Erika and I have said we think we’d have liked Lisbon a lot more if we’d gone there before Porto. As it was, we were high on Porto, and not ready to leave, so Lisbon felt like a bit of a letdown.

It didn’t help that we left a fantastic AirBnb in Porto to go to a… not fantastic one. Sorry Ruth, we’re shooting 50% while you’re with us!

Also, Lisbon is where I had one of my patented crashes, running out of energy to get out and see and do. And we were only there three days. I’m saying we didn’t give Lisbon a fair shake, alright?

But we still came out of there with some good memories, and good times. I’ll try to focus on that, and give a brief, brief, brief highlight of Lisbon in this post.

Mouraria and Alfama

We took the train south to Lisbon, shot across town in the subway, walked up hill a bit, climbed a huge staircase, to arrive at our… less than exciting apartment in the neighborhood of Mouraria.

Mouraria is the old Moorish quarter, and part of the old town of Lisbon, along with Alfama, which sits on the other side of a big hill from Mouraria. The streets of both are winding, narrow, hilly. Wandering, it’s easy to get lost, but the streets and alleys are incredibly charming. We twisted and turned our way through those alleys and it was one of my favorite times in the city.

The old town areas have been overtaken by a great deal of gentrification in recent years, and an invasion of tourists. This has meant tons of apartments being bought and used for AirBnb purposes. Hey, like ours!

It creates something of a ridiculous scene. These neighborhoods aren’t well connected by public transit. Our area had a subway station down at the bottom of the hill. So, from our apartment, all day we could look out and watch tourists lugging obscene amounts of luggage up the big hill our street climbed.

I don’t feel particularly great about having contributed to this neighborhood shift. And, this is far from being true only in old town Lisbon. From the wary looks of the older residents in our neighborhood in Porto, we felt it there too. Tourism, and especially the effects of AirBnb, are causing shifts in the character of neighborhoods of cities large and small, all over the world. Just wait until we get to Asia!

There are certainly pros to these new realities, but there are a lot of cons too. It’s something I want to explore in a future blog post. Being a tourist for such a long period of time has certainly made me more conscious of the effects of tourism.

Wait, what about Mouraria and Alfama?

That was about Mouraria and Alfama! But alright, alright, I get your point.

One of the incredibly charming aspects of our neighborhood were the streetcars that would trundle their way up our street. I know you’ve seen them. Pretty much every picture you see these days of the suddenly hot tourist destination of Lisbon is of an old fashion streetcar, set against colorful buildings, in narrow streets.

And for good reason! They’re adorable! We loved being able to look out our window and watch them head up the street. You could hear them coming from about 10 miles away, so you had plenty of time to get ready.

As I mentioned, it was a joy getting lost in the streets of Alfama, and walking-and-seeing is something we love doing in all of our destinations anyway. We wandered the hills of Alfama, and then made our way down through the bigger pedestrian and shopping thoroughfares, to the seaside plazas. It reminded me a lot of Latin America, since so much of this style of architecture was exported to Latin America.

This was all quite lovely except for one problem: Christ, it was hotter than fuck. Like just, oh my god hot. Not a cloud or shade in sight, climbing steep hills in the mid-day sun hot. Whew, next time we visit Lisbon will be in winter.

Time Out Food Market

As has become common for us, we also found a food hall in Lisbon which we went to for dinner one night. I’ve really fallen in love with these kind of food markets on our trip, whether it be the food halls in Europe, the night markets in Taiwan, the hawker centers in Singapore and Malaysia, and others like them. They’re great fun, and so easy for us when traveling–we always know where to go for food, before Hanger can set in.

This one was the Time Out market, which appears to have started in Lisbon, and then become something of a chain. They have four locations open now, with the most recent one opening… right here in Boston! Huh! We saw it here in Boston recently and thought we recognized the name from Lisbon. We did indeed.

I remember we went to a few different food stands, but the only food I remember were the croquettes we got. Those were good croquettes.

We took the subway back home, and emerged from Martim Moniz station, at the bottom of the hill. There, we saw what was quite obviously a prostitute, plying her trade. As I said, the neighborhood was full of charm!

Date Night

It was getting close to time for Ruth to leave us and go back home. So to celebrate the trip, we had a date night. Erika found a nice restaurant nearby, we all got fancied up (as much as Erika and I can get fancied considering we’d been traveling with the same clothes for eight months), and headed out for a nice dinner.

The restaurant scene in Lisbon is ridiculous. There are tons of places, and tons of people patronizing them. The place we went to had two locations a few doors down from each other… which was good, because their main location was packed, so we were shuffled down to the second location.

Same food though–some excellent fish–and a quieter room, so all wins. Erika and I naturally had Port wine after the meal, because we were in Portugal, and we’re sophisticated.

Ruthless Again

I hate feeling like we didn’t give Lisbon as good a shot as we could have. I hear so many people rave about it. As I said, though, I think we were still very much in love with Porto, and our eyes weren’t ready to wander yet. But I’d love to go back and try again.

As it was, our short time there had come to an end. We had a thoroughly uninspiring dinner at a place nearby, after the three of us failed miserably at coming up with any consensus about where to go. Then we headed back to the apartment to pack.

For Erika and I, it was packing for our next stop. For Ruth, sadly, it was packing to go home. She’d joined us for what I thought was a pretty awesome two weeks. I hope she enjoyed it all as much as we did. I think she did.

The next morning, we called an Uber for her, and walked with her up the street to where we could meet the car. After waiting for it to fight through traffic, and trying to figure out what streets it could actually get to, in these winding, crowded, one-way neighborhoods, we finally ended up on a street corner the car could meet us at.

The streets being so narrow meant we were blocking them while the car was stopped. So the next part had to be quick. We shoved my mother-in-law into a stranger’s car, watched her quickly vanish down the hill, and walked home, just we two travelers once again.

Next Time

Along with being a wonderful travel companion, I forgot to mention the important service Ruth provided as resupply! At this point, our original plan had been for another short break back in the states. But toward the end of Africa, we’d decided that money and time were shorter than we’d like, so we cancelled that idea and decided to just stay on the road until the end.

We had some things–toiletries and such–back at home in North Carolina that we wanted to pick up when we came back, though. Plus, we’d been traveling a little heavy, our backpacks a little overfilled, so we wanted to do a bit of a clothing rebalance, to make our packing and moving a little easier. And, we’d decided we wanted an old friend from Phase 1 to rejoin us on the road.

So Ruth brought that old friend to us. Hello again MSR, our wonderful tent we used in Patagonia, it’s finally good to see you again! And, she helped us with the clothing rebalance, bringing us a couple of pieces of clothing we needed, and taking back a number of pieces of clothing to cut our size down.

She also brought us some of those toiletries and such, and I can’t express enough how inappropriate it is to discuss some of the ‘and such’ with my mother-in-law, much less have her carry them in her suitcase. So in London, when she opens her suitcase to give us all the things she’d brought for us, and all that ‘and such’ pops out, Erika and I lost our minds with embarrassment and laughter.

Good times. Thank you so much Ruth, for traveling with us for a short while, and for helping bring us a few things like you did! Even the embarrassing ones.

Ruth was on her way to the airport now, for a long flight back to the states. And Erika and I were on our way across town to get our bus to our next adventure, across the border in Spain! But before we get to Spain, about that bus ride…