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Published: August 13th 2009
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Back to my random thoughts on the places we've been to.
We had two days in Lisbon and it was another proper city break. We stayed in a hotel right in the city, which was nice as the last few we've stayed in have been outside the city centre. Admittedly, we were getting a bit tired of cities at this point. We wandered around the city our first night and noted that Lisbon has a lot of big squares. And by a lot, I mean every block or two. And they all have big statues commemorating wars, famous leaders, etc. It got a bit much after a while, I admit, and we kind of tuned out.
At one point we saw a bunch of people sitting by the water (next to a big square) so we went over to see what was going on. Not much it turns out, just some sitting by the river. Neither of us felt like it was particularly stunning, but we thought like we should sit and watch the river too, just to fit in. There were some jumping fish which was kind of exciting.
The hotel said to go for dinner in
Barrio Alto, which is the West part of the city. Off we walked, following the hotel's directions. We passed a couple of dodgy streets but nothing too crazy was going on. We climbed up the hill, looking for this area of restaurants we were supposed to find. I think we walked for about an hour. We eventually found our way to the section of Barrio Alto with all the fado restaurants, which was not near where the hotel had circled it on our map. Indeed, it was about 2 blocks from our hotel in the end. At least we got a good walk in.
We eventually picked a restaurant that we thought might be a good choice, and it was decent. The fado singers were lovely and the restaurant was nice and small. There was some suspicious billing at the end but, alas, we were back in the big city after all.
The next day we ended up going to Europe's biggest retail outlet mall. I know, I know, what a crazy thing to do when in Portugal but we needed to look for a few things still and felt like doing something normal. It was a very
Getting sick of the self-portraits yet?
This is what happens when you travel on your own... nice place, fyi, albeit a bit of a pain to get to. I found a pair of shoes I desperately needed and Shane found a fabulous jacket that was crazy cheap. He does love his jackets. We're thinking we might need to mail some more clothes home, the bags are getting too heavy again.
That night we had a much needed simple dinner in the hotel as the next day was a
very early start.
Thoughts on Portugal Due to the fact that we couldn't hire a car (we had left it too late and they were way too expensive), we ended up having multiple city breaks in a row, which we decided is not our favourite way to travel. We can't wait to come back and explore the less crowded, beautiful areas of Portugal (we could see bits from the train at various points!). The cities we saw are pretty and there's lots to do, but it turns out we've been enjoying the smaller towns this summer more than the bigger cities, generally speaking. It's ok though, we're off to Antiparos next so that'll balance us out. :o)
The one thing we noticed was how cheap
the taxis are in Portugal (particulaly outside of Lisbon), it was so nice to be able to take them instead of public transportation and pay just a little more.
I would also like to note that Portugese bread beats out any other bread we've had on this trip, hands down.
Finally (and this is the last one), Shane downloaded the first season of the British comedy "FM", which we happily watched on our computer one night. It has one of our favourite actors in it and it's bloody hilarious. If I were still at my work I would no doubt be discussing it with Marcus, Dan and Daniel...ahhh, good times.
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