A Perfect Lisbon Birthday

Lisbon was easily one of my favorite cities- it has this great, laid back vibe, tons of fresh seafood, plenty of winding, adorable cobblestone streets, the people are friendly, the views are spectacular and the weather was perfect! By itself, it was wonderful, but then Smash and Stephen came to visit and made a great trip to Lisbon into an epic trip to Lisbon!!

We got into Lisbon late on the 22nd – 2 days before Smash and Stephen showed up. We found our adorable rental apartment (no straight lines or right angles to be found, but it was full of charm!), marveled at the amazing view and went to bed. The next morning we got up and did a whole bunch of boring things that needed to get done. Nick got a haircut, which is always an interesting experience in a foreign country. His Portuguese is almost non-existent/made-up gibberish and the guy who cut his hair spoke almost no English. Nick ordered a “small” haircut- does that mean only take a small amount off, or does it mean make the hair really short/small? Either way, it worked and he ended up with a bright shiny haircut. Meanwhile, I was sitting in a nearby laundromat watching our clothes get clean! We also ran up to Jose Alvadez stadium to pick up a birthday present for Smash- tickets to watch Sporting Portugal on the 25th! It was pretty boring, but we got a lot of dumb stuff out of the way so that we could have fun and play when Smash and Stephen showed up.

The next day we got up early and Nick learned about a wonderful, beautiful event called a “sunrise”. The sunrise (or, reverse sunset as he calls it) was absolutely stunning from our apartment. We enjoyed it immensely with some birthday pastries and then set out to pick up Smash and Stephen from the airport. They were in surprisingly great shape for having flown from DC to Newark and then the 5 hours to Portugal. They said they only got minimal sleep, but were determined to be awake! We took them up the gigantic hill from the subway stop to our apartment and they got dressed, brushed teeth and got ready to have a day. We headed over to the thieves market area of Lisbon to check out their wares and enjoy the beautiful, sunshiney day.

We found some churches along the way and stopped in those as well. After wandering for a bit, we headed back to our hilly neighborhood of Alfama to find some lunch. We found a cute outdoor cafe near the fado museum and ordered “cheese and smoked ham hot toasts” for lunch. We were a little suspicious when the waiter kept referring to them as “cheese and smoke” but the menu clearly said “smoked ham”. We got our sandwiches, and they looked great, but upon further inspection, there was no ham, there was also nothing smokey. Just cheese and tomatoes. Maybe it was the lack of sleep or the excitement of all being together again, but for whatever reason the lack of ham and smoke struck us all as quite hilarious and we spent most of lunch laughing about it- and decided that “ham” must mean “tomatoes” in Portuguese.

We continued our hilarious adventure by wandering out to the other parts of historic Lisbon down by the river (when we took our walking tour our guide told us that there are 2 answers to 95% of the questions people ask in Lisbon, the first answer is “Brazil” the second answer is “go towards the river”. Without even knowing about this advice yet, thats what we were doing. To be fair, the river is downhill and it’s much easier to walk downhill than up). Along the river we found a much more touristy part of Lisbon, but enjoyed looking at the squares, the straight streets (there were not many straight streets in Lisbon), the arch, the statues and the street performers. After a few hours of wandering through those neighborhoods, we went to find a place for wine tasting. We had heard that Portugal has great wines, and they are known for their port. We found a small wine shop that provided us with a few port tastings, the man who ran the shop went from not very friendly to very friendly and then back to surly very quickly. We didn’t learn much about the different variations of port (fortunately, at another wine shop later in the week we learned more about port than we could have ever asked for. Smash even said her port education was more complete after a few minutes in that wine shop than after years of serving port in fancy restaurants) but he did suggest a few excellent bottles of wine and made us laugh when, after several failed attempts to get the credit card reader to work, he held up the machine saying, “she works, she works!”

We took our purchases and headed to have some tapas- which turned out to be hot dogs wrapped in bacon and some cheese. It was still fun! We sampled the vihno verde, a unique wine with some bubbles and a light flavor. And then, the moment we had all been waiting for- Smash was able to see the results of her NCLEX which she had taken the day before she left. She was nervous, but knew she had to check… and she had passed! It was definitely a day of celebration!

