We are staying in the coastal town of Estoril, 30 mins by train to Lisbon. On our first excursion into Lisbon it was well over 30 degrees and it’s a hilly town, so did we enjoy our day?
First of all Lisbon is huge, we did want to do the Lisbon open top bus tour, but the deal I’d seen online wasn’t the same in person, so will try booking this online and doing it on our next trip in.
We walked from Cais do Sodré train station into Alfama the oldest district in Lisbon, had a look around the little skinny maze of streets, had lunch and then went in search for Saint George’s Castle, (20 Euro’s for family ticket) the castle is a magnificent ruin, where you can still walk around the battlements taking in the glorious view of Lisbon and it’s answer to the Golden Gate Bridge, the castle is a must do..the views alone will take your breath away, you could easily spend an entire afternoon here, perhaps bring your own lunch to enjoy with the vista.
Just outside the castle we picked up a Tuk Tuk that took us into a shopping centre, it was a 20 min ride and cost 20 Euros. It sped down the motorway at what felt like a million miles an hour, Lucas grinned from ear to ear the whole way and I held on for dear life, but I did enjoy it, it made up for not doing the bus tour saving our legs and injecting some fun into the journey.
Later we walked to the Baixa district, the old merchants district was wiped out by the tidal wave that came crashing onto the city after the 1755 quake, and was rebuilt with much wider streets, we walked from these bustling shopping streets and through the eye catching Victory Arch, straight into Lisbon’s Pride concert, it was only just starting, but could see it was going to be good fun.
We discovered a very busy little Portuguese restaurant, there were similar quieter ones around it, but it’s popularity and reasonable prices made us willing to wait over 20 mins to get a table and it was so worth it, the waiters were jokers, and Jake and Lucas loved it, Jacob ordered steak and cooked it himself on the hot stone, this was something different for our fussy eater, he really enjoyed this new experience. This was a highlight and lifted our spirits after a big day of walking.
On our way back to the Train station we found a Sorveteria (Portuguese for Ice cream parlour) this was a cut above the already very good home made ice creams we had encountered, with every flavour we tried wowing us, Coconut, Chocolate Lemon were all amazing, the lemon (Jakes choice) was so tangy it was refreshing like a sorbet, Lucas and Grant shared their chocolate and Coconut and created a Bounty bar frozen delight of their own, I was being good so just had a spoonful of each of theirs 🙂 the meal, ice creams and walk through the night time streets were a great end to a fantastic day in Lisbon.
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