This being our third day in Lisbon, we were having trouble motivating ourselves as to what to pursue. We settled for walking around town, looking for a gift for Erica. On our first day with her, we had ice cream cones at an amazing ice cream shop, then we walked down the street and she had pointed out some glassware she really liked. We had taken an Uber that day and we weren’t sure what part of town we were in, meaning we didn’t know where the glass shop was. While lazing in bed I searched the city on mapping programs for ice cream shops, hoping I would recognize the name or some element of its location. I was coming up dry. I remembered the nature of the street it was on; it was not at right angles to its cross street, but even that didn’t help. I remembered we had taken a photo at the ice cream shop, but we did so with Sally’s phone. We had turned off all cellular data to all her apps, so the phone had not mapped the location of the photo. Darn!
When Sally awoke, she mentioned something about the ice cream shop and that maybe the name of it was in the photo. Duh!! I brought the photo back up and zoomed in. Sure enough. Nannarella. A quick map search and we had our location. We needed a walk today and that became our destination.
Lisbon is really hilly, and our walk took us up and down as we traversed stairs and streets. We found the ice cream shop. It was before 11:00am, so it was closed. But, down the street and to the left was a row of businesses, including the glassware shop we had floating vaguely in our memories from 4 weeks earlier. Sally and I had been snooping in Erica’s house as to what gift she might need or want. Sally had taken photos of two glasses Erica had hanging from a rack. Those were green and blue. We purchased red and yellow one that matched the design.
With that mission accomplished, we started walking back with the intent of skirting around the base of the Alto district, saving the climbing and descending of the hills. Along the way we saw a trolley go by and realized we had not ridden on one. We hoped to get on line 28 as it went into the Alfama district and wove through that tightly packed area, but each car that went by was jamb packed with people. We hoped for a emptier car, but all were stuffed. Perhaps we should try another line. We walked up the hill to another line on Apple Maps. This one was also packed with people. If you can’t get a seat and have to stand, your head is above the windows and you can’t see anything. We wanted to get a seat if we were going to ride. We noticed another line, line 24, and were right at its turnaround point. We walked to the first stop after it was emptied and turned around, meaning we would be first to board and thereby could get a seat. This worked and we rode the line to its end where we were required to exit while it turned around. We could have just boarded again and rode it back, but it dropped us within a couple miles of our hostel just off Avenida Liberidade so we walked back to our place.
What walked down to the underground grocery and fast-food restaurants just down the street from our hostel, the same ones we had visited when last in town. We bought some food for the flights home and had lunch, Sally a big green and pasta salad and I a bowl of soup.
Back at our room in the hostel we found we were pretty tired. I am embarrassed to say I slept the rest of the afternoon. Sally slept part of it. We were meeting Erica at 7:00 at RD’s Nepalese restaurant about a 35 minute walk away. We left at 6:45, allowing us time to saunter there.
Erica has some great restaurants and they are always in a part of town we have not visited and mostly off the tourist track. It makes it very fun to walk to a new part of town.
We arrived before she did and entered, got a table (it was really small, only seating about 18 people indoors) and waited for Erica. She arrived about 10 minutes later. Great food, great company, great meal. Tofu with a thick green sauce, Nepalese version of pot stickers and a crispy something that had the color and texture of onion rings but the shape of a small contorted lobster. Delicious all.
We walked back with Erica. Her route was decidedly better than the route we had used to get there, laid out on Apple Maps. Outside her building we gave her the glasses, she gave us the stuff we had left at her place while we played tourist the past two weeks in Porto, Coimbra, Fatima, Nazare and Sintra. We parted company about 9:00pm.
Back in our amazing hostel room we packed our bags for home. Our flight took off at 10:45am tomorrow. We would ride the subway to the airport, catching it a little after 7:00am, giving us plenty of time to adapt if something went wrong. And with that, our days in Portugal came to an end.
Our room at the hostel
Erica’s two goblets
The four goblets
Lisbon’s trolleys
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