We’ve been itching to travel internationally since the start of COVID, having planned and begrudgingly canceled at least five other trips abroad in the last two years. While restrictions are loosening up, our vaccination cards aren’t approved for travel in Europe, so we thought for sure one of us would test positive and prevent us from going to Portugal. Luckily the tests were all negative, but then the online system wouldn’t accept them, so we weren’t really sure we’d make it to Portugal until the negative tests were inspected at the US airport and again at Lisbon immigration. Alas we made it!
It felt truly amazing to be in a new country again. The sights, the sounds, the history, the culture, we loved it all! Our flight got in really early in the day so we packed even lighter than normal. We were staying at an Airbnb and assumed we wouldn’t have anywhere to put our luggage. The girls had their own small backpacks for their week’s worth of clothes and tablets. Upon landing, the Airbnb host said she’d meet us and let us drop off everything while the cleaners were straightening up from the prior occupants, and then we set out to explore Lisbon! I had more sources of things to do than any previous trip — from Anthony Bourdain hot spots to other cooking shows to jealous coworkers and friends that had been before.
We started at a famous nearby ham shop called Manteigaria Silva, hoping to get some sandwiches for lunch. It’s a tiny place and seemed like it was more to purchase ham to bring home and the woman working there didn’t know a lick of English, so we got intimidated quickly and left. Next up we went to two different ginjinha stores that were within a block of each other: A Ginjinha and Ginjinha Sem Rival. It’s a prominent Portuguese cherry liqueur and the stores sold shots for 1 Euro. It was quite tasty and these shops were everywhere! We zig-zagged through the old streets, went to a neighborhood called Baixa, and went to Copenhagen Coffee Lab for a latte and a snack. We found a well-rated Thai restaurant and headed in that direction next. We stopped at a famous bar, Boutique Taberna, which was closed but it’s covered in beautiful graffiti for some good photo opportunities. The Thai place didn’t have a dining room, which we discovered is fairly common, so we stuck to the to-do list and strolled through the Alfama neighborhood, passing by St Anthony’s Church and Lisbon Cathedral, on the way to Pizzeria Romana BIO. After a great lunch and cervezas, we walked back along the coast, passing by a couple cruise ships that were in port. We stopped in the huge Commerce Square for a few minutes to let Edie join other kids in popping bubbles. There’s a large archway named Arco da Rua Augusta that overlooks the square, so of course we had to figure out a way to get to the top. The entrance was tucked into a small shop behind the arch, and the views from the top were incredible. Lisbon has a lot of hills so each direction has its own character to soak in. There is also a bell you can ring which the kids got a kick out of. We were starting to fade fast from jet lag, so we asked the girls what would keep them awake. They pointed at a nearby tuk tuk, so we jumped in and took a motorized tour through the city! Our driver lived in Washington DC for 30 years, and she loved having Americans onboard. The tour took us to the Lisbon Cathedral (which we had walked past earlier), an ancient Roman theater (Teatro Romano), several famous overlooks (Miradouro das Portas do Sol, Miradouro da Graça, and Miradouro da Senhora do Monte) that each had their own amazing views, the National Pantheon, and ended at our Airbnb. We unpacked a little and rested for a few minutes, before heading back out for dinner. We strolled around Rue Augusta which is a pedestrian boulevard full of restaurants, and ultimately landed at an Italian restaurant a little off the main drag named La Vita è Bella. After a delicious dinner, the kids couldn’t decide on a dessert place, so we went to two different ones! First was gelato at il Gelatone Vitória and then popsicles at nearby Popbar (which had a glass floor exposing unknown ruins). Back at the Airbnb for the final time, I stopped in the grocery store in the building and was surprised at how cheap everything was. I ended up just buying a huge 1.5L bottle of water for 59 cents, and then we crashed.
