Lisbon, Portugal - Day 4

Day 4 - Saturday May 28

We booked a Culinary Backstreets food tour!  "Lisbon Eats: The Culinary Backstreets Essentials." A mere $95 per person, and we were going to taste the best that Lisbon had to offer

Lisbon, Portugal - Day 3

Day 3 - Friday May 27, 2016

Our third day had some excitement in store. I was going to eat at my first Michelin rated restaurant.

We had 12:30pm reservations at Belcanto. And an amazing meal followed.

After lunch we walked over to the Castle of St. George. This walk took us through the Alfama neighborhood and their very steep streets.  The views from the castle are amazing, and worth the ~10 euro admission fee.  We took the fun a step further, and bought a bottle of wine with glasses and enjoyed a drink sitting atop the walls overlooking the city of Lisbon.

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Lisbon, Portugal - Day 2

Day 2 - Thursday May 26

I was supposed to meet my friends for lunch when they arrived, but their flight was delayed.  And with that, I was off to do my most favorite thing... a bike tour!

Now Lisbon is known as the City of Seven Hills, because the roads are very steep. This tours plan was to start at the top of one and tide downhill to the river Targus, and then just ride along the river to the city of Belem.  I chose Lisbon Bike Tour as my tour guide. 3.5 hours of riding around the city.  It was wonderful.

I walked around Belem briefly, but made sure to stop at the famous Pasteis de Belem. Melt in your mouth deliciousness. A short Uber ride to the Baixa (about 10 euro), and I was back at the apartment.

We had reservations at the amazing BA Wine Bar in the Barrio Alto. You can email them for reservations here.

BA is a very small and simple traditional wine bar with Portuguese tapas of cheese and/or charcuterie. They also have handmade marinated tinned fish.  Unlike Spanish tapas, the Portuguese ones are cold cuts. The wine menu has 200 different Portuguese wines, however, with the exception of the port wine flight, they do not have any fixed tastings. It is a customized wine workshop, table by table. It is a very small place - 7 people take almost half the seats!
I cannot recommend this place enough. It was the most amazing meal I had. It was so good, we went back again another night! This was a great introduction to Portuguese wine.

Surprise! You're going to Portugal!

Well, I've never been to Portugal before.....

So, I was talking with my friends about their upcoming vacation to Portugal.  They were going on one of their fabulous REI hiking tours (more on that later).  Before the tour started they were going to spend a few days in Lisbon.  I thought to myself, I should join them!  I went home, checked the flights, and the cost with miles was super cheap, like 25,000.  So, just like that I was going to Lisbon.

But then I thought,I shouldn't travel all the way there for just a few days.  I talked to some other friends, they were able to take the days off too, and just like that, with 45 days to go, we were off.

We found the cutest AirBnB, in the best part of town.
Here's the link if you want to see it the cuteness.
3 bedrooms and 2 baths, for four people in the Baixa. It was perfect. You could walk to everything.

Day 1

I arrived on May 25, 2016, about 3pm, a day ahead of everyone.
I checked into the apartment, and then went for a walk to get comfortable with my neighborhood for the next week.

I made a trip to the corner store for some groceries, and then had dinner at one of the restaurants along the tiled streets of the Baixa.