Summer Holiday in Lisbon | Travel

I've never been to Portugal and neither had my brother and my father and with that logic it became the destination of our international summer holiday. Mum had been to Portugal before, of course, but she seems to have visited most damn countries in the world. 

I've been horrible at getting these posts up as it's now exactly a month since we left for our ten day holiday. Oops. But I refuse to miss out on documenting another holiday, as I'm still annoyed with myself when I look at my LA post from 2014 and know I left Flagstaff, Las Vegas, San Francisco and Hawaii undocumented. 

That being said, Lisbon was an odd holiday. It felt a bit like a chill beach holiday despite the fact we only made it to the beach on our final full day - more on that later. We quickly fell into a rhythm of going exploring during the morning and then returning to the hotel for a few hours, either lounging or enjoying the small rooftop pool, to go out for dinner later. 

By now, a lot of the memories have already mashed together but I'll go through my photos and they'll undoubtedly make me recall some of what we expereinced. I think this is the most "lazy" I've ever been at taking photos, as one of the days I only took TWO photos during the whole day. What?

 

In the above photos you can see the fruit market and giant TimeOut Market, which is sort of a big cafeteria that we found on our first day. It was so good and had a wide variety of food courts you could choose from. One anecdote to mention, which I'm sure my brother would love, is that at the fruit market Mum ordered 2 kg. plums for €2 and had misjudged just how many plums are in 2 kg. We all had a right laugh about that.

We had invested in 8 day tickets so we could take all the busses, metro and trains we wanted. Also a thing to mention... I fell literally five minutes after getting out of the metro on our first day and busted up my knee really bad. Like all of the lower part of my knee cap was cut open as I had scraped off I-don't-know how many layers of skin. I'm still so thankful for the tuktuk lady, who was so quick with pouring water over it and wiping it down.

The Belem area and specifically Torre de Belém and Mosteiro dos Jerónimos was something Mum really wanted to see. Due to me feeling a bit unwell on the first day (thanks to my busted knee and my period, which of course had to start as soon as I arrived), we only did the former on our first day but returned a couple of days later to see the latter. We also visited a famous pastry shop Pastéis de Belém but in my opinion that was a bit overrated. Below is my Belem photos. 

Honestly, the days blended together while we were there but it was quite nice to just get lost and enjoy the heat (average high seemed to be 32 degrees), the beautiful city and the lovely family time. However, I still can't get over how Dad one day said that we hadn't done much! It's usually Mum dragging us around to everything frantically, so that we make the most of our time.

We also visited Castelo de São Jorge one of last couple of days, which was really cool because we got to see a great view of the city. It's located quite high up and we got a tuktuk up the streets though I think Mum almost got carsick and regretted the decision a bit. We had discovered just how high and long climb it was the evening before when we had done it on foot, but that whole evening just went from bad to worse so I'll rather not go into details about it.

One more thing to mention about the castle though; male peacocks walk around freely, which isn't uncommon but it's still a bit odd. They can be quite agressive sometimes and they're not called the fighting peacocks for nothing.

I also attempted a panorama but they never seem to turn out just right for me. Still, I think it captured the grandness of the view a bit better than a regular sized photo.

I've mentioned this before but it was nice to have a chill-out holiday and just go with the flow a bit. I'm sure we might not have seen some stuff that would have been great but we still managed to make a lot of our 7 and a half days in Lisbon if you ask me. I still had to take a bit of alone time in the hotel a couple of days to recharge, I'm not sure why travelling tires me out so much.

And now I better leave A little mention to our two only repeat visits. First place was Café No Chiado, which had some of the best food we had during our trip. I'm still eating mostly vegetarian, which was a bit difficult at times during travelling but this place also had some great dishes that suited my dietary choices. Below is the apple pie crumble with ice cream, which was delicious.

The second place we visited twice was a port wine tasting place that I unfortunately can't recall the name of. I'm not much of a wine drinker but I actually quite like port, though much more the white than red - just like with normal wine. We were also introduced to rosé port, which we all liked so Mum and Dad actually bought two bottles of it. Other than being served in a wine glass, they served it as a "drink" with lots of ice and slices of orange.

As mentioned earlier, we finally made it to the beach on our final day. It was something Dad had yearned to do throughout the whole holiday. And after finally being done with my period, I happily joined the boys in the cold water. It was so hot and sticky though, so we didn't last too long.

That's the end of our summer holiday and I managed to write this post. Thank God, so I don't have to look at my archive for this month and cringe for my inability to stick to the promise I made myself. It was a nice holiday but not quite as memorable as many others I've had but that is such a luxury problem. I'm very glad to have seen Portugal though.