Lisboa

I am officially taking over blog writing duties from today, apologies to anyone used to mum’s style of writing.

Today has been another lovely, but very different day. I almost asked mum what she was going to wear this morning... felt very stupid when I remembered she’s only brought two shirts and they’re exactly the same (she found this hilarious)! We headed into Lisbon after breakfast and caught a metro to Alfama, the old town district near the sea. Much hilarity as we tried to top up our travel cards, got fooled by an atm with a metro sign above it and tried to put our tickets into it (I found it a lot funnier than mum). Lots of tiny little streets, very like Venice. I’d found a recommended cafe online so we headed there in a roundabout way for the best pastel de nata we’ve had so far, delicious!

Worked our way through some more little streets before stumbling across a lovely cathedral. Went in for a wander and then headed down towards the sea (we had a bet about which direction it was, I won!). Found an enourmous square by the water with lots of restaurants around the edges and statues in the middle. Very like St Marks square in Venice.

Continued along the water front to the Time Out food market. A great find by mum, lots of yummy stalls around the edges with an eating area in the middle. An octopus salad for mum and fried squid with a lovely lime aeoli for me. We then decided to head up the hill to the botanic gardens, discovered the museum of natural history next door with a combined ticket. Mum wasn’t very keen but was soon won over once we discovered that there was a really old Charles Darwin research laboratory and amphitheatre inside, really cool! Heaps of wax models of bizarre diseases too, a bit gruesome!

Quick walk through the botanic gardens afterwards, very small and not very inspiring. Exotic trees for them were just Australian trees for us!We discovered later that it wasn’t the proper botanic gardens. Headed back to Sintra on a metro and train and went to the hostel garden for cheap drinks. Beer for mum, gin and tonic for me.