Day 1 Lisbon Portugal

A coworker is off to Portugal and that inspired me to repost this from our trip back in March 2013. Wow, how time flies but I still remember our Portugal adventure as one of our best…Enjoy!

After an 8 hour flight, we arrived in Lisbon and checked into the Sofitel Lisbon Liberdade, a great choice and one I would highly recommend for its location, spacious rooms and modern decor!

With no time to waste, we walked down Avenida da Liberdade, Lisbon’s main boulevard built in the 19th century in the style of the Champs-Elysees in Paris.

It runs north for a mile from Restauradores…

to Marquês de Pombal Square, and is more than 300 feet (90m) wide.

The avenue still has a certain elegance with fountains and cafes shaded by trees, as well as a pavement decorated with abstract patterns…

Some of the original mansions have been preserved, and many are outstanding from an architectural standpoint.

When booking hotels, it’s often difficult to know exactly where you’ll end up but I was happy to find that this avenue was the site of not only our hotel but others just as grand as well as banks, offices and designer shops like Louis Vuitton, D&G, Tods, Burberry and the like…

Jacob’s first purchase, roasted chestnuts from this nice man…

We then checked out Elevador da Gloria, a funicular that links downtown to the Bairro Alto district and one that most people take to go up and down the hilly windy streets.

Us? Nope! We made the walk multiple times…good for buns and thighs became the joke of the trip!

After exchanging money, we stopped off at the Post Office…(that would be our reflection in the ceiling)

Made our way past Rossio Station, a train station that looks more like a theater or a lavishly adorned palace with horseshoe arched doorways and home to the one and only Starbucks in the city…

This monumental Neo-Manueline building is located between Rossio and Restauradores squares and was built at a time when train stations were seen as temples of technology.

I couldn’t stop photographing it, it’s so beautiful!

Based on Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations we commemorated our first night in Lisbon with dinner at Cervejaria Ramiro for what was probably the most delicious and memorable meal EVER! Cervejaria Ramiro is probably the most popular seafood restaurant (usually called cervejarias or marisquieras) in Lisbon. Even before Bourdain featured it on his show, locals and tourists alike flocked to the not so hidden gem for its specialty seafood dishes like…

Just make sure to get there before 7 or, you will be waiting in line indefinitely as they do not take reservation…haha!

We ate barnacles…

Garlic Clams, Swimming Crab, Stone Crab and Alaskan Crab…

All made that much yummier with buttery, garlicky and crunchy fresh bread and a few Cervezas…

The meal was complete with Prego, a steak sandwich that’s eaten with mustard at the end of the meal as “dessert”…

Full and happy…

we set out to explore more of this awesome city!

One of my favorites was Lisbon’s Santa Justa Elevator that is said to have been designed by Gustave Eiffel (yes, of the Eiffel Tower), but that is not exactly true. Mr. Eiffel had many disciples and one of them was Raoul Mesnier du Ponsard, a Portuguese architect born in Porto of French parents. Ponsard was the real creator of Santa Justa Elevator which several publications have listed as one of the world’s best examples of iron architecture during the Industrial Revolution…it was truly fantastic especially, at night!