The next morning, we started with a walk to Manjerica for a yummy breakfast. Then we hopped on a tram towards a nearby city west of Lisbon called Belém. As we got closer we had to transfer to a bus due to a military parade that was about to start. Belém is famous for inventing a type of custard pastry, so of course we started at the place where it all began: Pastéis de Belém. The lines weren’t too bad and the pastries were great. We stopped briefly to watch the parade in front of Jerónimos Monastery before continuing on to Padrão dos Descobrimentos along the coastline. It’s a large monument to early Portuguese navigators, and it has a viewing platform with great views of the city and coastline. The other main attraction is the Belém Tower a little further down the coast. The line to get in there was insanely long, so we opted to just hang out on the beach in front of the tower to take it all in. Once we had enough of the beautiful tower, we went back into town and got a second batch of pastries while waiting for the train back to Lisbon. Once we returned, we explored the small Cais do Sodre neighborhood around the train station. The main attraction there is a few blocks called Pink Street which is literally painted bright pink. Continuing north into the Bairro Alto neighborhood, we stopped for lunch at Croissant Gigante after climbing some steep streets. Now heading east, we tried to visit the earthquake-damaged Carmo Convent, but it was closed. We stopped at the nearby 100+ year old elevator called Santa Justa Lift to get down the hill, but it was also seemingly closed, so we ended up walking down the hill. At the bottom was a fun and busy street full of retail stores. We hopped on another tram, this time to one of Lisbon’s main attractions, Castelo de S. Jorge. The views from the castle grounds were somehow even better than all the previous views we’d seen so far. The castle itself is great to tour as well. It’s pretty bare-bones and most of the tour is along the castle walls so you can see the city in all directions. There are also a lot of peacocks roaming the grounds which adds to the experience. Walking down from the castle, we had an impromptu ginjinha on the way to the same Thai restaurant we skipped the day before, Krua Thai. It was our 12th anniversary and we were planning to have a slightly fancier dinner that the girls might not like, so we got some of their favorite Thai food to tide them over. We also got some Thai iced teas for us and loved that they were served in bags with finger handles for easy carrying. We took an Uber over to the Príncipe Real neighborhood for our anniversary dinner. We tried to get into a romantic place called Lost In, but they were full and didn’t take names for a wait list (we found this to be fairly common). We found a nearby taco place called Coyotaco that did have a wait list. While waiting, we took turns wandering the main street to see what other options were available. I found a fried chicken restaurant / dive bar named Crispy Mafya. As soon as I reported back to Jaime, she thought it was hilarious and that we had to do it. It ended up being a great decision! The place was very cozy, the food was tasty, and the staff was super friendly. We told the server it was our anniversary and he gave us free shots! After dinner, we had some “healthy” gelato at UAO before heading back for the night.
I hadn’t originally planned to visit Belém on our second day, so we had some extra time in Lisbon. I had read good things about a palace-filled city a bit north named Sintra, so we decided to check it out. After the hour-long train ride, we turned down the gauntlet of local guides and walked to the old part of town through some winding back roads. Our first destination was a locally-famous pastry restaurant named Casa Piriquita. We couldn’t read the menu and our translation app wasn’t too helpful, so we just asked the server to bring us basically one of everything. It was quite tasty! We wrapped up there and then walked by the large National Palace and through the historic center, of course having some more ginjinha along the way, this time served in an edible chocolate cup! There are many hilltop castles and palaces around Sintra, so we narrowed down our choices and went to the visitor center to ask for directions. We assumed we’d need a taxi or shuttle, but our main choice ended up being only a 15-20 minute walk outside of town. It was a nice stroll along an old road, with a roadside waterfall (Cascata de Pisões) to make it more interesting. We got to Quinta da Regaleira, got our tickets, and headed inside without knowing what to expect. I’m still not sure how to describe it. It felt like we had stumbled onto long-abandoned castle grounds but the whole place is just over 100 years old. There are dozens of mini-castles, paths weaving up, down, and around different obstacles, underground grottos, waterfalls, etc. We strolled around for hours and kept finding new things to explore. One of many main attractions was the Initiation Well near the top. It’s an ornate deep well with an internal staircase that you start at the top and walk down. It ends up in a series of underground tunnels that also take you behind one of the larger waterfalls. Meandering down further, we strolled through the main hidden grotto called Gruta do Labirinto. We ended up skipping the main castle itself as we had seen so much already! Wandering back to town, we happened upon a nice restaurant, Dona Maria, with an excellent view of Sintra. We ate some of the popular salted cod before heading back to Lisbon. We took a different train route back in order to see a new part of town. The Oriente Station is nice, new, and modern, and it’s attached to a huge mall named Centro Vasco da Gama. We walked through the mall and to the coastline (it’s an interior coastline to the east instead of the normal south side). There we walked by the massive Oceanarium and took the Telecabine cable cars across the bay. On the other end, we were hoping for some good dinner options but most were closed at this time of day. We had some quick gelato at D’Nata and then took the cable car back (partially because I accidentally purchased two-way tickets). We saw a triple rainbow over the bay while enjoying the relaxing ride. We took an Uber back to the Airbnb to plan out our evening. While searching for family-friendly restaurants, I came upon an obvious choice: Lidia Restaurante. I didn’t tell anyone where we were going and Lydia was thrilled when we arrived! The food and service were amazing. I’m not sure if this is normal for them, but the power kept going out, 4-5 times, over the course of our dinner. We found it pretty unique and hilarious. The staff took it all in stride too. After dinner, we packed up to prepare for our trip in the morning.
