Adventures with Abigail

I went to Lisbon, Sintra, and Nazare Portugal in February 2023. This is my story.

Like any great USA to Europe trip, it started with a Redeye flight. I arrived in Lisbon bright and early at 8am on a Wednesday. Lisbon has a decent public transportation system with 4 train lines (Green, Blue, Yellow, and Red) that all intersect at some point, making it easy to get around. You can easily pick up a Viva Viagem card from the metro station outside of the airport, though expect long lines at these ticket machines. You will have several options to choose from. The best one includes the busses and funiculars (trolleys).

Side note: If you need a recommendation for a good data plan while you are abroad, then try Holafly. I’ve had great luck with Holafly in Portugal (not a sponsor), and they are reasonably priced. You can get unlimited data for 10 days and it’s also an eSim, so you can easily install it right when you land at the airport.

After collecting my pass and making my train connections, I arrived at my airBnB: CasaChiado. This was a cute studio apartment in the Chiado neighborhood between Bairro Alto and Alfama. It was a few steps up the street from the best coffee I found in Portugal. The shop is called Cotidiano Lisboa. They have the best vanilla latte I have ever had. They open at 9am most days, and they quickly have a line outside waiting to get seated. They also do to-go orders, but it’s not advertised anywhere. I highly recommend staying in this neighborhood area because it is blocks from the river and the arch (Arco da Rua Augusta). Near the arch you’ll find the English-speaking tourist friendly restaurants, but you are also nearby so many other local shops and restaurants. The best part of my airBnB location was how close it was to a metro stop! Check out my first real view of Portugal below after I made it out of the trains station.

After checking into my AirBnb, it’s still mid morning, so I set out on a walk-about adventure of the area. I stopped by the aforementioned arch (pictured below), had some lunch at a nearby restaurant while it rained, and then continued on to get lost in Lisbon. I highly recommend bringing comfortable shoes if you plan to do Portugal properly (aka walk around a bunch). I found a monastery to tour, and started walking up streets to find a high point in the city. See the photos below (fun fact, apparently Lisbon is a stop for cruise ships). There are lots of cute plazas space throughout the city, as well. Of course, throughout the whole city, there are beautiful tile artworks, too.

Day 2 in Portugal was also my birthday, so I decided to go to Sintra, the place where the royalty used to vacation. I had planned to take a long distance train (even paid for it and waited an extra 30 minutes), but it turns out there was a train strike that day. A policeman walked around telling the 50-ish people waiting for this train that it wasn’t coming. Thank goodness for google translate (I highly recommend download the app and the common languages of the country you are visiting) because this man only spoke Portuguese. I then headed outside to find a taxi to take me to Sintra. Checkout the cool photos of my time at the train station. I was up at the crack of dawn and had a cute little donut and coffee breakfast at the station.

So, my total plan for the day was as follows: go to Sintra, come back to Lisbon for dinner. Well, I got to Sintra and then had to figure out how to get around. There are a few options for getting around, but walking really isn’t a feasible one because the main attractions are scattered around the country side and it would take an hour and a half to reach each one. You can hire a tuk-tuk driver to take you places, but that does add up. It’s about 5 euros per person each direction, but they are there when you want to leave and will take you exactly where you want to go. I found the second option before I found a tuk-tuk. That is a hop-on-hop-off bus. This one is advertised at the public transportation bus stop (which also wasn’t running that day), and after purchasing the tickets I then had to find the boarding location. I do recommend not telling any tuk-tuk drivers you might encounter that you’ve purchased this ticket because some of them might get upset. The bus has two loops they run, and they are approximately 20 minutes apart.

Most of the attractions do require tickets or timed tickets. You can get them from a kiosk outside most of the attractions. My first stop was Pena Palace. The garden area at the bottom is free to the public, but to enter the palace you do need a ticket. Make sure you have your ticket BEFORE walking up the very steep hill. I can’t stress enough house steep this hill is. You don’t want to do it twice. Give yourself at least 30 minutes to get up the hill before your timed entry. Inside the palace is really cool, and they do have English plaques explaining what you are looking at. There’s a cafe at the end with good hot chocolate (and other stuff) and a cute outdoor patio area. See the photos below.

The next stop was Parque e Palacio de Monserrate ( or Park and Palace of Monserrate). This place is mostly a park, but it does have a palace at the back that nice to walk though. Throughout the park there’s a stream that winds around the path and ends at a lake at the bottom of a beautiful grassy hill next to the palace. See the photos below.

