A week in Lisbon

Lisbon is an interesting city with plenty to offer for almost every kind of tourist or traveller. It has beaches, nightlife, historical sights, good food, culture and friendly people.We had a very varied visit to Lisbon, staying there for just over a week, it allowed us to see the city at a leisurely pace and enjoy it more. Whilst there we stayed in a room in a flat belonging to a Portuguese girl. It was nice because we had access to a kitchen, meaning we could cook our own food (something we had been looking forward to).

We were lucky enough to be in Lisbon at the time that an airshow was going on in the nearby town of Cascais (a popular beach destination for tourists). Due to this we also benefited from cheap train tickets. There were hundreds of people lined up on the beach and next to it to see the airshow and we sat with them and were not disappointed. It was a lovely day and we were treated to some stunt helicopter flying and then some planes doing formations and trailing smoke behind them. After the show we were even lucky enough to get to sit inside one of the helicopters! 

The beach at Cascais

Us in the helicopter

Before we headed back to Lisbon though we also had a stroll along the seafront all the way up to a place called Boca do Inferno (Mouth of Hell). It is named this because of the way the water violently crashes and sprays up against the cliff rock walls. On the way back to Lisbon we also went past the town of Estoril and saw the famous casino there, which is a popular landmark.

Boca do Inferno

We did one other day trip whilst we were in Lisbon as well; this time to the very popular place called Sintra, known as the City of Palaces. One of the hardest decisions about visiting Sintra is choosing what palaces you want to see, as there are 8 palaces, and a castle. We tried to see as many as we possibly could, and we managed to see 4 palaces (Pena Palace, National Palace, Seteais Palace and Quinta da Regaleira) and the Moorish castle, but we had to choose only one to actually go inside to explore. We decided to visit Quinta da Regaleira for a couple of reasons, one that it was less popular than the famous Pena Palace and two because from what we had read about Quinta da Regaleira offered something a bit different and a bit more interesting than Pena.

Carmen with the National Palace

Seteais Palace

Pena Palace

The Moorish Castle

We really enjoyed looking around Quinta da Regaleira, it has a lot to offer. The palace building itself is not as big as many of the other palaces in Sintra, but what it lacks in terms of size it makes up for in design, and beauty. The main residence is over 4 floors with an alchemist lab in a tower on top. This is where the owner used to practise alchemy. The best part about visiting this palace though is the grounds, they are vast and are a lot of fun. The grounds include lots of underground tunnels and hidden passages, towers and wells, it was like being part of an Indiana Jones adventure.

The highlight though and most popular and most photographed place in the whole grounds was the Poço Iniciático (Initiation Well), which looks like an inverted tower, where at every 15 steps there is a plateau, in total there are nine plateau's leading down into the ground. The nine plateaus are supposed to signify the circles of Hell, the nine sections of Purgatory and the nine heavens of Paradise, as told by Dante. It was a really fun visit and would highly recommend it to anyone else visiting Sintra.

Quinta da Regaleira Palace

Tower in the grounds

The Initiation Well

There are many things to visit in the city of Lisbon and we tried to squeeze in as many as we possibly could. Belem is one of the most popular areas of Lisbon owing to the iconic Belem Tower along the waterfront, which can make for a very nice picture. The tower looks very nice from the outside and when you climb to the top you get a nice view up and down the waterfront, however inside the tower is nothing special, so I would say at 5 Euros the ticket price is probably a bit expensive. Luckily for us, however, we got it for free as they allow one day a month free admission to both Belem Tower and Jerónimos Monastery.

Belem Tower

Jerónimos Monastery was the other main attraction we visited in Belem and it is a very impressive building, late gothic apparently and took 100 years to build between 1501 and 1601. It is seperated into two parts, the church and the monastery. Within the monastery is a huge cloister with beautifully carved pillars, arches and windows; it felt very tranquil and peaceful. Contained in one of the rooms off of the cloister was a very interesting exhibition of the history of the monastery compared to the what happened in Portugal and what happened in the world at the same time.

Jerónimos Monastery exterior

Jerónimos Monastery cloister

Our last stop in Belem was to the famous Pasteis de Belem, this is where they make the equally famous Pasteis de nata. Pateis de Belem was first opened in 1837 specifically to sell Pasteis de nata, which had become a very popular snack sold by the monks at Jerónimos Monastery since 1820 to try and gain extra revenue. However, when the monastery was shut down Pasteis de Belem bought the recipe and still make them exactly the same way now. Pasteis de nata are basically an egg custard tart sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar; they are delicious. Unfortunately we only bought one each, and could have had a few more of them, but the queues to get them were huge, trailing out the door and along the street!

Carmen showing off the delicious pasteis de nata

Just walking on the streets of Lisbon is a nice thing to do in itself, you don't even have to visit particular sites, just take in the small windy streets of areas like Alfama, the oldest neighbourhood in Lisbon, which reminded us of Moroccan cities. A particular favourite place for people to visit here is the Castelo de São Jorge, which overlookes the neighbourhood and makes for some nice photos. Another area that is really nice to just walk around is Bairro Alto, probably the most touristy part of the city where you will see people taking pictures of streets and buildings on nearly every corner. This section of the city includes the most photographed street in Portugal and the oldest book store in the world (Bertrand Bookstore). It has lots of shopping areas and restaurants, as well as little eateries and praça's (squares) where locals congregate. It is an area full of life and is just nice to sit and people watch.

Archway in downtown Baixa

The most photographed street in Portugal

Although this was the longest we had stayed in a place (apart from Madrid and whilst doing the workaway in Spain) we were still a bit sad to leave Lisbon as we had become quite settled, but it was on to our next destination, Evora and experience the summer like heat in Portugal!