Day 1 - Saturday 29 August 2015
After 23 hours travelling we arrived in Lisbon around midday.
We caught a taxi to our apartment. The taxi driver was very nice but didn't speak much English but he taught us how to say "Thank you" in Portuguese. I thought it was "Obligato". Jazz thought it was "Obrigato". Jazz was right but I continue to say it the wrong way because it's stuck in my head.
The taxi couldn't go down the street that our apartment was on because the street was too narrow, so we walked up a hill along the narrow street dragging our suitcases along the cobble stones. When we got to our apartment we rang the buzzer and the door clicked open. We had to climb three flights of stairs so when we got to our apartment we were sweaty and exhausted. The apartment was great and so was our Air BnB host Tiago. It was smaller than we are used to, but sufficient and neat and tidy and of course the major highlight was definitely the 360 degree rooftop terrace.
We had showered and freshened up so we could hit the pavement. It was early afternoon so the streets were really quite but we didn't mind as we just wanted to wander around. We bought some lemonade from a stand on the street and got some money exchanged.
We didn't know where we were wandering so we just followed the beautiful streets down the hill. We hit some restaurants so decided to sit down and get a beer (Cervaja) and some food. The restaurant was really bad. We've since been told you shouldn't go to the really central places because they're just for tourists and the quality is crap.
We continued wandering and found ourselves in this beautiful square by the water. It looked very grand to us but there was a creepy guy wandering around trying to sell us drugs. We have since been told by a tour guide that it is just rolled up grass and they wander that square trying to rip off tourists.
We saw a sign that said "wine tasting room" so naturally walked towards it. We sat and watched young guys skateboarding and breakdancing in the square.
It was early evening Lisbon time but to us it was midnight and we had hardly slept the night before because we were on the plane.
We were exhausted so decided to grab some dinner and go to bed early.
We started wandering back up the beautiful streets. There were so many restaurants and they all had guys out the front trying to coerce you inside. We didn't know what was good and what was too touristy so we just picked one at random and it was ok. I had a Portuguese seafood dish and really liked it but Jazz had some pasta and felt like it had 2 minute noodle seasoning on it.
We got back to our apartment totally shattered. It was 2am our time. But it was our first night and we were excited so we went up to the rooftop and opened the bottle of wine that Tiago had left for us. We stayed up and drank most of it, chatting and acknowledging how lucky we were to have such a great apartment.
We went to bed and passed out. I think we slept for almost 12 hours.