The first weekend in May I headed to Lisbon, Portugal to meet my mom for 4 days. Before I studied abroad one of the top places I wanted to visit was Lisbon and my mom (being the great woman that she is) agreed on flying out and meeting me there.
We stayed at a Marriott about 15 minutes from the airport and 10 minutes from downtown. Thursday evening after my arrival we hung out at the hotel, drinking Super Bock and eating dinner at the hotel's restaurant: Citrus Bar & Restaurant. I got the chef's fish special which was a large piece of fish, vegetable and sauce cooked inside a porcelain dish covered with a filo dough. It was amazing.
Like in Dublin, we decided to purchase passes for the double decker tour buses. In Lisbon we used Lisbon Sightseeing which has 3 different lines and your tickets are good for 48 hours. After a shuttle from the company picked us up at our hotel on Friday morning we decided to take the line which would drop us off at the Castle of São Jorge, which is right above the Alfama district. This castle is the main staple of Lisbon's history, it is where the first human occupation of Lisbon is recorded. Instead of taking a bus like we did, you can also take one of Lisbon's historic tramcars up to the site, it just might be a little crowded. The views from up there are absolutely breathtaking and you can see the orange rooftops of Lisbon for miles.
After hiking around the Castle for a couple of hours we were starving so we headed to the Belém Tower and grabbed lunch at Vela Latina before we went in. Vela Latina is definitely a restaurant I recommend in Lisbon. Mom and I got some great white wine, she had oysters for a starter and I had the lobster cream soup. For our main course we each had fillet of hake with a pumpkin and ginger mousse: maybe the best fillet of fish meal I have ever had. We finished off with some great panna cotta for dessert. We also had some wine with our meal and since Mom made me choose which one we ordered the man made me taste it: I don't think he was impressed with my swirling, sniffing and slurping skills, but that’s okay. It was an absolutely amazing meal.
When we finished lunch we headed over to the Belém Tower, which was the one thing I knew I really wanted to see in Lisbon. The tower played an important role during the Age of Discoveries and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is absolutely beautiful, made out of limestone with amazing, amazing, AMAZING architecture. Being right on the Tagus River the location of the tower is stunning and there are great views from all levels of the tower. We made it all the way to the top but unfortunately there is only one staircase for people climbing up and down. And even more unfortunate for us, there was a group of 100 Italian high school students who went up before us and clogged the stairwell: not fun, but it all worked out in the end and was well worth the wait.
After the Belém Tower we headed back to the hotel to enjoy happy hour in the lounge. We decided to be adventurous and try the different types of Super Bock. We really like the original to begin with and the stout was really, really good too: I liked it even more than the original However, if someone ever offers you the Green Super Bock, don't take it unless you like beer that tastes like a strange form of lime-aid, it was hard for us to get down we disliked it that much, but we couldn't let it go to waste!
On Saturday our first stop was at the Museu Nacional do Azulejo (National Tile Museum) which is a stop I definitely recommend to anyone visiting Lisbon. My mom loves porcelain and tile so we both really enjoyed it. The museum is organized by time periods and tell you where the tiles were found and any other information they know about them. Tile is a huge part of Portuguese culture and history, as you can tell from all the tiled buildings throughout the city, so it was great to learn about the history of it and see the progression over time.
Next we headed to Rossio Square and the Santa Justa Elevator for lunch. We grabbed lunch at an outdoor café right across the street from the famous Santa Justa Elevator that was built to connect the lowest and highest parts of the city. The elevator was designed by French architect Raoul de Mesnier du Ponsard who was an apprentice of Gustave Eiffel. For lunch we had seafood paella and a nice bottle of white wine while watching people go up and down in the elevator. After we finished lunch we walked over to Rossio Square, one of Lisbon's famous squares. The tile work on the square was really amazing black and white waves but made us a little bit dizzy (the bottle of wine might have had something to do with it as well.)
On Friday when we were on the bus we passed a stop for the Museu Nacional dos Coches (National Coaches Museum) and thought it sounded interesting so we decided to return and check it out on Saturday, and I am glad we did. This museum holds a collections of the highest end carriages in the world; basically the Rolls Royce, Lamborghini and Ferraris of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. The building the museum is in is an 18th century riding school with stables and is breathtaking in itself. These coaches were so detailed and rich looking, Cinderella would have envied them. They seemed to have a new coach made for every baptism, marriage, birthday and party. They even had a carriage on display that had bullet holes in it from an assassination attempt. The only thing the museum could have had that they didn't was a carriage for people to sit and take a picture in, that would have made it perfect.
The last site we wanted to see in Lisbon was the Monument to the Discoveries which isn't very far from the Belém Tower. This tower was built in honor of Henry the Navigator and is at the location where many Portuguese explorers started their journey. The monument features statues of 30 people who were influential during the Age of Discoveries. This is another monument you can go to the top of, but we opted out because it is so close to the Belém Tower and the views would have been pretty similar.
Our weekend in Lisbon was really amazing. I love traveling with my mom and it was great to get to see her and see things that we were both really interested in like the tile museum, coach museum and castle. We both felt like we could have spent weeks there visiting all the different squares and monuments. If we go back we want to take a day trip out to Sintra, a city about 2 hours outside of Lisbon that has multiple castles and people say looks like a fairytale.
I'm currently in the middle of the Cannes Film Festival so I will be doing a blog or two on that in the next couple of days!
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