My Average Holidays

Lisbon! It’s a bit of a forgotten European capital. I couldn’t think of a single song about it. There are some, but they are all, and I’m being generous here, forgettable.

This is an unusual trip because I’m not here with Lyn! She was home alone for the first time in 35 years! Instead this was a ‘boys’ trip and I went with my son Matthew. Unfortunately Matthew is a rain magnet. When he and I went to Symi it rained. When he went to Berlin it rained so hard they cancelled a boat trip he was supposed to go on. As we left the house to drive to the airport it started to rain and it followed us all the way to the airport. The forecast for Lisbon was rain for the 4 days we were there. Sunny before and sunny after. The headlines for the UK when we’re away is ‘Parts of UK To Be Hotter Than Ibiza!’.

This is a quote from Douglas Adams So Long and Thanks For All The Fish and perfectly encapsulates my son.

“Rob McKenna Matthew was a Rain God. All he knew was that his working days were miserable and he had a succession of lousy holidays. All the clouds knew was that they loved him and wanted to be near him, to cherish him, and to water him.”

Our flight was delayed due to bad weather at Lisbon. Fortunately our Uber driver, who I pre-booked, was still able to pick us up. It was dark and wet and it had been a fairly uncomfortable flight because Matthew hadn’t wanted to pay for upgrades. On the plus side he did learn his first father/son lesson for this trip; ‘When travelling and you can afford it, don’t be cheap’.

Day One: 

We’d picked a couple of activities for this trip and on the first day we’d booked via Viator “Lisbon Small-Group Food Tour With 18 Tastings In Alfama District”. Matthew had done a food tour in Berlin and had really enjoyed it and a food tour wouldn’t normally be on the cards for me as its not Lyn’s sort of thing. So we were both looking forward to it. 

The tour didn’t start until 10:30 so we thought we’d take advantage of a few hours to have a little explore. Lisbon is fucking hilly. Almost everything seems to be uphill no matter where you start. This would have been tough for the man I was 10 years ago and I’m most definitely not that man now. Nevertheless at this point I was still believing the maps when it said destination X is only a 20 minute walk away. This is not the time for a near crippled 57 year old whose wife had giving him a leaving present of a cold. Also nothing is really open until 10am, coffee shops being the exception.

My first impressions of Lisbon… Well it’s estimated that 85% of Lisbon was destroyed in an earthquake in 1755. If Lisbon was a house it would be described as either a fixer-upper or a DIY project. This goes not only for the buildings themselves but the roads and infrastructure. I don’t think I walked down a single set of slippery, uneven cobbled stairs where the safety rail didn’t wobble like it was about to come out of the ground. Anyone who’s read my blogs before know I like the cobbled approach to roads and paths as I believe it breeds more athletic pensioners but there’s a difference between ‘slightly uneven’ and ‘a fucking big hole’, especially when its halfway down a 1 in 4 stairs with no secure had grip. Might as well have a teenagers throwing rocks at you just to maximise the danger. Now I come to think about it I don’t recall seeing that many elderly Portuguese. On top of this general sense of neglect is a massive layer of graffiti. Couple this with the poor weather (not Lisbon’s fault) and I wasn’t very impressed.

Our small group food tour was very small indeed. Me and Matthew, a couple from Maastricht in the Netherlands and their baby. Also Bernard?, Brian?. Some old name beginning with B for a young 20 something American travelling on his own for the first time. I can’t remember the name of our guide but looking at the comments for the tour there’s someone called Bianca so let’s go with that.

I’m not going to go into details about the tour but it was excellent and a lot of fun with different food and lots of wine and a  special thanks to ‘Bubbly Bianca’. Good Tour guides make for good tours. I’m very proud that I didn’t bring up Trump, Willie? from the Netherlands did that so of course I piled in but it wasn’t me who started it. I got the impression ‘Brian’ who works in Washington as a federal subcontractor? was a Trump supporter but he very sensibly kept his opinions to himself.

We finished the tour around 2 and the sun was out. It had rained a few times while on the tour so we thought we’d take advantage of the weather and go to Belem which was something we’d planned to do the next day but the forecast wasn’t good. I ordered up an Uber (I f’ing love Uber) and they picked us up at the hotel and dropped us off at Belem Tower about 25 minutes and 6 miles away all for 8 euros.

This bit looked a bit cleaner and it was defiantly flatter so there was a bonus. We looked at the Belem Tower and the Monument of Discoveries which is very impressive. And then wandered around for a bit. By this point I’d walked about 13k and the cold was starting to kick in so we Uber’d back to the hotel.

Matthew said his feet were killing him so he’d pay to eat at the hotel. I said my feet were so murderous that Poirot would have to investigate so I was happy to let him pay. At this point I got a text from AvisoPROCIV, Portugals National Warning system saying there was going to be ‘strong winds, heavy rain and flooding’ for the next 2 days. I contacted the Tour company for our trip to Sintra in a couple of days and they said it was still on. We weren’t that hopeful and we went to bed wondering what tomorrow would bring.

