Day 1 in Portugal

We have now been in Portugal for three weeks and we’ve been having so much fun exploring the country and the culture that we haven’t taken time to update you on our trip. So I thought it might be time to tell you a little of what’s been happening here.

We spent the first week and a half in Lisbon, followed by a few days in each of Évora, Sintra, Leiria, and now Coimbra. Rather than trying to pack three weeks of travels into a single post, I thought I’d pick one topic and share some photos.

We landed in Lisbon early in the morning, took the metro to our hotel, dropped off our luggage with reception, and went out to kill time until we could check in and go to sleep. We walked all around downtown Lisbon, known as the Baixa neighborhood, including the Praça do Comércio (“commerce square”) along the Tagus river.

The day was warm and fairly sunny, but, being early on a Thursday morning, it was also rather quiet. We were able to explore the area without the throngs of tourists that usually come out a little later in the day.

One of the first things we did was get a galão (a Portuguese latte) along with a pastel de nata (literally, “cream pastry”), an egg custard tart that is available from pastry shops and cafés pretty much everywhere. The galão is more like a café au lait or café con leche than the lattes Americans are used to, but they are still quite good and go very well with a pastel de nata.

Next up, we made sure to try a “ginjinha,” a little shot of ginja, a sour cherry liquor popular in Lisbon. You can buy it with or without the cherries in the glass, and it is sometimes served in cups made of chocolate. While people really seem to enjoy their ginjinhas, the drink tastes a little too much like cough syrup for our liking. We’ve had it once more since then, in the chocolate cup this time, but it still tastes like Robitussin.

For lunch that first morning, we made sure to try the pastel de bacalhau–a deep-fried croquette made of codfish, potato, egg, and onion–along with a little vinho verde or “green wine.” We didn’t realize that the pastéis (the plural of pastel) could be served hot or cold, and ours arrived cold, and not as tasty as we were expecting. Subsequently we’ve made to sure to order them “quente,” or hot, and they are much better.

In some places you can also get pastéis de bacalhau com queijo, or “with cheese.” These are always served hot and have a filling of warm, melty Serra da Estrela cheese in the middle. This is apparently a relatively new thing–definitely not traditional–aimed at tourists and overpriced. But if you find yourself in Lisbon and suffering from a melted cheese deficiency, the pastel de bacalhau com queijo may be just what you need.

And, because Portugal is famous for its sardines, our lunch also included a plate of grilled sardines. These are nothing like the tiny canned sardines we get in the states. Rather, they are large, fresh sardines cooked on an open grill. Seafood is common, plentiful, and cheap here in Portugal, and we are loving it!

By 2:00pm, exhausted and overcome with jetlag, we were finally able to check into our hotel, the Vila Nova Guesthouse near the Parque Eduardo VII, a 64-acre park named for King Edward VII of England after his visit to Portugal in 1903. (I’ll tell you more about the park and it’s amazing botanical gardens in another post.) Thankfully, we slept well and were able to recover from the jetlag within just a couple of days.

So much has happened in the short time we’ve been here, but I think that’s enough for the first update. We’re looking forward to sharing more soon!