Day 7

Friday August 3

9:30am GMT - woke up around 8, finally got down to breakfast - same as yesterday of course - and made it out about 9:30. We walked a few minutes to the square to catch the famous Tram 28. Got on easily with our LisboaCards, just had to pass it over a thing at the entrance, and got on for a ride. Well, I thought the ride was short, but it took us practically all over town, up and down steep streets, barely missing parked cars, throughout all the different neighborhoods of town, etc. We got to a point high up and the tram ended, she made us all get off, but luckily it was turning around. Instead of sitting on it the whole entire time, we got off earlier and took the subway the rest of the way, which was fast, easy, and clean.

11:45am - after finally getting to the right place, we got the bus up to the castle, which is high up at the top of the Alfama district - the bus was small and veeeeerrrrryyyyyyy crowded, but still better than walking. We went to the castle and spent some time walking around looking at the viewpoints. Worth the 3.50 euros fee (discount with the LisboaCard) to see the views. I wasn't so fond of the really high up views, but what else is new. It was a perfect day, a bit hazy, but you could see the whole city (see photos). Pretty amazing.

1:30pm - Following the Rick Steves Alfama walking tour we made it down to the Largo Santa Luzia lookout where we found a decent but probably touristy and overpriced outdoor café for lunch called Miradouro de Santa Luzia. We got some olives and fruit salad, and I got a "tomato salad" which turned out to be a plate of tomatoes (see photos). It was quite tasty tomato, but still just a plate of tomatoes, LOL. Oh well, live and learn. The olives were, of course, QUITE tasty, though. Yummy :p

2:15pm - Time to descend the Alfama to get to the water. It is a maze of staircases, narrow cobbled "streets" which are really more like sidewalks, no way a car could get down most of the streets. On one little square, some photographers were taking pictures of someone. Interesting. We wandered for a bit til we found the main street, where there are a bunch of fado restaurants. If we have a chance I'd like to take a bus over there to try one of them out, but we'll see if we make it back. We caught a bus back to the square outside our hotel, which was much nicer than walking. Thank you LisboaCard!

4:30pm - finally back at the hotel for a while, we are sitting in the lounge which is nice and cool and the wireless signal is much better down here. Finally I was able to upload all of my pictures from yesterday. So enjoy.

5:45pm - took the metro from the station that is just a few steps from our hotel a few stops away to Parque Eduardo VII a big park in the newer area of town connected by this long tree-lined street called Avenida da Liberdade. The Parque's metro station was BLUE, all BLUE. Wacky!! So we had a hard time actually getting into the park but once we found the entrance, it was nice. Great views down to the Baixa and the river. We continued down the Avenida all the way back to the square where our hotel is.

6:45pm - After a couple days of grilled meat for dinner we decided to have italian. Found an Italian pizzeria type place on the main restaurant street just a couple min from our hotel called Locanda something. It was pretty busy, probably of all the non-Portuguese people who wanted stuff LOL. I had a pizza con salame, aka pizza with salami. It was pretty good, thin crust and cooked in a wood-burning oven - huge for 7.50 euros. I also ate the olives they put on the table and of course paid a euro for them but who cares :p olives twice today woohoo! We were sitting outside a huge window into the restaurant's kitchen. It was pretty cool to watch them make all the stuff - he smiled and nodded at us a couple times when he saw us looking. Very clean kitchen, you would have been proud mom ;)

8:00pm - because we had pizza and it went pretty fast, we were done about 8pm and decided to just have an early night because we are going to Sintra tomorrow. On our way back, we unfortunately had to pass through the sea of restaurants, which unfortunately meant dealing with the pushy guys out front with the menus. One of the more aggressive ones from yesterday who had stopped us like three times sadly recognized us and was so rude he stood in front of me and was like "you promised you'd eat here!" I was like "we are here for a couple more days" to try to get rid of him, anyway he was so rude I'd never in a million years consider eating there and I wish I knew the name because I'd tell other people to avoid eating there too. What a total asshole!

9:30pm - so now we are back in the lounge just chilling. Full day planned tomorrow so we will try to get to bed a bit earlier tonight.