Day 01 :Arrival into Lisbon, Avenue de Liberdada, Dinner Nearby
- 11am – Arrived into Lisbon Airport – Air Canada planes park away from the terminal. You must deplane onto the tarmac, take a shuttle to the terminal before clearing customs (bonus: if you have an electronic enabled passport and aren’t travelling w/kids there are kiosks to the left that are much faster!)
- Uber to the hotel (Four Seasons Hotel Ritz, Lisbon) – not much traffic. Room wasn’t ready so we inquired about eating at Cervejaria Ramiro (as recommended by Anthony Bourdain). Turns out the hotel has a partnership and can secure tables for you easily!
- 1pm Uber to Cervejaria Ramiro (Anthony Bourdain recommended – as did everyone else!). Food was delicious. We ordered the tiger shrimp, razor clams, iberico ham and beef tenderloin sandwiches. Incredible
- 2pm – walk around the area to soak in the sights. Everything is beautiful but the sun was so intense.
Aven. de Liberdada
Architecture
Backdrop
Gorgeous Tiles
Day 02 : Day Trip Tour to Sintra & Cascais
- 8am Pick up at Hotel
- Drive out to Sintra and walk through the town which included one of Portugal’s most famous postcards
- Walk over to Regaliera, explore the well, waterfall/pools for free masons, winding trail down
- Picked up back in Sintra to head over to Pena Palace
- Pena Palace join area between the two sections also where the Atlantic air meets the heat – gorgeous tiles and architecture
- Head over to very traditional Portuguese lunch
- Drive over the lighthouse at the tip of Cascais then into an area overlooking the cliffs and the Ocean
- Drive over to Cascais for a stroll around the area, dipping my foot into the Ocean, enjoying froyo and buying super $$ tinned octopus & sardines
The day was jam packed but the tour guide and fellow tour mates were great! I booked via Viator with 12% cashback w/Rakuten. It was more walking than we expected but we don’t walk much >_<
- Once we got back to the hotel from the tour, we rested by the pool a bit, tried some fries then headed to dinner in a hole in the wall restaurant that was rated really well
- Headed over to a nearby mall for Acai bowl and checked out a supermarket (my favourite thing to do in a foreign country)
Day 03: Sleep in, Time Out Market, Elevator, Patais de Nara, Michelin Dinner
Having had a long day out, we intentionally slept in til about 10 which meant I missed the complimentary coffee in the hotel lobby!
- Roamed around the area a bit to grab a coffee then discovered an adorable park, playground and an outdoor playground and eventually stumbled upon an amazing grocery store that sold tinned octopus for 1.99 Euros!
- Once Dean woke up, we made our way to Time Out Market for lunch and had the best octopus of this trip
- Walk over to Pink Street and the Praça Europa by the water. The sun was so intense we ended taking an uber back to Avenue Liberdada to check out Zara and explore a bit around
- Stumbled upon the Santa Justa Lift (Elevador de Santa Justa), Arco da Rua Augusta and a gorgeous pedestrian street
- We bought some portuguese tarts and headed home to rest a bit before dinner
- Dinner was an amazing dining experience at the Cura where we were delighted by a 10 course tasting menu
Day 04: Scenic Views, Amoreiras and Av. da Liberdade
- Ventured out to a lookout point to admire the beautiful landscape
- Visted a mall to do some shopping then ubered back to the hotel only to realize it was about a 10 min walk!
- I headed out to grab a whopper from Burger King and nabbed a Naruto BK collab tee for 2 euros
- After resting at the hotel a bit, we ventured out to Av. da Liberdade for some shopping and roaming – we saw a trolly car, more beautiful stonework streets before eating rotisserie chicken at a very popular restaurant with interesting service
Day 5: Home time, Airport Challenges & Enjoying Business
Our short trip away has come to an end; I went for a last coffee walk, grabbed a few more octopus in tins, packed up our stuff and we were in our Uber to the airport
- give yourself a lot of time at the Lisbon airport
- VAT back: if checking luggage, I would recommend checking in at the counter first (we were w/AC who was very good about giving me instructions to go to the VAT Refund kiosk w/my luggage then once cleared, bring it back to the counter to have the bags checked
- All gates are after security – there’s only one security line/area that leads to all gates – domestic, EU, International. I got confused and we walked around aimlessly a bit before going through security just off of the checkin counters
- Passport Control is before the gates and after the restaurants/duty free shopping – it’s super misleading as there’s a bunch of souvenir shops, restaurants/food court, lounges all in this main hub that you expect your mins away from getting to your gate but you’re not! There’s still passport control at the back of this area. We went to the AC lounge for a bit before giving ourselves about 45 mins to go through passport control and to our gate
- Electronic/Digital Passports – most passports (esp. Canadian passports w/in the last 10 years) are electronic/digital which means you can go through the MUCH faster line! We experienced this on the way in and saved tons of time! *note: travellers under 16 or 18 cannot go through this line so the whole family would need go through the line to see the agent.
- Another lounge – once passed Passport control, we got to enter the TAP Portugal lounge – really appreciate the individually wrapped cinnamon sticks!
- Shuttle to the plane – Lisbon’s airport is quite small so from the gate, a shuttle bus takes you to the actual plane. I would recommend checking luggage and minimizing your carryon items as much as you can as you need to take a set of stairs from the bus up to the plane cabin doors in the blazing heat.
- Once settled, the flight home was glorious – I spent the time writing this blog and editing a video 🙂 Hope to post it soon!
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