Today is the first day of the rest of our adventure and I couldn’t be happier.

Our flight from Miami went very smoothly although the food on TAP, even in business class, was well, typical airline food–borderline edible. It was, however plentiful and frequently served.  Our arrival in Lisbon was at 5:30 am.  While customs was barely noticable, like Italy, the immigration lines were very long and it took us about an hour waiting there.

So we were into our apartment (which is great!) around 7:00 and promptly took naps.  I made us get up at 10:00.   Here’s our view:

First stop coffee and pastries, expecially the oft mentioned Pastel de Nata.  An English speaking customer in the line with us recommended the Pa di Dous ??–God’s bread, so we had one of each.  Loved them.

We just started walking around seeing the squares and shops near our place.  We went down to the main square near the river:

 

Exhilarating!  We barely heard any English being spoken on the streets–lots of Portugese, of course but Spanish, French and German, too.

We went to a grocery store and got a few supplies for our 4 days here.

Look at the design of this pavement.  It’s really flat:

At 3:00 we had a “free” walking tour with “Chill Out” tours We met in a square called Praca Luis de Camoes complete with Easter bunny and a tourist/photographer horning in on his space.

We really covered a lot of the city on the 3 hour tour.  It was difficult to photograph because I wanted to listen to all the information from our guide, Gabrielle.

This roofless church was gorgeous in the light.  The weather was strange, going from warm to cool in a matter of minutes–always breezy. I loved the story of the Portuguese author Jose Saramago  his house and his memorial olive tree:

The tour ended walking up through the Alfama arriving at a gorgeous view spot but it was so windy I couldn’t hear where we were. It started raining so we jumped into a Tuk Tuk to ride down to the Time Out market.

The food hall is huge and crowded at 6:30 with many options for dinner.  I went with the stall of Marlene Viera one of the many local chefs represented.  I had “5 snacks from the hand of the chef.”

 

Didn’t love the fishy /oniony octopus salad but the rest (mussles salad and codfish with garbanzos) were fantastic.  (J&T, the little burger was amazing!)  The small things are stuffed mushroom caps with a quail egg and a bit of ham–each about 2 luxurious bites.

Ken had a roast pork sandwhich–delightful.  We had 2 glasses of local red which I’m sorry, I have no idea what they were.

Walking back, luckily it had stopped raining, we got a little lost but wound our way in the general direction until we recognized our large street, Rio do Almada.

The fitbit says we walked over 18,000 steps and I believe it.

Today is the first day of the rest of our delicious travel adventure!  Hurray!