because one of us likes white and the other red. Fortunately, we are in Portugal where the prices are pretty reasonable.

While we were eating a couple sat down at the table beside us. In Europe, tables are often placed very closely together side-by-side to maximize seating. In any event, we started talking with this couple who turned out to be lovely people from Waterford, Ireland. They had just finished walking for a week in Portugal with some friends and were just taking a few days to see Lisbon. We seemed to have much in common, and I think we talked for about two hours before exchanging contact information, saying goodbye and starting the climb back up to our accommodation in the dark.

This morning we woke up and went next-door to our now favourite breakfast spot in Lisbon. I’m definitely going to miss these breakfasts when we get home the day after tomorrow!

We spent a little time sorting out our morning escape route to the airport which we will need tomorrow. I plotted it on my mapping app and we decided that we should walk it just to make sure that the route to the train station worked.

It turned out to be a good decision because we were able to make a few adjustments, thereby avoiding a bunch of stairs. It was a nice walk though.

We came around a corner and we sort of went, oh, oh. Another cruise ship had arrived this morning. We began to wonder how busy the city centre would be?

We continued on the train station and basically got ourselves sorted out. We didn’t really want to take an expensive taxi to the airport as we are very comfortable using the metro and buses in most European cities. For €3 each we can take the train to a metro stop and then catch the metro directly to the airport. The trip takes about 30 minutes, around the same amount of time that a taxi would take for a fraction of the cost, and possibly with better reliability due to the morning traffic. I guess we will see if we made the correct decision tomorrow morning!

This process sorted out, we decided to walk into the city centre to get a number of chores taken care of. I had a list.😎 However, we soon discovered that there was not one cruise ship, but three, including two very large vessels. The larger ships were humongous! There’s really no other way to express this. Unbelievable!

As we walked past the ships, the people were streaming down the ramps while the tour buses and tuk tuks were assembling in large numbers. I swear that I could see the level of the ships rising relative to the land as the many passengers disembarked.😉

This is when our undefined plans for the day shifted. We had been discussing taking a ferry across the river, and had googled a number of the options. However, because it appeared that we couldn’t sit in an open area to view the city from the ferry we decided not to go. We quickly changed our minds on the fly and walked along the waterfront in search of the correct ferry terminal. There are several.

We eventually found the correct terminal, purchased our tickets and before we knew it the ferry was pulling away. It was actually pretty good because the windows were pulled down and taking pictures from the water was pretty easy.

We were quickly across and had a look around.

We had read that the small village was a great place for seafood. As it was approaching lunchtime, we had fun interviewing all the posted menus.

After being approached by several of the entrepreneurial restaurant owners, we selected a simple restaurant that looked promising, and where the owners hadn’t bothered us.😊

It turned out to be another good choice! We ordered a lighter lunch, which is a bit contrary to the typical noon time meal eaten in Portugal.

Once again, we had the good fortune to be seated beside someone who was interesting to talk to. This retired fellow, somewhat younger than us, had lived for 14 years in California and done his degree in geology while there. He later returned to Lisbon where he had worked for a time at the airport and then somehow managed to retire very early. He was considering returning to university for his masters degree in palaeontology this fall.

We talked about all sorts of things, including American politics, life in Portugal and the recent political happenings in Europe. He told us that the restaurant we were enjoying was his favorite, and he made the trip over quite often. The family run restaurant has a reputation for fairness, good portions and good value. We agreed.

Then it was back to the mainland.

We managed to get our chores dealt with in a very crowded central old ftown. And we escaped as quickly as possible.

We navigated our way through the winding streets and climbed up to an area with which we were familiar with.

We stopped at a small terraced bar with marvellous views across the city, and we each enjoyed an exorbitantly priced drink. What the hell, it’s only money, and you can’t take it with you. The view was certainly worth it.

We are again returning to the same restaurant that we enjoyed so much last night. So in order to make sure we get a seat, assuming it’s open tonight, we have to go there right now. I’ll finish this up after dinner, and hope that we don’t run into our new Irish friends, or it’ll be another late night I suspect!😂

Made it to the restaurant just in time because it filled up very quickly, and there was a long lineup shortly after that.

My two views tonight from where I sat

And this.

Food was good again tonight. I enjoyed cod while AM had cuttlefish.

We are now back in our room where there is lots to do. So I’ll say thanks for following along, and let’s do this again soon! The messages, emails and texts with support were always appreciated!❤️

Geoff 🍻