We flew from Milan to Lisbon yesterday morning.  We’ve never been to Portugal before so everything for this leg of the trip will be new.  

It was a sunny Sunday afternoon when we got settled and the world was out and about so we joined them! Our Hotel is on the Avenida Liberdade in the historic centre – and seems walkable for lots of things.

Lisbon is hilly – we took a funicular up the hill behind the hotel thinking we’d get a viewpoint but there doesn’t seem to be any one viewpoint. It was interesting tho’ – we wandered through what seemed to be a migrant neighbourhood – lots of african women in bright prints and indian women in equally bright garb and interesting music and food aromas. We eventually wound up back in the heart of the tourist area – all grand squares, historic buildings (some a bit tatty round the edges) and statues of kings.  While the city has a nice feel and clearly there are lots of tourists, it’s also clear that there’s not the wealth here that there is in Milan or other major italian cities.

Today we had our food walking tour which got us into a residential neighbourhood called Estrela outside the city centre.  We sampled everything from almond pastries fresh from the oven, sour cherry liquer, nata (portugese custard tarts), samosas and a variant of vindaloo curry (from Goa – which was a portugese colony) to fava beans, sardines and salt cod, as well as portugese wines and beer.  There were 6 of us plus 2 guides so we walked between various small restaurants, cafes, hole in the wall bars, bakeries, shops and a small market – by the end we were all truly full!  The company running the tour (Culinary Backstreets) also operate in other places including Naples, Istanbul and Tokyo and we’d definitely use them again.  Needless to say we didn’t need dinner tonight!

Instead we went for a walk in time to see the parade for the local football team – who won the Portugese championship on Saturday.  Much horn tooting, chanting and flag waving!  Portugal also won the Eurovision Song Contest on Saturday – it was the other major newspaper headline today.

As usual some pictures will follow.