Lisboa

The morning following our lunch with Martha and Jacques it was time to pack up and head back to Lisbon or, as the locals call it, Lisboa. The plan called for driving back to LIS, returning the rental car to the nice people at SIXT, taxiing to our Lisboa hotel, and spending the last full day in-country on a walking tour of Portugal’s capital city.

We got an early start out of Tavira. The drive from Tavira to Lisboa is a leisurely three hours of stunning countryside that gradually gives way to the suburbs of Portugal’s beautiful capital city. Of Portugal roughly 10 million inhabitants, 3 million of them live in Lisboa and its environs.

A quick observation about Portugal’s highway fuel/rest stops:

There appear to be a handful of EU fuel/convenience store chains that compete for designated roadside concession locations on Portugal’s main motorways. Repsol, Orange, and Tangerine appear to be the most common brands. There are several things I find nice about this model:

1. Whoever has the concession for a given location sets up shop on both sides of the highway – meaning it’s always exit to the right, pull in to a pump, fuel up, and then pull out the far side of the facility and merge left back onto the highway.
2. The concessions seem to be spaced at 20-30km intervals and there are signs 10km, 5km, and 3km out from the approach that tell you what brand is coming up and what their fuel price is. So, for example, if you’re partial to Repsol (as Jill and I are following our gassing-up tutorial from the nice Repsol man in Vila do Bispo) you get 10+ minutes notice at highway speeds to know when you’re coming up to a Repsol station and what each grade of fuel costs. To be fair to Orange and Tangerina, we’ve had good experiences there as well – we just imprinted on Repsol.
3. The bathrooms are universally clean and their food selection puts the US’s hot-dog-roller convenience store culture to shame.

We successfully negotiated mid-morning Lisboa traffic, found our way to the airport and pulled in to the SIXT car rental return lane. Jill and I are loyal SIXT customers for life and here’s why…

When we pulled forward to drop off the car, a SIXT employee scanned the barcode on the windshield and started the return process while Jill and I set about getting our personal effects sorted and our luggage out of the boot. About 10 seconds into that process the SIXT person realized that I probably still had the proximity key fob for the car in my pocket – again, this was done gently with no intent to embarrass me. I sheepishly dug the fob out of my pocket, handed it back, and we resumed our clear-out of the car. The attendant signaled we were good to go and that the receipt had been emailed to Jill. We smiled, said “Obrigado!”, shouldered our backpacks, and headed for the exit.

We decided to hit the restroom at the arrivals hall before grabbing a cab to our hotel. When Jill walked out of the ladies room she had a look of TERROR on her face. When we were within earshot she said “I can’t find my phone!”  She dug through her backpack one more time to confirm that the phone wasn’t there and I called her phone to see if we could hear it ringing… No joy. If you don’t know Jill – she NEVER misplaces anything. We quickly decided the only place it could be was in the rental car. I grabbed Jill’s bag so that she could hotfoot it back to SIXT.

I arrived at the car return area about 2 minutes behind Jill and she was already engaged in a discussion with the manager, who told her the car had already been cleaned and no cell phone had been found, but he’d be happy to check again if she could give him the license plate number. The irony of that request was that of course Jill had studiously taken a picture of the license plate when we rented the car, but that photo was ON HER PHONE! Never fear, the nice man said, as he looked up our rental and made a call upstairs. By that point Jill had worked out what had likely happened. She was gathering up her purse and phone when the attendant noted that I hadn’t returned the key fob and that momentary distraction was enough to make her miss her phone, which had been placed in a recessed area in the center console to let the Waze lady talk us in to the airport. So, she told the manager that’s where it likely was. He was still chatting on the phone in Portuguese and he relayed that information and about 10 seconds later gave a Jill a big smile and a thumbs up. About two minutes later a nice young man came trotting downstairs with Jill’s wayward iPhone and all was well.

There were so many ways that story could have ended badly. If we hadn’t made a pitstop at the arrivals hall who knows when we would have detected the missing phone. And maybe by that point the car would have been re-issued to the next customer. But instead we have a great story that makes us love the people at SIXT!

On our subsequent taxi ride to our Lisboa hotel Jill confessed that, while she didn’t relish the idea of replacing a $1000 phone, she was in agony over whether she’d had an opportunity to back up all of her photos of our experiences in the Algarve to the cloud (it turns out she had). 

Jill is SERIOUS about her pictures. A little over a decade ago, when Jill and I decided to spend the rest of our lives together she famously said to me: “When they wheel us into the old folks home, I don’t need to take any stuff but I want to be surrounded by pictures of all the things we’ve done.” There are lots of ways in which Jill and I are well aligned, but that was an early indication that marrying her was the best decision I ever made.

Our ride from LIS to our hotel, MyStory Rossio, was a tidy 20 minutes. So, roughly 25 minutes after recovering Jill’s phone we were dropping our bags at the hotel and setting off to explore Lisboa on foot.

I have to say that to this point the itinerary that Jill had originally mapped out for her trip with Stephanie could not have been any better. Having never been to Portugal, Jill had placed her trust in Rick Steves and company when selecting lodging at each stop – to that I say “Thanks, Rick!”

Lisboa is fantastic!

Pro-tip: Wear sensible shoes and be prepared for some serious elevation change as you walk the city. The locals claim Lisboa is the “City of the Seven Hills”. No disrespect to Lisboa intended, but I’m pretty sure Rome is the OG “City of the Seven Hills”. Upon further investigation the cities claiming to be built on seven hills are legion. Regardless, Lisboa definitely has seven hills and most everything we wanted to see on our walking tour was apparently at the top of one of them. A thing Jill noticed while we were walking the city is that a dominant trend in ladies’ fashion in Lisbon is that, regardless of the ensemble, the footwear is cute sneakers. Cobblestones and hills require traction!

Our first stop was the Castelo de São Jorge, which, while requiring a serious uphill trek, offers fantastic views of the whole city.

After the hike up to the castle we were famished so we popped into a restaurant on the way back down the hill for a delicious lunch with a spectacular view across the harbor.

After lunch we walked down to the waterfront plaza.

After a full day of tromping up and down hills sightseeing I was in the mood for… pizza! We found a fantastic place called Pizzaiollo a few blocks and, not a surprise, significantly uphill from our hotel.

For our last dinner of the trip we had a bottle of local wine, a starter of bruschetta with Iberico ham, a delicious pizza, plus a bottle of sparkling water. Total bill €23. I only mention that total because the locals complain about how expensive Lisboa is compared to the rest of the country.

Fortunately, after dinner it was downhill all the way back to our hotel.

The next morning we caught a taxi back to the airport for our flight home. As we were waiting for our flight to board, there was a departure announcement for the next gate over. That flight was going to Marrakech with a flight time of 1 hour 30 minutes. That caught our attention. One more plus to potentially living in Portugal is just how convenient it is to other locations that are on our bucket list.

We concluded the trip with the mindset that living in Portugal was a grand adventure that was both appealing and within reach – with Carvoeiro setting the standard as a possible landing spot. We knew we had lots more to research and explore. More to come…

Adventure is out there!