We got up and headed back to the Oriente Station again. After a quick breakfast in the station, we took our three hour train to Porto. We took a taxi to our new Airbnb, and with a few blocks to go, we were completely stopped in traffic. We jumped out and walked the rest of the way. Check in was easy, so we were able to drop off our luggage and head out to see the city pretty quickly. Our first stop was the beautifully tiled Igreja de Santo Ildefonso for a quick photo op before continuing west. Porto is also hilly, and seemed more bustling than Lisbon, at least on the main roads. We walked around, across pedestrian boulevards and Av. dos Aliados, which is lined with gorgeous architecture (and a small military gathering). We stopped at Francesinhas Al Forno da Baixa for lunch and had their namesake sandwich, which I can only describe as a ham sandwich topped with an egg and smothered in tomato soup. Continuing on, we made a quick chocolate stop at Arcadia and then delicious gelato at Santini. Upon reaching the main attraction, Clérigos Tower, we discovered we needed tickets, so we got in line and purchased them for a few hours later. Nearby, we then tried to go to a famous bookstore called Livraria Lello, but it had a massive line over a block long. We checked the website and found that you can buy tickets for there too, so we bought tickets for the next morning and left the line. The kids still wanted to go to a bookstore (how can you say no to that?), so we found one named Almedina a few blocks away where we bought some bilingual books. We still had about 90 minutes to kill, so we strolled by another beautiful tiled building, the Igreja do Carmo, and then went to a wine bar in an old church called Capela Incomum for a couple glasses. Back at the tower, we raced through the museum itself to be among the first to climb all the stairs to the top of the main bell tower. The views from the top made up for our exhaustion. We then headed south past the Monument Church Of St Francis to the riverfront. I had picked out what I thought was a wine bar but it turned out to be a hookah bar, so we skipped it. We hung out along the riverfront for a bit, taking in views of the main bridge and a hilltop castle, the Mosteiro da Serra do Pilar. Edie sat on a wall and drew the scenery in a new notebook from a gift shop. There weren’t any good dinner options for us along the river, so we strolled east for our next stop. It was another old elevator to get up the hill faster. This one was called Lift Lada Ribeira, which was running, but bizarrely (and somewhat maddeningly) it just led to a staircase back to the bottom in a more remote location along a major road… We passed by a funicular, which was of course out of order, though we saw it running with no passengers. I had read that one of the best views of the city was at a semi-private soccer club. It seemed like it was close to us, so we aimed in that direction. What the map didn’t show was all the stairs we needed to climb. After so. many. stairs. we finally reached the Guindalense Football Club which was pretty crowded with locals. We had a few cervezas and enjoyed the view as the night began to fall. We stumbled back towards our Airbnb and stopped for a late dinner at Gazela for some great sandwiches before heading to bed.
Our bookstore tickets were just for the day, not a specific time, so we left early and arrived about 30 minutes before they opened. The line was even longer this time! We split up to grab some breakfast food to eat in line. The line wasn’t moving very quickly after they opened. While waiting, we checked the website again and found that they had a “premium book” ticket that let you skip the line, so we bought those too and went straight to the front. We finally made it inside of Livraria Lello! It was incredible inside, with books lining the walls and set up on tables, with old carved wood throughout, and the centerpiece was a twisting red staircase to reach additional books along a narrow balcony wrapping the walls. We got a few books, which were mostly pre-paid by our upgraded tickets, and then headed south for the bulk of our day. We walk by an old church named Igreja de Santa Clara before crossing the main Luís I Bridge. It has tram tracks down the center and walking paths on each side. The views were just outstanding everywhere you looked. I took so many pictures on the bridge that looking back through them now, I can almost relive the entire walk across it. South of the river is no longer Porto, it’s a sister city named Vila Nova de Gaia. After crossing the bridge we took the Teleférico de Gaia cable cars to the west side of town. Our first stop was taking a wine cave tour at Caves Ferreira. We had just missed a departing tour but they let us catch up and join them. The tour was fascinating and ended with some great port wine samples. We then walked back along the southern riverfront and went south a bit for a tasty lunch at 7g Roasters. Next up, we went to the main attraction in Gaia, the World of Wine (WOW). It’s a vast collection of museums and exhibits about wine or related things (mainly chocolate). You can get passes for various combinations of attractions — we got a two-attraction family pass. Looking at the options, the girls chose the one with a ball pit, called The Pink Palace Experience. Upon arrival, we learned that this was all about Rose, and we got 5 different types of rose wine throughout the exhibit. The ball pit was titled “Dive In Rose” and we spent a good amount of time playing there. The other exhibit we went to was The Chocolate Story. We were a little disappointed that the “5 samples throughout” wasn’t consistent, though the exhibit was very educational and we did get one sample at the end (and a lot more at the chocolate store). A coworker recommended that we stay and eat at a luxury 5-star hotel called The Yeatman in Gaia. We had already booked our accommodations elsewhere so I looked up the restaurant, and found that it’s not kid-friendly. Luckily the website did say that they have a different area called Dick’s Bar which was kid-friendly, so we ended our time in Gaia there. It was incredible! The service and food were top-notch. We wanted to dine on the balcony, but they said it was too cold and windy and the chef wouldn’t serve food outside. They compromised by offering us to start on the balcony with a bottle of wine and hot tea while they prepared lunch. They even brought the kids branded blankets to stay warm! Once our afternoon tea food and other main dishes were ready, they escorted us inside to a large living-room type area for our main meal. It felt like we had three servers around us at all times, refilling glasses, folding napkins, taking away plates, etc. This was our most expensive meal by far the entire trip, and it was barely over $100. We took a taxi across town back to Porto into an area we hadn’t seen yet. We strolled around shopping a bit. We got some fancy chocolates at Chocolataria Equador and then had gelato at Amorino where they shape the gelato into flowers. Across the street was a soccer apparel store, so we got the girls personalized futbol jerseys. The person working there was likely the friendliest person I’ve ever met! From there, we wandered down a pedestrian boulevard back to our Airbnb for the night.
