Lisbon Day 3- Cascais & Sintra

 Saturday morning, we met our guide Isabel at our hotel and walked to our car nearby. From there, we drove along the coast to Cascais which is only 20 minutes or so outside of Lisbon. It was once a town for summer homes but now is a treated like a suburb of Lisbon and people commute into the city to work. It was a cute seaside town and Isabel mentioned that American ex-pats have taken to the town which made sense. We saw the marina and walked around a little before getting to visit the Saturday craft fair. 

From Cascais, we headed to Sintra which is usually less crowded in the afternoon (vs the morning). We went to Quinta da Regaliera which was beautiful. The property has a palace and really cool gardens. Isabel was great at knowing where to take great photos. The house was built by a man with a lot of interests. Wikipedia describes him this way which sums it up nicely: António Augusto Carvalho Monteiro (1848–1920) was a Brazilian-Portuguese businessman, collector, bibliophile, entomologist and Freemason. 

After visiting the Quinta da Regaliera, we had lunch in the town of Sintra and popped into a few shops. We then went to the Pena Palace. You can’t enter the palace with a private tour guide and tickets this year cost 75 euro a person so we only visited the grounds, kitchen and chapel. I think spending more time at Quinta da Regaliera was a better choice. For Pena Palace, it’s up on a hill so we took a bus up but walked down. It was also beautiful with a lot of tile work but a little crowded.

After Pena Palace we drove back to Lisbon and said goodbye to Isabel. We then went out to do some last minute Portugal shopping before dinner at Can the Can. Dinner was great and the fish was really fresh. Despite all the walking we did yesterday we still walked back to the hotel for our last night. Heading to the airport soon to go to London. 

Lisbon Day 2

 On Friday morning, we met our guide Leonor in our hotel for more touring of Lisbon. We met our driver in the next plaza over (Paula had told her I am allergic to Jacarandas) so they chose the pick up location in the plaza without them. We drove to the Belem neighborhood and Leonor pointed out some sites along the way including the presidential palace. In Belem, we went to the maritime history museum. The museum starts with the Portuguese explorers and goes until more modern day. It was really interesting to go into more detail about the explorers. There’s also a room like a small airplane hanger that has actual ships from various eras and usages. It was really cool. There is a monastery connected to the museum but the line is always really long and it doesn’t seem to be worth it so we stayed outside the monastery but did go into the church next door. The church was beautiful and it had the tombs of the most famous/important Portuguese poet and Vasco Da gama. After the church, we walked to the bakery that claims to have started making Pastel de Nata. That was one of the best ones we had so far. After the bakery, we went closer to the water to see the monument celebrating the explorers and the Belem tower. 

After our tour, we got dropped off at a park with a cafe that is near a botanical garden that was built into the area that used to be a quarry in Lisbon. We visited the botanical garden after lunch and it was beautiful. After visiting the garden, we took a taxi to a shop that was like an artists co-op. And then walked back to the hotel from there. 

In the evening, we took the subway to a chef’s apartment for a cooking class. We made mushroom, toasted almonds, sea bass, scrambled eggs and a custard we caramelized for dessert. We gas a really good time and left very full. 

Lisbon Day 1

 On Thursday morning, we woke up early, had breakfast and then got a taxi to the train station where we rode the train for a little less than 2 hours to Lisbon. The train was comfortable and easy enough. After arriving in Lisbon we took a taxi to our hotel. Our hotel is in another converted convent but this one is pretty new. We dropped our bags and went out for food in the neighborhood. We had pretty good pizza and pasta at an Italian restaurant. After settling into the hotel, we met our tour guide for the day Paula. Paula took us to several neighborhoods around Lisbon. Because Lisbon is SO hilly, we took cabs in a few places to go up hill but mostly walked downhill. We started with the church connected to our hotel. It had suffered a fire in the 1950’s and was pretty ornate before then but when they renovated, they decided to leave the damage to the church visible to honor the fire and also to acknowledge the pogrom that had happened there in the early16th century as part of the inquisition. It was interesting to see a church in that condition intentionally. 

From there we took a taxi to a neighborhood that has the Church of Saint Rogue, which is a Jesuit church. This church was lovely and more of what you’d expect. There was some really intricate mosaics that looked painted. We then went to the Praça do Comercio which is near the water and had a very large statue of King John I. We then got in another cab to go to the top of a hill where the original castle (Castle of Saint George) was. There is still some ruins there and an active dig site. The views of the city were great from there and there were several peacocks just hanging around. We then walked down through several neighborhoods that are preparing for the festival of St Anthony that happens in June. It seems like the city transforms to honor him. We walked back to our hotel and said goodbye to Paula. 

For dinner, we took the subway one stop up hill to a restaurant that’s called Mini Bar. It’s a speak easy style restaurant created by a very famous Portugués chef Jose Avillez. The food was very good and creative in a fun way. We had prawn ceviche, really good sourdough bread, Caesar salad. I had a pork katsu sandwich with sweet potato chips and mom had a steak. We decided to find gelato on the way home and we found an Italian style gelato that was really good. Great start to our time here.