Heh - I’ve been told that if English doesn’t work, French should be the next language tried … Spanish last!
In Portugal you want to spell bacalhao correctly - the restaurant I visited spells it like you’d see it in Puerto Rico or Spain - Bacalao. Issues!
Wow. These look fantastic. Thanks so much!
The Portuguese have a couple of sayings about Spain:
Neither good water nor good marriages come from Spain.
Spain deserves to have France for a neighbor.
Looks like they have a problem then, given that most of their water comes from Spain.
Here are the photos I took during our trip. The first half is Lisbon (followed by Barcelona). It’s not just a bunch of selfies, there are some good shots that give a feel of many spots of interest.
Oh yeah, one other thing. I was pickpocketed in Lisbon. It’s a long story but no matter how smart you think you are, those guys are smarter. A beggar on the sidewalk distracted me and his partner took my wallet out of a shoulder bag I carry.
If you like hiking/backpacking consider the Portuguese Camino de Santiago (or the lesser known Camino de Fantima). It is walking town to town, staying in hotels, hostels, albergies, including staying in monasteries and has a lot of sites with historical and spiritual significance. Food is along the way with cafes and taverns. If needed there are services which will transport your luggage for as little of 4 euros / bag / transport. 2 main routes are the central (most authentic) and costal (more tourist’y’).
You will experence most all of what you mentioned.
If I was going by myself, I would be very interested in this. A friend of my did it in Spain and had a very enjoyable time.
Brilliant! Thank you for posting these. And sorry about your wallet (and about having to deal with Bank of America).
Hence the comment; the implication being that Spain pisses in the water that comes to Portugal.
I have found that English usually works fine especially in cities and populated areas. In more rural areas it’s only Portuguese, and with a very heavy accent. Though Spanish can help on occasion. I can’t speak to or in French (or Portuguese . In my trip it was English>hand signals(=)Google Translate>Spanish>drawings
But I don’t expect any issue for English in Lisbon.
Good comment. My wife was ‘almost’ pick pocketed. She had taken her shoulder bag off to remove her jacket, and felt someone lifting her bag from behind. She’s feisty, and gave them hell for it, but it’s the first time it’s happened to us for a long time. Worth taking precautions.
I’m talking about the stuff made by Scott Baio.
Welp, our tickets and hotel have been booked, and I’ve also arranged for a couple of tours.
Which brings up the question that inspires fear and loathing in us all: TIPPING. Yes or no, and how much? In this case, we’re specifically talking about tour guides, drivers and restaurants. At least we can contain this one to one country!
Tipping, usually done in the form of leaving some of your change back on the table or telling the cabby to keep the change. Waiters’ salaries are supposed to be decent enough to live on; tipping is considered a show of appreciation, not a required action.
Tour guides don’t expect tipping; you can ask if they accept them or not when you book the tour.
Thank you!
I wanted to update this thread just in case anyone else is thinking of going to Lisbon.
We had a (mostly) fine time, did a lot of stuff, and there’s certainly a lot more to do and see that we just couldn’t get around to in a week.
Our first full day there, we did a small-group day tour to Sesimbra and Arrábida Natural Park. On this trip, we visited Palmela Palace, stopped at two wineries (one major commercial producer and one small family-owned operation) and had a wonderful (and very large!) seafood lunch in the small fishing village of Sesimbra. We passed through the Natural Park (in the summer you can choose to actually make this more than just a quick photo op like we had) and then headed back to Lisbon, where we stopped at the Cristo Rei statue.
We also did a 3-hour walking and tasting tour in Lisbon with the same tour operator a couple days later. I can highly recommend the company, Inside Lisbon. They were very organized and the guides were fantastic. The small group tours are a good size; enough to be fun, not a cattle call.
We also did a 3-hour private walking tour offered by Your Friend in Lisbon that familiarized us with the various neighborhoods, and ways to get up and down the hills on foot - there are public elevators and escalators you can take to avoid a long, steep walk. The guide also took us to a small shop where we got some of the best ham I’ve ever had - literally melt-in-your-mouth. We also had some port there and later stopped by one of the pastel de nata shops for a snack.
We did another wine and food tasting at the Lisbon Winery. It was a bit pricey but you try five full glasses of wine, along with two big plates of cheese, bread and charcuterie. That was dinner one night.
I was also impressed with the small restaurant in our hotel. We ate there the night we came in, and also on Christmas Day since there wasn’t much else open. Both meals were delicious, great wine pairings suggested by the staff and plenty to eat. Wine is cheap in Portugal - you can get a decent bottle for just 3 Euros.
We also went to the Lisbon Oceanarium and the zoo. The Oceanarium in particular was just fantastic and well worth a visit if you like that sort of thing. It’s also located on the site where the 1998 World Expo took place, so there’s lots of open walking space, bars and cafes and a shopping mall in the area - a very modern area of Lisbon to contrast with the old places like Alfama. If you like art, the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum and the Museum of Ancient Art are both very good.
We used Uber exclusively around town, and I couldn’t have asked for a better experience there. Fast, efficient, clean late-model cars, nice drivers, and the prices were very reasonable. The only problem was that sometimes we weren’t sure what car to look for, since we weren’t familiar with some of the various European models. A Seat Leon? A Fiat Tipo?? I learned to look for the license plate instead!
The only real issue we had was on our last day when one of our tour reservations was lost and we had to improvise. We managed to get on another tour with a different company later in the day, but it wasn’t as good as the one I’d originally booked (a cattle-call style tour to Sintra on a bus instead of the private one where we were going to be able to pick which sites we wanted to see) and the timing also caused us to be unable to go to dinner at one of the restaurants we’d wanted to visit. The funicular near our hotel was also out of service, so no ride for me on that, either, but these things happen.
I made an album of some of the things we saw/did - if you click on a photo directly and then the ‘i’ icon in the upper right, there’s a caption with more info.
Looks like a successful trip, and I’m glad that the food scene has improved significantly. Also good to see that some of the best red wines in the world can still be had for a song. We lived on Rua Dom Pedro V (in the Bairro Alto), right across from a small bakery. On the weekends, we would buy a bag of paozinhos (bread rolls) and nosh on those and Quejo da Serra (when in season) and red wine. That photo of the rooftops looks a lot like the view from our apartment.
The croissants and other pastries we got with our breakfast at the hotel were outstanding. I have never been able to figure out how Europe does this seemingly effortlessly, while the vast majority of the time the same items here don’t come anywhere close to the quality even at twice the price.