Our final city on the trip was a beach town about 30 minutes west of Lisbon. Unfortunately there’s no direct way to get there from Porto, so we had to take a train back to the Oriente Station, then taxi across Lisbon, and finally hop on another train to Cascais. Once there, we went to Albatroz Hotel right on the ocean. I splurged a bit for this last stop as I loved the location but they didn’t have any two-queen rooms anywhere, so I figured we’d just be a little cozy. It was quite funny checking in because they were panicked that the room could only fit a single cot and they were certain that we couldn’t fit a kid with us in a king bed. We assured them we would be fine, and they escorted us to our room. It was amazing! We had a large terrace with both pool and ocean views. They even included a bottle of port wine to enjoy in the evening. We dropped off our stuff and went to lunch at a place we passed on the way into town, Roots Cafe & Pizzaria. Cascais was the perfect way to end the trip. It was a mini relaxing vacation after the rest of the fast-paced and action-packed vacation. We walked up and down the main beach, went through and around the downtown area doing some light shopping, and ended up for dinner at Da Benedictis – Gastronomia Italiana. Afterward, we found out that Santini was a chain and had some more gelato there. We then walked along the coast away from town, down to the Citadel of Cascais, which, despite Google Maps saying it was 24 hours, was closed. We walked back to the hotel, buying a bottle of wine along the way, and ended up drinking that bottle and the hotel’s port bottle on the terrace while the girls fell asleep.
For our last full day, in Portugal, we started with breakfast at the hotel overlooking the ocean. Then we took an Uber about 15 minutes east to the popular Carcavelos Beach for the girls to go surfing! They had surfed once before in Hawaii and loved it, and I’d heard about the great surfing culture here, so I found them a lesson with Salty Souls Surf School. We had a private instructor so they had a full 2 hours hitting the waves and loved every second of it. Back in Cascais, it was starting to get very busy with tourists, so we branched out and went to the south side of town. It was even busier there! We had to go off the beaten path a little bit and ended up getting lunch at Tasca da Vila. We then took the long way around town to see new areas and ran into a market with a carousel. Edie went for a spin before we continued south and back to the Citadel of Cascais. I thought it would be your typical old castle ruins but it has been transformed into a collection of art galleries and a restaurant or two. We strolled through and out the other side to go south and west along the coastline. We walked past some beautiful museums, including Museu Condes de Castro Guimarães, Farol Museu de Santa Marta, and Forte de Santa Marta on the way to our destination, Boca do Inferno. The second half of the walk was very hot and without any chance for shade, and since we weren’t really sure what we we looking for, we all kind of declared different sights as Boca do Inferno in order to convince the rest of us to turn around. The GPS was telling us to keep walking though, and we ultimately made it. It’s a nice natural archway and cave along steep cliffs. There are several viewing areas and we stopped at all of them. There’s a little shopping at the entrance, where we stopped for you-guessed-it gelato, to cool down before the walk back to town. We walked through the main drag again and stopped at Joaninha to stock up on more wine for the evening. We dropped the wine at the hotel and the girls put on their swimsuits. After some debate, they decided on the hotel pool over the beach. The pool was pretty cold so Lydia gave up quickly and Edie continued solo (with some birds joining her for a bit). With the crush of crowds increasing, we made a dinner reservation this time, for a place a little bit out of the busy area. The restaurant, Cantina da Vila, was nearly empty but the food was delicious! I ordered something that translated to “pork strips” and sure enough it was long strips of pork twisted into spirals. The girls had pasta there, though the portion was rather small, so we stopped at McDonalds for a second dinner for them. Back at the hotel, we packed up and finished our wine on terrace again.
The following morning, I had asked the hotel to book a car to the airport and we walked out to a Tesla Model X with Falcon Wing doors, which was a fun surprise. The ride and flight back were uneventful. We thoroughly enjoyed our time in Portugal and know there is so much more to see. We will be back for sure!