Let’s see – it’s not even 6:30 PM on a Friday evening and I’m about ready to pass out from tiredness. Now, you might say that’s just a regular Friday for me, but you’d be wrong (I do go to bed somewhat early, but not THAT early!). In fact, it’s because I’m back in Europe! Yes, that’s right – just two weeks after returning home from the UK, I’m back in Europe with Scott, this time to a new-to-both of-us country. We’re in…

PORTUGAL!

We’ve had Portugal on our must-visit list for awhile and, after spending a week in Italy around this time last year, we thought October this year would be a great time to finally check it off the list. It may not be the three-week long travel extravaganzas we did a decade ago, but we’ve found that shorter trips like this are much easier to pull off (less time off work, we don’t get homesick/tired of traveling by the end, we still get to see/do a lot, etc.), so we’re excited to be here. 🙂

Anyway, let’s talk more about the “here” of this trip. Unlike some places we’ve been to (Amsterdam, London, Paris), we can’t get a direct flight from Minneapolis to anywhere in Portugal, so we had to make a connection. To get to Lisbon on Delta yesterday (or today – we left yesterday, but landed this morning, so pick whichever day you prefer!), we connected through Boston. I’ve never even connected through Boston before and I wasn’t exactly enthused about spending four hours in the airport there, but we made it work. For the Boston flight, we were able to use my lowly Silver Elite status with Delta to grab Comfort+ exit-row seats that gave us PLENTY of room and, as an added bonus, didn’t even have the third seat in the row, so we got to sit on our own. Okay, that’s not fully true as we had a flight attendant jump seat next to us, but she was only there for a bit at the beginning and then at the very end of the flight, so it felt like there was no one there. We were in seats with entertainment screens in the armrests, which worried me a bit as that makes the seats a bit narrower, but it actually worked out fine and I think I might have even preferred that setup a bit. We both definitely appreciated the ample legroom, as you can see below.

With four hours to kill at the Boston, you better believe we spent most of that time in the Delta Sky Club! As I’ve mentioned previously, I can access Delta’s lounges through my Platinum AMX card (I certainly don’t get it with my lowly Delta status!) and I can bring Scott with me as a guest, though there’s a $50 fee charged per guest. Never fear though – one of the bonuses of the card is that it reimburses me up to $200 in airline fees/year, which includes reimbursement for guest fees! That’s one reason why I encourage folks who are interested in credit cards with travel benefits to at least look at this one. While it does have a high annual fee, it also gives some great benefits, like the $200 in reimbursements (it also pays for Global Entry and Clear, gives me $15/month in Uber credits, pays for our Disney+ and Hulu subscriptions, and more), so it can absolutely be valuable. Honestly though, in this case, we would have spent the money either way because it was worth it to have a really nice space to relax in for our longer layover (the free food and drink was nice, too!). I’m not sure if this a new Sky Club location, but it felt pretty new and was HUGE. It was a good way to spend a few hours! And we even got a few extra steps in on our walk to the lounge because we had to walk from our arrival terminal to the international terminal, which ended up being close to a mile in terms of steps (there was a bus we could have taken, but we opted to walk). We did have to clear security again in the new terminal, which was a slight annoyance, but again, we had plenty of time.

You can see from these photos that we had LOTS of space to relax in.

Our flight from Boston to Lisbon was…as expected. 🙂 The flight was actually downgraded to an older, smaller plane at some point during the day, which meant that it had older-style Delta One seats (still lay-flat, but not as fancy) and it didn’t have Premium Select at all, so folks who booked that ended up in Comfort+ with us, which made me glad we hadn’t sprung for the nicer seats (we tried, but none were ever available). And actually, the Comfort+ seat was nicer than I remembered, after flying Premium Select on my recent UK trip. As usual, I didn’t get ANY sleep, which is why I’m so tired now (ditto for Scott), but we’ve made it through most of the day (it’s after 7 PM now – wooooo!), so we survived. And since we ate in the Sky Club right before the flight, neither of us ate on the plane, so we focused on TRYING to sleep, at least managing to sit there with our eyes closed for much of the flight.

After only about six hours of not sleeping, we landed in Lisbon, safe and sound. We were actually early, but another plane was still at our gate as a result, so it felt like it took forever to actually deplane (there was also a short-lived issue with the jet bridge, which didn’t help). After one long walk between terminals in Boston, it felt like another long walk to get from our gate to passport control to baggage claim to the Uber pickup spot, but we got there in the end! And we were once again happy to get some steps on our feet, especially after sitting for so long.

