Portugal

As a mini-break during the holidays, we jumped at a lastminute.com offer and went to Lisbon, Portugal for a few days. This was one of the first trips we took where we had no guidebook (actually we had one I bought at Heathrow and accidentally left in Heathrow...) and no real sense of what to expect..

• Stayed at the Lisboa Plaza, part of Heritage Hotels Lisbon, right off the Champs-Elysee-looking strip called the Avenue de Liberdade. Very nice, quaint hotel, easy to get to and free wifi throughout!

• The first day we got there was on a Sunday, and Lisboa seemed to shut down this day as it was very quiet on the streets. We ended up doing one line of the hop-on-hop-off bus tour and managed to see some important monuments/sites...but i dont remember their names lol.

• Found this really popular pastel (egg-tart) place in Belem and decided to join the queue and see what the fuss was about. Had a couple of pastels and coffee and soon realized these were probably the best egg tarts we've ever had and even better when sprinkled with a bit of icing sugar and cinnamon...mmmmm. We did try them again throughout the weekend at other places but not as good as the first place..

• Next day we completed the second half of the bus tour and this time it was windy and rainy..but it was 13 degrees Celsius! At one of the stops, we noticed this new mall, Vasco de Gama, and it being Boxing Week we went to check it out. I was only looking for a belt but i ended up getting a belt, shirt and sweater...in a matter of 10 minutes lol! Afterwards, we had no idea where to catch the bus again so we had some churassco chicken at the bus station and it was way better than Nando's..way better.

• At night we went for more Churassco chicken, this time at a Churassco restaurant we passed by earlier. Luckily, there were no line-ups and we managed to get in right away. This time, a bottle of white was 9 euro which was ok but the chicken was soooooo good. There was also this spicy olive oil on the table that was there to spice up the chicken even more. There were these 2 old Portugese men beside us so naturally, i kept my eye on them to see what they were getting, and they got this cherry liquer called Ginja...so i HAD to get one too lol! Sweet and smooth, i ended up buying a bottle at duty-free on the way home haha!

• We found a Christ the King-copy on the other side of the river, called Christo Rei. Apparently, the previous Lisbon bishop visited Brazil,saw the real one there in Sao Paolo and liked it so much he had one built just like it in Lisbon! We tried to go there on the last day but because of lunch difficulties and the transportation to get there, we only made it to the train station before turning back..

• All in all, Lisboa definitely exceeded any presumptions we had before arriving and it's a great place to go that's not so overrun by tourists..yet. The food here was amazing, the people were great, the weather was amazing (16 C on the last day!) and the location by the sea was beautiful! Come here if you can!