My last main stop on this hop-on-hop-off bus ride required the second loop, and it took us to Torre da Regaleira. I didn’t get to spend as much time here as I’d have liked to because I had a dinner reservation to make. This is the place with the famous “Well of Ascension.” It should be noted that they don’t actually let you ascend the well, but make you descend it. It was built to symbolize exiting the womb of the earth and entering the light of the world as you ascend up from the cave depths. As the site let us, I descended into the depths of the earth and then made my way through a cave system to exit another part of the park. All I really had time for was making my way to the well, doing the thing, and then finding my way back out of the park.

It was easier to Taxi to Sintra, and it was easier to Uber back to Lisbon. I made it to my dinner reservation at Barrio Alto Hotel (the top floor of the building). I had scheduled it for 7pm, but I learned that is wildly early for dinner in Portugal. I had my pick of tables both inside to eat and outside to relax before dinner. They sat me outside next to a space heater and I discovered what Vinho Verde is (it’s “green wine” that’s only made in the north parts of Portugal). It might be my favorite wine since its got a sour note to it. They also served me some spicy nuts that surprisingly paired well with the wine. Dinner itself was served inside where I got a table next to the kitchen, which is way cooler than it sounds. The kitchen is open-concept like you might have seen on a cooking show with judges off to the side in the dining room. I could watch the chef and his sous chefs make my dinner. I don’t remember much of what the food was. I had some shrimp in some rice sauce that was a popular dish at this restaurant. My travel companion had a lamb dish that was really really good. I did have an appetizer that I remember liking, but I couldn’t tell you what it was. There was also bread served. At the end of the meal I was very very full. The waitress comes around and cleans the table, then places a clean set of silverware and plates for me. I jokingly tell her “oh, no more, I’m so full” and she laughs and responds “no, I’m just getting the table ready for the next guests.” At this point there are maybe 3 other tables occupied, but none of them are onto their main course yet. She tells me to relax and take my time, finish my drink, so I do. About 5-10 minutes later she comes out with a small cake with a candle on top and tells me “Happy Birthday” a little embarrassed since I made such a fuss about no more food. Let me tell you, this was The Best cake, no dessert in general, that I have ever had. I can only describe what it was because when I asked what it’s called “How would I order this somewhere” she said “it’s just a simple sponge cake.” And I told you how full I was before eating this cake to explain just how amazing this cake was. Yes, it was sponge cake, but it also had this amazing egg custard between 3 layers of sponge cake. Each layer was also sprinkled with large pieces of salt that provide a beautiful crunch and really brought out the flavors of the egg custard. It simple amazing, and I’m a little sad that I probably won’t ever find it again. That also makes the experience all the more beautiful. I ate probably 3/4 of this cake because it was soooo good. And that’s how I ended the second day in Portugal.

The third day in Portugal, I had planned to visit Nazare to see the giant waves. I monitored this website that tracks the expected wave heights and knew they were expecting medium size waves this day. I set off to the bus station a few train stops away from my Airbnb, and bought myself a ticket for the next bus to Nazare. The bus ride was about an hour and a half and does have one stop along the way that a few people might get off and on at. The bus stop is a few blocks away from the beach, but its simple to navigate yourself there. Once there, you can enjoy a nice walk down the beach and maybe enjoy a nice midday snack like I did. The main destination for Nazare is the light house on the top of that very large hill. There is a walking path that will take you the whole way there, and it is very steep. You can take that path if you want, and there are plenty of benches and swings along to way to rest. You can also take the “Ascensor” up and down for a few euros. I didn’t know about that, yet, so I walked up the whole thing. I think it was worth it for the views. Once you find the Deer Surfer statue, then you know you are almost there. The lighthouse itself is a surfing museum with the surfboards of all the great or record breaking surfers that have surfed nazare. On the top of the lighthouse you can sit and watch the surfers risk their lives on these big waves. These medium waves were 15-25 feet tall! The third photo below has the surfer and his jet ski partner. These waves are so big that they need a partner on a jetski to get them onto the wave (which is what is happening in the photo), and then the jetski bails out of the way to let the surfer continue on as the wave builds and starts to crash. It’s so dangerous that the entire crowd goes silent if the surfer falls. The hush lasts until we see the jet ski partner come rescue the surfer before the next wave comes by. As a final note on Nazare, You’ll see a beach over on the right and you might think you can walk down there and get an uber back to the town. You can’t. If you walk down there, then you are walking back. The views are pretty good, and it is crazy to see the waves at eye level instead of the birds eye view from the lighthouse.

