I had never been to Portugal before, even though it is really close to Spain. So, this was my first trip to Portugal and, as usual, I started with the capital, Lisbon. In Spain, we are not very aware of our western neighbour, and I hadn’t heard a lot about Lisbon from a touristic point of view until I asked in the social networks for tips. Therefore, I guess I had my expectations pretty low beforehand.
And I got a really good impression on this city. It is still in a renovation mode, with lots of buildings being restored or rebuilt, and also many empty buildings in the centre, but it is a charming city. The orography of Lisbon probably helps to create this charm, as the longest river in the Iberian peninsula flows here into the Atlantic ocean and there are a couple of hills spread along the city, creating lots of narrow and steep streets, as well as many viewpoints to observe the whole city.
We mainly visited three areas in Lisbon, all of them in the north shore of the river: the center (including Baixa, Alfama, Castelo and Bairro Alto), the Expo area (in the north-east), and Belem (in the west).
We visited the Expo just one morning. There is not really much to see there, apart from some fountains, but I was interested in seeing whether they were reusing the investments done in 2000, and I guess they are doing better than other cases I know quite well, like Seville. There are a couple of corporate buildings in that area, some museums, an important Calatrava‘s train station (Vasco da Gama), a shopping mall, and some restaurants to enjoy the river sights. We also saw quite many people and it was not a working day, so I liked the way they have done it.
Belem is a must for a couple of reasons. The first one, the simple one: the Torre de Belem or the Mosteiro dos Jeronimos, but the real must is the Pasteis de Belem, one of the most tasty tarts I have tried in my life. You can buy pasteis de nata, which is essentially the same, anywhere in Lisbon, but the ones you can buy here are the best (at least among the ones we tried).
In summary, I liked Lisbon much more than I expected, and in coming posts, I will write about a couple of places which can be visited from Lisbon to complete the trip: Cascais and Sintra.
