It’s the end of our first full day here in Portugal (or rather, it WAS when I started this post, but now it’s the end of our second full day) and we’re back at the hotel after a nice day out in the sun. It was actually warmer than I anticipated, which made me very glad I packed a variety of shorts for this trip. 🙂

Before doing anything of substance, we had to start with some sustenance, so we had our first hotel breakfast, which came after we woke up…at 9:15 AM! For anyone who knows either of us, you’ll appreciate how late that is for us. Scott had a little trouble falling asleep and it took me awhile as well, but once I was out, I think I slept pretty well. I did wake up once or twice (normal for me) and looked at my watch once, only to realize it was only 7:15, so I thought to myself “We don’t have anything planned today, so we don’t need to be up early. Back to sleep I go!” And sleep more I did. 🙂 The only thing I thought when I woke up again two hours later was something like “Hmmm, I wonder if she told us breakfast goes until 10 or 10:30” (thankfully readers, it was 10:30). They had a pretty decent buffet-style spread, though I wouldn’t say I was wowed by it. Comparing it to the most recent one I had at my last London hotel, I enjoyed the London one better, but this one was still a good start to the day.

With a satisfying breakfast down the hatch, we actually chilled in the room for a bit more and then worked on our plan for the day. Mostly, that plan was to head to the Belém neighborhood of the city to explore and check out some interesting sites. In our conversation with the person who checked us in at the hotel, we heard that Belém is an area of the city that we needed to check out. Of course, she said we would take a train to get there, but in looking it up on Google, we realized it was only a little over four miles away, so we figured we’d get our walk in by hoofing it there. The weather was quite cooperative (it felt fairly warm by the time we arrived) and we actually started our trek with a detour to the Praça do Comércio (Commerce Plaza) shortly after we left the hotel. It’s right by the river and we knew we could follow the river pretty much all the way to Belém anyway, so it made sense to walk through it for a few minutes to take some photos. The results are below!

Here’s what I’ll say about our walk to Belém – it was very…functional. :p There wasn’t really anything to see between there and our hotel and it felt a bit “industrial” at times and not exactly touristy, which isn’t a bad thing, but it also meant it wasn’t a very interesting walk (though I unsurprisingly still found a few things to take photos of). To be fair, I’m sure I’ve walked through a number of traditionally uninteresting places in London (for example), but being my favorite city, I’m always going to enjoy and get some energy from anywhere I walk in that city, so don’t think that you might not get that kind of energy from a place like Lisbon because you might! And if walking isn’t your thing, the train looked easy enough (though we haven’t taken one ourselves yet) and Uber is always an option, too.

So what’s special about Belém? It’s a bit of a museum district and happens to be home to some cool things to see. Is that what we started with though? Erm, no – we opted to make our first stop at Pastéis de Belém, which is the original home of the famous egg tarts that are so ubiquitous around Portugal (well, certainly around Lisbon, as we see signs for them everywhere). You may read “egg” and think that it’s a savory treat, but in this case, it refers to egg custard, so these lil’ tarts are actually sweet treats. You can eat them as they come, but it’s also normal to sprinkle them with powdered sugar and cinnamon, both of which I find pretty tasty. Because this restaurant (well, more of a bakery, I suppose) is famous for having the original recipe for these goodies, it’s always busy, but they have a good system in place to deal with that. Namely, they have two different entrances – one for takeaway service, which just allows you to buy the tarts, and another for table service, where you can come in, order more of what they offer, and sit down and eat it. It looked like table service could take awhile, so we opted for takeaway. Although there were ~20 people ahead of us, the line moved very quickly (easy to do when the only choice you have to make is how many of the one available item you want), so we soon had our treats in-hand. We were going to get two (one each) and then thought we might get four (two each), but then saw they had a convenient six-pack (three each?!), so we opted for that. And then we quickly realized we’d like to have a place to sit and eat them! Thankfully, there’s a Starbucks next door, so we decided to squat there. To be fair, I did go in and buy a bevvie, even though I don’t like coffee (neither does Scott), but I can always find a non-coffee drink at a coffee shop.

So how were the tarts, I hear you asking?! They’re good! We actually had a preview of them the night before when the hotel sent up a two-pack of them to our room (a little welcome treat, I guess?) and I think the ones from Pastéis tasted similar, but they get extra points for being served with packets of powdered sugar and cinnamon (that’s the only reason we knew you were meant to put them on top). They were also served warm from the restaurant and I’d say they’re similar to a small creme bruleé, though minus the crisped-up top. They actually are decently sweet on their own, but the cinnamon and sugar added an extra sweet kick that I know I appreciated.

So do you have to come to Pastéis when you’re in Lisbon? If you just want to try an egg tart, you probably don’t need to, but since you’ll likely want to go to Belém anyway, I think it’s worth checking out the original home of this national treat.

