Showing posts with label Portugal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Portugal. Show all posts

Saturday, 8 July 2017

Wandering about Lisbon



There you go: twice in Lisbon in two weeks, after years trying to find the best moment to get there. Does one ever learn that "best moments" do not exist?


After a late night flight, a late night Uber ride, a late night delivery of a briefing, I was exhausted but Lisbon was there for a few days.

Two weeks ago, Lisbon was hot, unbearably hot, forest fires exploding in the north, people too tired to even talk. Two weeks later the city is cloudy, fresh and moody.



Half million people, life style well above European average, sun through the clouds and a pretty waterfront. What some would call a good start.


At the end, this Lisbon time was about friends, about walking, about going up and down and up again. It was about sipping coffee with a bite of chocolate, and drinking white wine looking down towards the Ocean. No, that is not the Ocean, it is the Tagus that you are looking at.


Too short a time, it turned out. Enough to visit four or five miradores and the Belem Jeronimo's monastery and to climb the Arch of Augusta street to enjoy the view on Praca do Comercio. Not enough to visit all I wanted to visit at the slow pace we decided to keep.

And certainly not enough to get sick of eating pasteis. Not even close to that.





Saturday, 14 March 2015

Porto stories


Note to self: never buy a guidebook before having planned a trip. I got my Portugal guide in 2005, but set foot there for the first time ten years later.

To sum up: lots of pasteis de nata, long walks up and down, fish and more fish to eat, dinner and party at Ribeira. Yes, my friends can have great ideas to fight (upcoming) birthday blues.