On the way back to the bus, I got some delectable marshmallow treats from a food vendor on top of the hill. I then decided to try to take the Ascensor down the hill. The bus was about 30 minutes late, but I didn’t have any dinner reservations. I did go out to dinner a few bus stops away from the Airbnb, but it was a cute hole-in-the-wall place that I found online and can’t find again. I do recommend finding those kind of places to try at least once. Below is a picture of the menu. They did have an English version on the back, but between Spanish and google translate, it was easier to read the Portuguese version.

Day four had me exploring more of Lisbon, including the Tile Museum. This museum is a must if you care even a little about the history of the tiles around Lisbon. Below are some of the exhibits at the museum. They even had vision impaired descriptions of the big pieces, and hands-on mini recreations of the tiles with a tactile legend to show each color.

Next I ventured into the new area of Lisbon with the large sky scrapers and found some people protesting on a large lawn. I think it was either about the trains or teachers. There was too much context missed in translation.

To end the day, I did a “Sunset Harbor Cruise”, but it was very overcast. Regardless, the tour was really worth the time and money. The two sailboat captains/guides were really charismatic and supplied us with lots of free Green Wine. There was also a gaggle of American college girls taking a weekend trip from their study abroad located in Barcelona. They became much more friendly after the wine was uncorked. When we went under the bridge, there’s this loud buzzing from all the cars overhead. They built the bridge with grating instead of solid road because the wind would have destroyed the bridge otherwise. Our guides also pointed out a restaurant that Anthony Bourdain went to: Ponto Final.

Check out this photo I took on my walk back to the train that night.

The next day I rode the famous number 28 funicular along it’s some of its route. Number 28 is very popular for both tourist and locals trying to get to work, so it is difficult to get a seat to be able to see out of the windows. I walked around a new area of Lisbon and found Pink Street and did some window shopping. There was a farmers market happening nearby, as well. I found a tile shop that sold tiles at a wider range of prices than I had seen other places. I was able to purchase some newly made tiles (as opposed to the very expensive original tile work from abandoned buildings). I also went to the Lisbon zoo and the Time Out Market. The Time Out Market is a large building with two sides of it. One side is the local population selling stuff, mostly old coins. My dad has a collection, so I got him some for a good deal. The other side has lots of trendy restaurant stalls. I highly recommend going here. I had a few treats, but my favorite thing here was Bolo De Bolacha, which is a brown sugar and coffee flavor cake. It’s also called “Portuguese Biscuit Cake.”

All of the train stations have different tile art work, but this one was my favorite. Under the giant rabbits it spells “estou atrasad” and (when you add an o or a at the end, depending on your gender) it means “I’m late.” Unless you actually look up, you usually don’t see past the knee of the rabbit.

The next morning, I road the famous elevator and went to a leather glove shop that good ole Rick Steves recommended, Luvaria Ulisses, which is near the elevator. I got myself some very nice leather gloves from the woman who runs the shop. She really knew what she was doing. The shop was so small, but she had tons of options. I then took a ferry to the other side of the river and headed to Ponto Final for lunch. This restaurant is very cute and picturesque, but the walk there is a little grummy. You will also need to get there an hour before they open if you don’t have a reservation. You’ll have to wait in line, but they will eventually seat you. I got a great table with a good view outside. They do also have inside seating. Of course I had to get a photo shoot moment along the graffiti wall afterwards.

For my last adventure of the trip, I went on an accidental pilgrimage. During the sailboat ride, I had seen the giant, probably Jesus, statue, but I didn’t know anything else about it. I had some time to kill and nothing else to do. I figured since I was already on this side of the river, I should go see what all the fuss was about. After lunch, the weather cleared up and it ended up being a very pretty day. However I was dressed for the morning when it was a bit cold and cloudy, so I was super hot after my 3 mile walk through the small town and up the hill that the statue sits on. When I got there, I was finally able to confirm it was, in fact, Jesus. The bathrooms had 8 different languages explaining where you were. It did have great views of the bridge and Lisbon.

I woke up early the next morning so I could stop by and get some “God Bread” (which was heavenly and definitely worth waking up early) for breakfast and started my literal 24 hour journey back home. The Lisbon airport is fine, but my 3.5 hour layover turned into a 30 minute layover because the plane had a mechanical issue and was delayed in Portugal. Thankfully I do have Global Entry, so I was able to run, take a train, run, take a bus, and then run again to make it to the plane right when my boarding group was called. I did not check any bags, either.

All in all, Portugal was a great trip. I had a lot of fun, saw a lot of cool stuff, and ate a lot of delicious stuff. The country was surprisingly affordable, too, so I didn’t break the bank after I got there. I even got 8 euros back at the airport from my glove purchase.