With treats consumed, we moved on down the line (literally) to just a little further down the street, where we saw the Jerónimos Monastery. It’s actually not actually a monastery anymore, as it was secularized in the early 1800s, but it’s still a really imposing building, not to mention quite old, as it was built in the 1500s. Every time I see buildings like this, I stop and think how ridiculous it is that people hundreds of years ago were even able to design and construct them! Although we’re usually down to visit churches (or in this case, church-adjacent, since it’s no longer a monastery), we opted not to go inside this one as the mood wasn’t hitting us. We still got a sense for how impressive it is from the outside, as you can see below. Also below are a couple of photos from the Praça do Império (Empire Square), a square and park across the street from the monastery that we wandered through as we continued down the street. And yes, I mean that literally – all these famous sites are on the same street!

Okay, I promise we’re going to actually walk through the next cool monument we find! Well, to be fair, we walked by one that we DIDN’T go in (see below), but then we walked to the Torre de Belém (Belém Tower), which is a cool, tall, imposing structure. It was built in the 1500s and served as a point of embarkation and de-embarkation for explorers and also functioned as a “ceremonial gateway” to Lisbon. In my mind, those are a lot of words to say that it was a mostly decorative structure. 🙂 We had a bit of an odd experience with this one because, although we had decided that we wanted to go inside it, we hadn’t yet purchased tickets, thinking we’d just get them there. You can see the line of people in one of the photos below, but at the front of that line was a notice saying tickets were sold out. That was a bummer, since we’d skipped the monastery thinking we’d still get to walk through this cool building, but I looked online and saw that I was able to buy same-day tickets (they aren’t timed to a specific slot, just general admission for that date), so I went ahead and booked them and then we got in the line. It wasn’t the fastest-moving line, though it chugged forward steadily at first, but then seemed to stop. According to the ticket-taker, only 60 people are allowed inside at once, but we must have seen 20 people come out (they exit where we had to enter, so you couldn’t miss them) and no one was being let in. Maybe they only let people in in batches or something, but either way, we finally got in after ~20 minutes in line. It was a bit warm out, but other than that, the wait was pleasant enough. At least it wasn’t raining!

Inside, there isn’t actually a lot to see, though there are some nice views. The entrance takes you to an open room full of small cannons pointed out small windows and then there are a couple of empty function rooms, plus a balcony that gave us some very nice views of the area. All told, I doubt we spent more than 20 minutes inside, maybe 30 at the most. Tickets were only ~€10 each though, so fairly inexpensive. Even if you opt to not go inside, definitely visit the outside and snap some photos because it’s a really neat building, as you can see below.

Finally the tower! I made sure to get a few photos of it from different angles because it just looks so neat.

Cannons!

Also on the balcony, a selection of selfies. 🙂

Maybe that doesn’t seem like a lot reading it all, but it felt like a pretty full day, especially with the 4-mile walk to get to Belém in the first place, so we were ready to head back and relax for a bit! Although taking another 4-mile walk in the same day wouldn’t be at all unusual at home, we’re not also walking around sightseeing at home, so we did the sensible thing and took an Uber. 🙂 As with our trip from the airport to the hotel, the distance wasn’t far (close to five miles’ driving distance), but it took a good half-hour to make it back. I can neither confirm nor deny if one or both of us started to doze off during that half-hour though.

The rest of our evening was enjoyable and low-key. We chilled at the hotel for a bit and then decided we wanted to have some Portuguese food for dinner, so we asked the folks at the front desk where they would go for that. They recommended Taberna de Baixa, which is a short walk from our hotel, so we made our way there and had a nice meal. Although it was late for us to be having dinner (nearly 8 PM), we knew it was kind of early for Portuguese folks to be eating, so weren’t surprised to see the restaurant only half-full when we arrived. Happily though, it filled up nicely by the time we left, so it seems like it is a popular place for more than just tourists. We enjoyed our meal, too, which consisted of a few tapas to start (chicken, beef, tuna, and chickpea salad) and then a seafood rice dish for Scott and a pork dish for me, along with apple crumble (Scott) and caramel pudding (me) for dessert. Oddly, the server specifically took Scott’s spoon away, giving him a larger serving spoon instead, which made it difficult to eat the rice as it was pretty saucy. It had lots of seafood in it though, so he was able to do just fine with a fork. 🙂

After dinner, we decided to check out a local bar to see what it was like. Again, it was pretty early for folks to be out drinking, especially on a Saturday night, but the bar got busier the longer we were there for our two drinks. Well, I say the bar got busier, but we were actually standing outside the whole time because the bar proper is so small, so it was the street outside that got busy! It seems very normal here to have a small bar that you go into to get a drink, but then you take it outside to enjoy in the nice weather. So that’s what we did! The downside to that is that smoking is fairly prevalent here, so we definitely had to deal with smokers outside, but not too many, thankfully. Coming to Europe always reminds me that there are still plenty of smokers in the world!

My pork dish was served in a tasty sauce with some really nice veggies. I was surprised to see fries included, but I noticed them on most people’s plates, so they’re quite common. And they’re actually sweet potato fries. On the right, my caramel pudding was like a flan, which I enjoy, though I know that texture isn’t for everyone.

By the time we got back to the hotel and got to bed, it was after midnight. Now, that’s when things are just getting started at many Lisbon bars, but we had a 7 AM wakeup call for our day trip, so knew we couldn’t stay out later! I’m also just too old to party like that anyway – ha!

Check back soon for the recap of our day out, but I’ll give you a preview by saying that the weather was miserable to start, but got significantly better as the day went on. More on that soon!