Our citytrip to Lisbon

Lisbon is the capital of Portugal and my friend M. and I went there this Summer vacation for a few days. It was a city new to us both, although I had been in Portugal before (in Porto).

We ended up loving the friendly people, the beautiful houses, the amazing food and of course, al the great things we could see and do.

So here is a little overview of what we did :-)

Day 1
We arrived on Wednesday July 17th. We had a direct flight from Amsterdam and arrived at 12 am. but that is 11 am local time! We checked in to the hotel and then immediately went out to explore. We walked towards the river Taag and then slowly walked towards the Alfama neighbourhood, to visit the castle.

Lots of climbing, but great views

Great street-art

On our way we stopped to have coffee and our first official pastel de nate, which are amazing. We had them at St. Antonio's, and they were heaven. Just heaven.

Heaven on a plate.

The castle of St. Jorge sits on top of the highest hill. It has 11 towers, walls of a metres thick and it was conquered by the Crusaders from the Moors in the 12th century. It is an amazing place to visit and we really loved walking around the courtyards, the walls and the different parts of the castle. (Admission 10 euro's)

Looking down from the castle on the river Taag and the main square.

We almost walked 10 kilometres that day.

Day two
This day we took the public transport to the neighbourhood of Belèm. This is where the Crusaders left for Jerusalem (hence the Belèm) and where explores left to sail the Ocean to find a new route to India.

Here is an amazing monasterie with a beautitful church. The Monasterie of St Hieronymus was built in 1502 and the intricate details everywhere take your breath away. Well worth a visit.

We had lunch in Belèm and then took the bus back to Lisbon.
There are several options to go to Belèm with public transport, which is much cheaper than taking a hop-on-hop-off bus or something like that.

The monument for the explorers, Vasco da Gama leads the way. 

Lighthouse of Belèm

We walked almost 7 kilometres that day

Day three
This time we took the metro to Rato, which is the best stop for the Natural history museum. This is a wonderful museum which still has the 19th century collections of stuffed animals (I cannot help it, I still like that), but combines it with a modern educational function of telling visitors about the animals that will extinct due to damage to their territorium, like the bear, the wolf and the lynx.

We are not so different, human and chimpansee

The museum has a very divers collection and is absolutely amazing. I can really recommend a visit when you are ever in Lisbon.

Next to the museum is the Botanical garden, which is also very beautiful.

After that, we walked through the neighbourhood of Alto Bario and really liked it. Although we were glad most of the stairs for us were going downhill!!

We walked almost 8 kilometres that day.

We can really recommend going to Lisbon, the city has something for everyone, and the people are very friendly! We will definately be coming back.