Day Thirty Two - Lisbon

Maria woke us up with tea in bed at around 6am, we had some cereal before finishing packing and doing a double check of our things. We also decided to leave the rucksacks in favours of wheely suitcases we borrowed! The rucksacks we decided are a pain in the arse to carry as well as looking ridiculous. Dad and Maria dropped us at Heathrow Terminal 3 around 7.45am for our flight, we checked in online so we only had to drop bags and wait.

We got a coffee and a newspaper to pass away some time. I also bought a book for the trip (Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), hopefully to read on the beach or something. The BA flight to Lisbon was pretty good, only 2.5hours and ran pretty much to schedule. We arrived to good weather and we took a short cab ride to the hotel, only 6 euro ($10)!

After sorting ourselves out and dropping off bags we grabbed a map from reception and worked out we needed to get the metro into town. The system worked really well and we both got a return ticket for around 4 euro. We spent a few hours getting familiar with Lisbon mixed in with some shopping! The city is a little strange, very spread out with no real centre to speak of.

Typical street in Lisbon - real problem with graffiti here

You can't love it or hate it but just enjoy it for what it is. Our hotel is a little out of the city but not in a bad location, it's only a few mintues walk to the metro and just a little more to the main train station that we can use to get to Sintra and also down to the Algarve in a few days time. It's also by the big Bull fighting stadium in Lisbon (Campo Pequeno) but don't worry, apparently in Portuguese bull fighting they don't actually kill the bull unlike the Spanish.

Not walking up that hill

Our shopping trip was pretty successful - it's been a running joke so far about the lack of shorts available during summertime in Europe. Honestly, there is NOTHING unless you want denim shorts. But I managed to find a single pair in my size in some random shop that were also on sale. Some might say it was fate, but I bought them. Jo got a really nice skirt too that I think she'll wear all the time as it is hot here.

Dinner - Yum

We found a little spot in tourist central for dinner, we had grilled salmon with vegetables. Very nice too, it was basic but fresh and tasted very home cooked. Fish is the main thing on the menu in Portugal so it would be a shame not to try it and we weren't disappointed, even for a tourist restaurant.