Our next port was Lisbon, Portugal, our third time in this great city. One of the nice things about returning to a city you’ve been to before is that you can either do something new, or you can revisit some old favorites in a more relaxed manner. We chose the latter.
We started the day with a walk on the waterfront. I don’t believe we have walked the waterfront since our first visit to Lisbon in 2010. Not much was open yet during our walk, and to be honest it looked more rundown that last time. I suspect, like many places in the world, the pandemic took its toll.
We then wandered around the Alfama neighborhood, an old neighborhood with many twisting streets and alleyways. There were a lot of tourists in some sections, and less in others. We visited a place we had been to during our visit in 2019 for some tea and time to update our Kindles (they cannot connect to the ship’s Internet), and then got semi-lost (not hard to do or unusual in this type of neighborhood at all). We realized we had crossed into another neighborhood, so we headed back down to the waterfront to figure it out.
Once re-oriented, we found an enjoyable restaurant for lunch. We chose the restaurant before we noticed that George, the maître di from our dinner restaurant on the ship, was eating there, eating the same things we were planning to eat, grilled sardines. Since he has probably been to Lisbon (a common cruise ship port) 10s if not a 100 times or more, probably a good sign! Grilled sardines may not be for everyone, but it is the food I most associate with Portugal since our first trip. I enjoyed it with vino verde, a lower alcohol slightly sparkling wine with a green tinge that is hard to find outside of Portugal.
After lunch, we headed back to ship for a nap, and then headed back out to a favorite bar from our last time in Portugal that we spotted earlier in the day. It was as enjoyable as we remembered, with craft beers for Kevin to enjoy, good sangria, and good tapas. We told the proprietors that we will see them again next year! A perfect end to our trip to Lisbon.
