June 26 – Lisbon, Portugal

Weather – 19º when sailing, 29º in Lisbon

Steps – 14,304 (that’s what happens when we are on a walking tour)

Humidity – 87% when sailing, “I-was-drenched%” in Lisbon

Today is the last full day of the cruise. It’s always a bit sad to say good-bye to people you’ve become friendly over the last 40 days…40 days is a long time. More annoying is the packing. I don’t know why I hate it like I do, but I can’t stand packing. I was determined to get it done as fast as possible – 30 minutes, I was done.

Other than packing we spent time on the deck.

perfect place to blog

Often the last day of a cruise is a sea day, or at least a partial sea day. Today was partial, we arrived in Lisbon at 3.

sailing in under the bridge

It is interesting to be in Portugal considering the countries we’ve visited on this cruise that were former Portugal colonies. We’ve been to Lisbon a few times – the first in 2006, I just check the blog. We’ve only stayed on land once, the other times were on cruises.

 

Our tour this afternoon was completely on foot. We met our guide, Andre, in the terminal and followed him throughout Lisbon’s narrow streets for the next 4 hours. This was a perfect tour for us – walking, food, drink, listening, learning – loved it!

statue with flags in the distance

Other than the heat I loved it. Lisbon is going through a heat wave. It was 29º today, apparently that is about 6/7 degrees hotter for this time of the year. This weekend it’ll be 36º - I’m glad I’m leaving.

massive old church

Lisbon rises right up from the river – the river seems like the ocean, but it’s not. We sailed from the ocean into the river – same water. Because of this, it is a hike from the port to the top of the old town. then we meandered through the streets and ultimately down to the river by the end of the tour.

We saw churches, ancient Roman ruins, the tram running back and forth, and many tuk-tuk tours. Although people live in the old city it is also very touristy.

ginjinha 

We made 3 stops for food and drink. The first was for meat, cheese, marmalade, a port wine, and a lot of water – lovely. Second, we stopped outside à Ginjinha Espinheria. à Ginjinha Espinheria is a tiny bar that serves ginjinha – a traditional Portuguese sour cherry liquor. We didn’t even see inside the bar – people were standing outside drinking and there was a line. Lucky for us, Andre skipped the line and brought out a tray for us. It was kind of as expected…a bit sour, a bit sweet, a bit boozy.

random buildings

Then we kept wandering, listening. BTW, we used earpieces and Andre had a mic. This was ideal. There’s no way in the skinny streets we could have heard half of what he said. It’s rare that we use, these…like basically never, but they’re great.

that's a public elevator!

The last food/drink stop was for cod fritters - Pastéis de Bacalhau, cod, potato, parsley, fried. We expected a small golf ball sized one or 2 bite thing – nope…it was a multi-bite situation.

By 7:30 we were back at the ship, took a quick shower and were out for our final ship dinner. We never request a particular waiter, a table by the window request…yes, but never a specific waiter – we like to get to know everyone. However, this being our last dinner, we wanted to sit with Dhiraj. Luckily, he had an open table. It was a lovely last meal.

Candy Lisa candy store

We were back in the room by 10:30, had our suitcases in the hall shortly after to be taken into the terminal for us to pick up tomorrow and we were in bed.

random buildings