Lisbon is definitely my favourite city so far! It's very beautiful. It reminds me of San Francisco, because it is very hilly and has tram lines that go throughout the city. It also sits by a river and so you get these great views of buildings on top of each other spilling into the water.
Photo taken from Elevador do Carmo on the Sandeman Tour
We're here for 5 days, and it's my second day today.*
Yesterday, we got to Lisbon in time for dinner, and had walked by a crowded restaurant on our way to our hostel and decided to go back there to eat. It turns out we had stumbled upon one of the most popular restaurants in the area, and the food was DELICIOUS. We ordered berbigao (cockle) for our appetiser, and dorado and cuttlefish for main course. We were seated next to a real estate investor from Munich who knows the area quite well and comes to Lisbon for vacation and business when he can. He was very friendly, giving us suggestions on what to order and teaching us Portuguese words. We followed his suggestion of adding olive oil and lemon juice to the freshly grilled fish and it was amazing. He still considers himself "a tourist" to the area, despite having a second house in the area, and says he "becomes a new person after each trip to Lisbon." So cool.
We went on a Sandeman tour on the second day. The tour guide, Sebastiao, took us through Chiado and the downtown, ending at Praça do Comércio.
View Below from Elevador do Carmo
Pastel de nata and Ginjinha from a cafe we stopped in on the tour
Here are some of my photos from Praça do Comércio, one of the largest squares in Europe.
The square used to be a parking lot!
A corridor of the old royal buildings that surround the square
View of the square from across the street
Marquis of Pombal, the man who led the reconstruction
The Statue of King Jose I, the king during the reconstruction of Lisbon
For lunch, we went to Casa das Bifanas. It was delicious! A sandwich was 2,50€ and a small beer is 1,00€ so you could get the whole meal for under 4,00€.
I want to eat another one now.
After lunch, we headed for MUDE Design and Fashion Museum, a museum for modern design that
we saw that morning on the pedestrian street.
These photos above are from an exhibit by Felipe Oliveira Baptista, currently the creative director of
Lacoste
Because we loved Casa da India from the last night, we headed back to get the seafood rice that had
ran out the night before.
Finally!
We wanted to see fado after that, so we went to a bar recommended to us by the hostel. It ended up
not having fado on Fridays or Saturdays, so we were told we need to wait two days until the next
performances. They recommended Caldo Verde, a restaurant across the street, which also has fado.
So we went andwere seated just before the end of one of the fado performances. Unfortunately, right
when we were getting excited about finally getting to hear fado, Teresa noticed that there was a message
on the menu saying we have to pay a minimum of 10€ for listening to fado. So being the cheap college
students we are and the fact that we just had a huge dinner, we decided to try to leave asap. There were a
few small arguments with the waiter serving us ("would you not pay if you were at a theatre right now
and had a place within the theatre?"), but we managed to get out with our wallets unscathed.