After the automated scan-your-passport-and-go of Heathrow’s passport control, I was a little wary that it might be a longer process here in Lisbon, but it was totally fine. There was a bit of a line, but we were through it in a few minutes, and then we got our passports stamped (I love when countries still do that!) without even a question from the officer. Not bad! Our bags were already waiting for us and we briefly debated taking a train to our hotel, but ultimately went with Uber as we were tired anyway, plus it was only €10. Our assigned driver did get changed a couple times, so we probably waited for 15 minutes to get picked up, but then we were on our way!

Although the airport is only a few miles from our hotel, it still took about 25 minutes to reach it, so we got the chance to see a bit of Lisbon. It’s not a big city (~500k people) and it didn’t feel like one as we were driving through some of it. When we got to the Old Town, it started looking much more interesting though! And that’s where our ride ended because that’s where our hotel is located.

The Hotel Santa Justa Lisboa is a boutique hotel on a pedestrianized street, so our driver actually had to drop us around the corner and we walked with our bags the rest of the way (many reviews called this out, so we knew to expect it). We had been keeping our fingers crossed that we’d be able to check into our room early (it was about 12:15 PM at this point and check-in time is technically 3 PM), so we were delighted when the very friendly person at the front desk confirmed we could. She also took the time to walk us through a map of the area and shared a few recommendations about places to see. We did take her advice (as you’ll see below), but we also took our own advice of having an early night. 🙂

Anyway, here’s the hotel!

…right after I got a picture of the hotel restaurant’s outdoor space (you can see the indoor space in the photo on the right).

Looking towards and away from the sleeping area. The space behind the TV is kind of wasted as there’s absolutely room for a dresser or easy chair. At least there’s a window with a decent view!

We of course spent some time unpacking, getting settled, and showering before heading out, though we knew we weren’t gonna have a ton of energy to do much. We did pretty well though as we started with a not-too-long, but VERY uphill walk to the Castelo de São Jorge (which you may have caught a glimpse of in my picture above). Seriously, the entire path to get there was uphill, but we made it! And it was a neat place to visit, with a history that goes back to the 10th century AD, which isn’t even including the fact that archaeological findings have shown that people have lived on this hill since at least the 8th century BC. Obviously it’s in ruins now, but what remains still covers a decent area and made for an interesting walkthrough. You do have to buy tickets, which we would have done ahead of time if we’d known the line to buy them would be kind of long. As it was, we ended up buying them on our phones will waiting in line, so we still saved some time. We didn’t choose an audio or in-person guide, though I can see how those would have added some value. For €15 each though, we were happy with our experience!

A couple of neat views seen at the start of our wanderings.

There are quick a few peacocks in the area, so I snapped photos of two of them.

We got some more great views walking along the top of the castle walls.

There’s still a lot of archaelogical work happening on the castle grounds. These remants of pottery and bones are found in the small museum next to the gift shop.

It was neat to see all these tile pieces and how colorful some of them were. I can’t imagine trying to put all these little pieces back together!

Perhaps unsurprisingly, we were getting fairly tired at this point, but we knew we could make one more stop for sure, so we decided to walk all the way back down to visit the Cathedral of Saint Mary Major, AKA Lisbon Cathedral. Old churches are always fun to walk through because the architecture is usually amazing, especially one as old as this one (it dates back to 1147). Of course, like many (probably all) old buildings, it’s been added on to, repaired, restored, etc. over the years, but its presence it’s still really powerful because it’s so BIG (as you can see below). It’s an active church today, but visitors are welcome, as long as you’re willing to pay the not-so-princely ticket price of €5/person. Not only can you walk through the church proper, but you can also walk around on the upper level, which provides a variety of vestments and church items for your viewing pleasure (that upper level is the only place where signs specified no photography though). There’s also a narrow outdoor balcony to walk on, which gives you a view in front of the church. Maybe not great for folks who don’t like heights, especially as it’s so narrow.

Photo time!

Although we didn’t get back to the hotel late, we were definitely ready to rest. I was thinking we’d end up going to dinner, but neither of us were that hungry after doing a little snacking in the room, so we just chilled for a bit, worked on this blog, and waited for sleep to come. That’s about to happen now, but hopefully we’ll be reset to Portugal time tomorrow and will get to see a lot more stuff! We also have a couple of scheduled activities planned for Sunday and Monday, so there will definitely be more to come. 🙂