For dinner we went to the Corkscrew, a small restaurant that we had passed earlier in the day and decided that if we could find it again, that is where we would go. We tried the sardines (which had a story to tell… the cans usually had 3 sardines in them, but the can that they opened for us had 4- one for us each!), salmon and blood sausage. They even brought out a little piece of apple pie for me and a small glass of port for all of us to celebrate my birthday. It was an absolute blast!

The next day we went out to the Campo Grande and Campo Pequeno area. The football stadium was out in Campo Grande and we thought we would explore the area for a while first. We visited campo pequeno in the hopes that we could find out more about their famous bullfighting on horses (they also, apparently, don’t kill the bulls, although what becomes of them, I do not know) but had no luck, the arena was being set up for some chocolate show. We walked through a long, very pretty but very narrow park to get to campo grande where we found a super sketchy lunch of chicken spaghetti and bones (which we all lived through, shockingly!) and picked up some scarves to show our support for Sporting Lisbon. Nick and I were pleasantly surprised to find out that we knew 3 of the players. Uri Rosell had played for Sporting Kansas City and we had watched him in several games, Fredy Montero was one of Nick’s favorite Seattle Sounders players and THE Nani all played for Sporting Portugal. The game was a little slow, but the chanting and flag waving was utterly fascinating so we didn’t mind. Sporting Portugal did end up scoring a goal towards the end of the game which made it way more fun, and the chanting reached fever pitch. We even yelled some of the easier chants with the crowd. It ended up being a great game! To celebrate the win we went back to Alfama to have some dinner and almost killed Stephen by all ordering something with shellfish.

Now, from our apartment we had this amazing view and we could see orange trees just at the bottom of the tiny hill outside our apartment. We had seen orange trees all over Lisbon and we decided that tonight was the night and we were going to try those tempting, delicious looking oranges.

Nick and Stephen spent a few dangerous minutes jumping up and down on the hill getting us each an orange. They looked amazing, and they smelled amazing as Stephen peeled one and handed us all pieces. Smash stuck one in her mouth and immediately made a face and started laughing “they’re so sour” she managed to choke out between laughs. We all immediately bit into our own pieces and found out she had never been more right. They were unbelievably sour and brought tears to our eyes. Here we were walking down the streets, laughing and crying and making faces. We must have looked ridiculous, but it sure was funny. We found a tiny family run restaurant near us and went in to try the seafood. Smash ordered the cuttlefish (squid) and we all learned that in Portugal squid is served with the ink. Poor Smash had to learn the hard way when she looked up from her dinner and we all burst out laughing because her teeth, tongue and lips were all black. She even had ink running down her chin! Hilarious! After our hilarious dinner and Stephen’s near brush with death, we went back to the apartment and played cards.

The next day we took the walking tour where we learned several important things about Lisbon. Our guide gave us directions to the two best restaurants we tried in Lisbon and we learned about a wonderful thing called a nata.

My absolute favorite thing that I learned was this gem: during the reign of Napoleon, the way to conquer a country was to ride into its capital, dispatch with the current government and then the country would belong to Napoleon as well. Well, the Portuguese monarchy decided they would trick Napoleon and simply move the capital of Portugal from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (remember, one of the two answers to every question is Brazil). If Napoleon wanted to conquer Portugal, he would have to sail halfway across the world to do so! Ha!

We walked through Alfama where we learned about the summer sardine festivals. Our guide told us it goes like this: start at the top of the hill, grab a piece of bread and a sardine. Squeeze the bread so that the fillet in the sardine pops up and eat it. Next, peel out the bones and find a cat. Feed the cat. Eat the remaining fillet. Continue until your bread is soaked through and then find a grill, lay your bread on it and let it get nice and toasty. Eat the bread. Repeat. Eventually, after 5-6 hours, you will find yourself at the bottom of the hill.

We learned about the secret to Portugal’s power- it was a round ball that they used for navigation (it didn’t work super well. They tried to find America and got to Brazil, but it was still the epitome of the technology at the time) the ball can be found on everything from the flag to inside churches to the tops of street lights. We walked past the port where new food discoveries found their way into Europe and learned that anything that was not Portugal was referred to as India.

