I kicked off our second (and last) full day in Lisbon by sleeping in. This was the second time this trip I slept over 12 hours, so my body must need it. We showered up and headed out to try another breakfast place. On our way we walked through the big plaza between the arch and the water, and there was a lot of concert equipment there in preparation for the countdown tonight. The sun was just starting to rise and we got some great photos.
The breakfast place this time wasn’t quite as good as yesterday’s. Here are my raw notes:
“Huge cappuccinos, big avocado toast, one power outage, reasonable prices.”
After a quick stop back at the hotel we decided to go try to hunt down one of those funicular street cars. A google search showed there was one running just a 13 minute walk away, so we hit the hills and started climbing. The neighborhoods here had more tiles to photograph, and we passed a beautiful museum, the Carmo Archaeological Museum, and eventually found the top of the funicular line. Our timing was good to see the car arrive, and then we went next door to take in views of the city from a park nearby.
On our way back we hit a supermarket to look around. Kuniko found some Moroccan mint tea, made by Lipton. It was weird to me that we were buying Moroccan tea after just having left there, but we tried it later and it was really good.
We went back to the hotel, packed up and checked out, and then back onto the train heading towards the airport. At the transfer we got off at Oriente station, where we found the weather a little colder. Our hotel was right across the street from the train station, and there was also a shopping center. Beyond the center we could see a ropeway running over the water.
After leaving our bags at the hotel we took an Uber to get to the National Tile Museum. Surely this would be a great place get my tile addiction taken care of for the long term. We had found mixed results online whether it was open or closed – being New Year’s Eve made things uncertain. But I found a site selling tickets online and they sold me two tickets for today, so we were on.
But when we arrived we were disappointed to see the place closed. Later I contacted the website and got my money back, but we’ll have to save the museum for another visit. We hailed an Uber and went right on back. Both our Uber drivers were professional and did a great job – big difference from our experience yesterday.
We had the driver drop us off near the water’s edge and we walked along there to get to the entrance of the ropeway. I bought some tickets from the ticket booth – the guy noticed that I had Japanese characters on my credit card and said that he really wants to go to Japan someday.
The ropeway was fun! As we boarded we politely (I hope) declined the photographer taking a picture of us, but the after that we had great views of the city, the Tagus river, and we could even see the barge that (hopefully) would shoot off fireworks tonight at midnight.
We did a round trip on the ropeway and then got back off and walked through the grounds of a large aquarium, that was doing good business on the holiday. Many other places were closed, and we were starting to get hungry. We went to the big shopping center across from the train station, and found ourselves walking through the big food court and checking our options. We ended up going upstairs where they had more sit-down options, and chose a Belgian beer place that nonetheless sold a local bottled beer. Kuniko had some red wine, we ordered more salt cod confit, and sat in the sun in front of a window overlooking the river. A group of Spanish tourists sat near us so I had a chance to work on my listening comprehension (not good).
For me this was another of those perfect travel moments – comparing and contrasting our current situation to cold days in the Fes riad – we’d come a long way. We had two rounds of drinks here because of the great location, and the staff were again really friendly and helpful.
Maybe it was because I was under this sort of blissful condition that things went so well at the supermarket. Suddenly all the culinary treasures of Europe lay before us, and the only things standing in our way was a flimsy credit card. Woo-hoo!
We were shopping to stock our hotel room, as our plan was the spend the evening in our room partying until midnight to ring in the new year. The supermarket was a big one, and we weren’t the only ones stocking up. I got four rounds of Portuguese cheese (three to take home, one for tonight), a bottle of Esporao Alicante Bouchet, a bottle of Portuguese sparkling wine, three mini bottles of port (just in case), and then also a salad, some caramelized onion pate, some crackers, and other loot. We hauled it all back to our room with big smiles.
The staff in the hotel opened our wine bottle for us, provided utensils, and provided a lot of extra services for us. So we enjoyed sipping wine, snacking, listening to music, writing in the journal, talking about the trip and remembering the funniest moments. We even got a nap in – staying up until midnight is not something we do often and we needed all the help we could get.
Close to midnight we opened the bubbles and turned off the lights for the countdown. Through our window we could see fireworks off in the distance from about an hour before midnight, and then we had a good view of the fireworks near our hotel when the big moment came. Across the horizon we could see fireworks in other areas of the city – it was a great moment and nice way to finish 2024.
We went to bed soon after, knowing that tonight’s sleep would be the last chance for us to sleep horizontally for a long time.
