Since our bad experience in Rome where we’d been told we’d be able to do laundry, but found that the machine was inaccessible, we’d been trying to hold out until Lisbon where we’d have a machine again. Yes, this was way too long for us not to do laundry. But we are stubborn and did not want to waste time or money at a laundromat, so we washed our clothes in the sink until we FINALLY made it to Lisbon. Our host was very kind about it, but Becca felt bad that after he’d shown us around the aparment her first question was “Hey so how can we do laundry…”

We had to do two loads of laundry because we were washing basically all of our clothes, and European machines take AGES to do a cycle, so we decided we were going to stay in for the rest of the evening. We asked our host for a grocery store recommendation and got some food to make dinner – we were drawn in by the chorizo and planned a meal around it – tacos! We had a really nice relaxing evening eating great home cooked food and doing laundry. It was honestly such a good feeling – thinking back on it now makes me smile. The power of clean clothes….

The next morning we woke up early to get out into Lisbon to explore. Our place was a bit out of the main town so we walked about 30 minutes into Lisbon and then wandered around until the early afternoon. We started at the Castle de Sao Jorge and then wound our way down past some churches and beautiful viewpoints to a Saturday flee market that was going on. We spent over an hour looking at all of the trash and the treasures.

After the market we retraced our steps to a nice looking coffee shop we’d seen earlier called Copenhagen Coffee Lab. It was tucked away on a side road, but turned out to be a rather large coffee shop! Ryan decided to get a cortado and Becca, wanting a mid-morning snack, got some overnight oats. They were both really good, and we relaxed for a bit, happy to not be walking up and down hills for a few minutes.

After recharging, we began to wander around Lisbon without any destination in mind. We stopped by some shops and passed a Delirium Cafe – which seemed oddly out of place outside of Belgium – before starting to look for lunch. We had heard there was a central market full of great food choices, similar to the ones we’d had so much luck at before, but when we got there the prices were a little out of our budget – even higher than those in Rome!

We began looking for other options when Ryan found a small flatbread place called Piadina which was not too far away. After setting out for it, we realized that it wasn’t going to be an easy stroll – as it was directly uphill! We persisted and made it to the restaurant, happy to be out of the sun again. The food was really good and very filling – definitely worth the hike to get it.

Refreshed, we set out for the Santa Justa Lift, a strange free-standing elevator tower by one of the main squares. We just wanted to look at it rather than ride in it, and we were shocked by the number of people waiting in line just for a ten second ride – a sign said it was about an hour and a half wait! It was neat to see though!

We continued wandering our way through Lisbon until Ryan got upset that we were just walking up hills with no destination, so we decided to head back to the airbnb. We walked back – making our grand total steps for the day 30,599! Almost 13.5 miles.

We stopped by the store again, we ended up cooking all of our dinners at the airbnb because we love to cook and the airbnb was far enough from the center that if we came back to the airbnb in the afternoon we didn’t want to head out again for dinner. We made a delicious pasta with sauce from scratch and some bacon and peas.

Our second day we decided to go further out – starting in Belem to see the famous tower and get some pastel de nata (egg tarts) from the place that claims to have the original recipe. Pastel de Nata are some of Becca’s favorite treats and she was so excited to share them with Ryan! They did not disappoint – we each scarfed down all of the ones we bought.

We walked along the water and enjoyed people watching as we made our way to the LX Factory – a long street filled with warehouses on either side, housing dozens of restaurants and stores, with flea market vendors lining up in front of them. They were selling everything from high-end jewelry to the same things that we’d been seeing every street vendor selling. There was also a neat bookstore that we spent some time at even though most of the books weren’t in English. We also spent some time walking by the stalls, before stopping to grab some lunch.

After making another pass through, we headed home for the afternoon.
The next day was our big day trip. We’d read about the fairytale castles of Sintra – just a quick train ride away from Lisbon, so we set out early to try and beat the crowds. We arrived in Sintra at about 10 am, just after the castles were opening, and tried to find the path to walk up to the castles rather than taking the super overpriced tourist bus to the top.
We struggled to find the path – it seemed like everyone took the bus – and for good reason. We ended up following a path from maps on our phones that led us along a busy road, but we saw a fair number of other people walking it, so we knew that it had to be at least one of the normal routes to get up the hill. The walking was tiring and stressful because the cars were so close. Not one of our best money saving moments.

We finally made it to Pena Palace at the top of a huge hill and found 100s of tourists there too. Because we’d walked (and gotten lost a few times) it had taken us about an hour to get to the top and it was already 11 am – prime time for tourists to arrive. We had to wait in a massive line to buy tickets that wound around doubling back on itself and blocking the bus lane. We had to deal with the heat, the sheer number of people, and people cutting us in line. It wasn’t a happy time. But we finally made it to the front and bought our tickets… only to wait in two more long lines! One to get into the park complex and another to get into the castle itself.

Luckily we packed our lunches and ate them in line. We finally made it into the castle and saw some pretty interesting rooms – but we regretted paying extra and waiting longer to see the interior of the castle – we didn’t realize that we could have just paid to see the park and still walked around in the castle complex which was the main attraction – mainly all of the beautiful brilliant colors that the outside was painted.

We spent a really long time exploring the castle complex which made up for all of the waiting we ended up doing because it was so cool! Then we walked through the park surrounding the castle which housed greenhouses, ponds, flower gardens, and even a cross at the very top of a huge rock which we hiked up to. It was a packed day.

Satisfied we had gotten the most out of the park, we began to head back towards the main town. We exited the park through a different place than we had entered, and began to walk through a parking lot in what we thought was the direction of the main entrance. Except when we got to the end of the lot, there was just a hiking trail leading to another castle. We had heard about a better trail leaving from that castle and decided to check it out further to see if this was a better way down. After walking for a couple minutes we found it!

We began heading down the trail and realized why it was considered a good way down the mountain. It was very steep, with big steps going straight up for most of it. While we hadn’t liked walking next to cars on the road, this would have left us sweaty and dead tired before we even got to the park! Before we knew it we were back in the main area of Sintra, and we headed for the train station. Heading home, we were very happy with how our day had gone!

Since it was our last night we looked in the fridge to see what we had to use up, and found a huge bag of frozen peas from the pasta we’d made. We brainstormed for a really long time – not being able to come up with what else to buy to make a meal out of frozen peas… but finally came up with chicken nuggets! The ultimate comfort food meal. When we got to the store we only focused on price and quantity of frozen nuggets, and didn’t think to try and translate the packages at all – why would we? It is just chicken nuggets!

Ryan heated up the nuggets and peas and Becca heard him call out “Becca… I think these nuggets have cheese in them…?” Somehow we’d bought chicken nuggets that had cheese inside of them which started oozing out of them when heated. It was a funny meal – made even funnier by the cheese, but they were tasty just the same!

The next morning we woke up super early to make our 9:10 am flight to Madrid. Luckily this time we had no problems with transportation – making it to the airport easily. This was our third budget airline experience of the trip and both of the first two went super well so we were nervous that this one had to be our bad experience that everyone had been warning us about!! We will let you all know how it went on our next post!