Our Last Hurrah in Portugal!

Discoveries Monument

It’s funny when I think about planning our trip to Spain.  David was looking at all of the places we could see in our 7 days of travel and at the top of his list (right below seeing Blayne in Cadiz) was going to Portugal.  I really knew nothing about the country other than it was next to Spain.  In the almost 30 years I have known David, I had never heard him speak of Portugal.  But here he was telling me that it was a place he had always wanted to travel to.  Our first few days in Portugal at the beginning of the trip had been fabulous, so we made sure that we left two days at the end of our trip so we could explore Lisboa.  We ended up spending most of those two days in Belem, along the Tagus River.  We visited the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos, crossed the Portuguese version of the Golden Gate Bridge and viewed the Cristo Rei Statue (huge statue of Jesus with arms spread), and rode on the oldest streetcar in Lisboa.   Our culinary experiences were of course at the top of our list.  When we returned to Lisboa, it was mid-day and all of the eateries were closed or were closing.  We tried to get into a little café and they sent us across the street to a snack bar (I think because they didn’t want to try and communicate with us).  The only thing we knew to ask for was sopa (soup), so we ordered that.  We tried to express how yummy the soup was.  I guess he understood because he soon came out with bread.  This was followed by pork and clams (a regional speciality).  Yummy!  That evening, our concierge sent us to a restaurant on the waterfront.  We got to try bacalao, a fish specialty of the area (thank goodness for our school library where David read about all of these luscious foods).  And of course, one of my favorites was to have a pitcher of Sangria with loads of fruit in a luscious fruity juice.  Unfortunately, the end of our adventure ended the next morning as we headed to the airport for our 16 hour flight back to Bangkok. 

  

25 de Abril Bridge and Cristo Rei Statue

David in a Lisboa Cable Car

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 Mosteiro dos Jerónimos