Day Two:

What the next day brought was strong winds, heavy rain and flooding. Our hotel has a train station under it, you can’t hear it with the window closed. We looked out of the window and saw parts of the roof that cover the platform had been blown off. Not a good sign. We decided to buy a travel card. This gives you access for all the public transport, Trains, Metro, Trams, Busses, Ferry in Lisbon for €11 or about £10 for the day. Also your 24 hours starts when you first use it which is good. London, if you can work out times/zones and any other little obstacles they throw in is double that.

As we’d been to Belem already we decided to head for the centre of town where the lift and castle is and a bit of shopping. The first snag was again nothing open until 10. This did give us a chance to have a little look around an almost empty capital city. As nothing was open yet we thought we’d make our way to the ’Time Out’ Market. Nope that wasn’t open yet… still not 10. We found a coffee shop and had a very hot a very mediocre coffee and then went back to Time Out. This is a very popular place for tourists. We had Some Crush Doughnuts which at the time I thought was probably a chain but it turns out is a local Lisbon business. Think of Crispy Creams on steroids.

We wanted to have a look at St Georges Castle. It’s a fairly prominent feature of the Lisbon skyline. To get back we decided to use on of the old time trams. The Portuguese take the same principle with trams as they do with sardines and cram people on with no regard for comfort or safety. I didn’t mind I’ve ridden on the London underground more times than I care to remember. Matthew on the hand was definitely not a fan.

We got as close to the castle as we could. It was raining off and on and the queue to get into the castle was absolutely massive so we decided not to bother. Instead we had a look around a very damp and uninspiring environs. From what I can gather all the castle is is just an outer wall, there’s nothing actually inside so instead we paid €5 to climb up a Bell Tower. We did get a free drink which did include a choice of alcohol, which was nice. The view was okay if a little windy and given the narrow stairs to get up and down I’m glad I didn’t have the wine.

We made our way back into the town centre to try and find something to eat. We’d not planned this very well and ended up randomly picking places on the map, walking to it and then looking through the window to if it was okay. On route to yet another restaurant Matthew saw an Italian restaurant which of course sold pizza. Choice made. It was run by a little Asian lady and rather amusingly had a picture of Margret Thatcher on the wall. We decided that Matthew’s ‘Travel’ thing is to have a pizza in every country he visits.

We’d walked 16k this day and seen a few things but the weather was very disappointing. For tea Matthew went to the supermarket to get some sandwiches crisps and maybe a little cake. He came back with two giant baguettes that were mostly bread with little filling. No crisps or cake. To round the day off I then got a text from the tour company saying our trip to Sintra was cancelled because the Pena Palace wasn’t going to open. FFS the weather wasn’t that bad! I think someone just wanted the day off.

Day Three:

Our plans had now been totally thrown out. We needed to get an idea about what to do for today so I started looking to see what museums Lisbon had… the Fado Museum, nah, the Tile Museum, really that’s a thing, (it’s probably quite good). I saw there were a few museums in Belem so we decided to make our way back out there.

During breakfast at the hotel, which was always excellent, a man came up to us and informed us the writing on the back of Matthew’s T-shirt said ‘brave’. He was from Taiwan and was supposed to be going on a cruise to the UK but his ship wasn’t there again weather related. He did say how much good value Lisbon was especially compared to the UK so if you thought going out in Britain is a rip off so does everyone else.

We got another day pass and got on the metro. I’d forgotten that very special smell you get on the underground in London in rush hour but here it was 900 miles away in Lisbon. We made our way to the train station which would then take us to Belem. It was closed (weather) and quite frankly it looked like complete chaos as people were trying to drive/tram their way along the river. So it was back to the town centre to see if the lift was open. It wasn’t. We walked up o the top of the lift just to see what the view would have been and then found a shopping centre. The highlight of which was a Japanese vending machine. While sat down drinking are strange Japanese drinks I suggested we go to the Edward the 7th Park.

It’s a bit odd that a park in Portugals Capital is named after a 20th century English king but there you go. The view at the top is quite impressive. I would imagine it would look better if the sun was shinning and the trees didn’t look like something from a post apocalyptic hell scape.

We decided to see if the train station was open yet. It wasn’t so as it was lunchtime and the Time Out Market was across the road we went there. It was rammed! But we did manage to get some over priced food. I’m pretty sure a chap tried to pick pocket me but I noticed him fairly early led him down a semi dead end and then turned and faced him. It was amusing seeing a bit of shock and then the about face. All my stuff was in a sling bag on my front anyway. Can’t recommend these enough.

The weather had remained semi dry so far but that was about to change so we thought we’d call it quits, go back to the hotel and get our shit together for a reasonably early flight in the morning.

Conclusion:

This wasn’t the best city break I’ve done. In fact I’d go as far as to say it was the worst and this was entirely due to the weather. We’d booked this 3 months in advanced, we picked Lisbon because in March it was supposed to be 18 and sunny. We’d booked tours to maximise our experience. There wasn’t much else we could have done with planning but when you get an emergency warning text on your first evening you know it’s probably not going to go well. Just to top it off our flight out was again an hour late (due to weather). Would I go back to Lisbon? No, sorry Lisbon. While I think you’re good value and you’re probably a different city in the sun theres not enough to get me back.