Lisbon

Friday, December 1st – Monday, December 4th (3 nights)

Friday, December 1st

We arrive, drop off the bags at the hotel, then drop off the car, and walk back to the hotel, perhaps stopping off at the Dois Corvos (Two Crows). Intendente Taproom for a few craft beers, and maybe eat our evening meal there? Here’s what they say on their website about their food:

Our kitchen is open late, serving a seafood-inspired pub food, burgers as well as vegetarian and vegan options.

Not terribly inspiring, but could be a good choice after a long day on the road. Here’s what TripAdvisor has to say about it. The reviews are mostly about the beer and the atmosphere, but we’ll see.

Petiscos, the Portuguese Tapas

It turns out that Portugal has a thing very similar to Tapas, called petiscos. I’m sure we’ll discover that thoroughly, if we hadn’t already done so by then.

Saturday, December 2nd

I’m proposing that we go to Sintra today.

To get there, we first make our way from the hotel, to the Rossio Train Station:

followed by a train ride to Sintra:

We will most likely have to buy ‘skip the line’ tickets for the Sintra Palace. We perhaps should buy a Viva Viagem or Lisboa Card. Check here for details.

Although check out the “Travel Guide to Sintra” video below. It talks a lot about buying tickets. If we’re as out of season as I think, it may be that we won’t have problems buying tickets at the entrances.

Here’s a brief Rick Steves video about Sintra:

… and another one about the Pena Palace:

But here is the most useful video I found about how to make the best of a trip to Sintra, including a strong warning against the use of a particular bus company. It sounds like we would do much better (and cheaper!) using Uber.

The video also makes some very useful suggestions for where to eat lunch, and some of the delicacies we could choose from.

This makes me think that we might do well to find a tour of Sintra, where things, including transportation, would be taken care of.

Here’s a good possibility for a tour: “Small group Sintra, Pena Palace, option Regaleira, Roca, Cascais” . Take a look at the maximum number of people in the group, and what’s included. We would have to buy tickets to see the inside of the Pena Place — and they say to check with them for time confirmation for those tickets.

Anyway, we return to our hotel by simply reversing the steps of how we got to Sintra.

Sunday, December 3rd

Here’s my suggestion for day 2 in Lisbon:

First, we make our way to the Belém District, by bus or metro:

… to visit the

Pastéis de Belém

where they claim to be the inventor of the egg tart, known generally in Portugal as pastel de nata, “cream pastry”, but here as pastel de Belém.

Because of Geoff’s culinary training and expertise, this should be of interest to him. The rest of us just want to taste one…

The Belém District

Now, we take a walking tour of the Belém District, which Google Maps says takes about 48 minutes. Of course, we’ll take our time about it…

Lunch

Somewhere in here, we’ll want to eat lunch. Here are some possibilities, ranging from hot dog vendors to five-star rated restaurants.

The Baixa and Alfama districts

Here, we could take the bus or metro from the National Coach Museum to the Time Out Market:

… and then take a walking tour of the Baixa and Alfama districts, ending up back at our hotel:

All of this is probably too much for one day, but we can pick and choose what we want to do when we know more…