We learned all about the earthquake of 1755 which occurred on Nov. 1st, all saints day. All the good catholics lit candles in honor of their dead and went to church. Then, the earthquake struck. It was (probably) a 9.0 and lasted 9 minutes. It destroyed just about everything, the churches collapsed, full of people and the candles that had been lit burned almost everything that the earthquake had not destroyed. The survivors all headed away from the collapsing buildings to the biggest open area, which happened to be right next to the river. A few minutes later, a tidal wave hit. All in all, the earthquake killed almost 2/3 of the population. Now everything is divided to pre-earthquake architecture and post-earthquake architecture.

Anyway, it was a long tour, about three hours and a half, and about 100 hills, but so educational and we learned tons from our Portuguese guide. After our tour we stopped at the nata place that our guide had recommended and absolutely fell in love. We tried our nata with loads of cinnamon as he recommended (and remembered not to breathe while eating)- so, so good. After our nata we went to dinner at Super Mario per our guides recommendation. It was tiny and we were the only foreigners in the place (though a French couple came in later) and the food was absolutely superb. We tried the bacalhau (dried, salted cod. Which, for some reason, is the national dish of Portugal) which was good, but the grilled sardines (skin, eyeballs and all!) were absolutely amazing and definitely the highlight of the meal. Afterwards we went back and had more nata. When a fresh batch was available a bell was rung 5 times (stupid operant conditioning, now every time I hear a bell, I want nata!). While we were there, a fresh batch came out and lucky Stephen got to ring the bell. With our bellies full of fish and Nata we went home and called it a night.

On our tour we learned that a day pass on the metro also works for all public transportation including funiculars, trams, buses and the elevator. The elevator was built by a pupil of Gustave Eiffel to solve the problem of people having to slug up and down the giant hills in the summer. Instead of walking up, you can take the elevator. The elevator itself coasts 5 euro for one trip, the day pass cost 6 euro and covered everything. So, we bought a day pass and decided to take all the rides in Lisbon. We had a lunch of doners (not the best doners ever, but still a good introduction for Stephen!) We took the elevator- the same one used since 1902- and it did offer sweeping views of the city. The views were spectacular, but overall the elevator was not worth 5euro.

We took the #15 tram out to Belem to try the original nata and to take pictures pretending we were in San Fransisco and Rio de Janeiro. The nata were not as good, in our opinion, but it was still nice to visit their birthplace. We visited a monastery with stunning architecture. We got a quick work-out in in the park and headed back to our side of town. We awaited the #28 tram which was supposed to be good for seeing the sights of historical, downtown Lisbon and pickpockets. We were warned that there is always a pickpocket on the tram, and it is never who you suspect, if you only see 2 people on the #28 tram, one is the driver, the other is the pickpocket. We had great fun trying to decide who the pickpocket was every time we boarded the tram. Fortunately, we carefully guarded all of our belongings and we never found out!

This time however, tram #28 was stuffed full so we decided to walk home. This is when we found the wine shop and learned all about port. We also found a butcher near us in Alfama, got a kilo of pork and headed back to our apartment to make spaghetti. Well, Stephen cooked, Smash, Nick and I chatted and snacked on goat cheese and ham (sliced tomatoes). After dinner and a few card games we headed out to see some fado. Fado music came from the Alfama neighborhood and it can be translated to fate, essentially it is Portuguese blues. We found a place nearby where the music was just ending but we did get to hear a few songs. The waiter there spoke Spanish so Smash was able to practice her Spanish as well. After the fado ended we went looking for more, but instead of more fado we found a staircase. On one of the landings of the staircase there sat a plant, just an ordinary houseplant, but for some reason it was illuminated with a desk lamp that had been connected through an intricate string of extension cords to a plug several houses down. It was the weirdest thing! We never did find more fado (well, we never found fado that didn’t have a cover charge of less than 10 euro per person). So we went home and played cards for a while again.

Our last day we just spent exploring. We took the #28 tram out as far as it went. At the end we looked at a church and walked through a large a beautiful park where we saw baby ducks and pigeons digging in a pile of dirt. We walked through the park and then downhill through the city stopping at various vistas to look at the view. After we got to the bottom of the hill, we stopped for nata and headed up yet another hill to the castle. The castle had an amazing view of the city and was very cool. We enjoyed wandering around the castle and seeing the camera obscura (a realtime, 360 view of Lisbon) and the peacocks. We went to dinner at the second restaurant our guide recommended and had a quiet night before catching our respective planes in the early morning hours the next day. It was unbelievably awesome!!