We woke up relatively refreshed and determined to see some of Lisbon’s many sites. It was another pretty day. Two and a half weeks in Portugal and we never saw a single cloud. Just brilliant blue skies. I missed clouds a little…

We grabbed the usual tasty pastries for breakfast certain we’d be walking it off. We ambled down a main pedestrian-only street, Rua Augusta, to the Praca do Comercial (Commercial Square) near the Tejo/Tagus riverfront enjoying all the art, architecture, and shops to see. After a couple hours of that, though, we were getting pooped & hot.

We jumped on the metro to go a couple stops away to see a different area. Once you get the hang of it, Lisbon’s metro system works pretty well (although Porto’s seemed to have better coverage with less underground and dark.) What I like about Lisbon’s system is you just load money on your metro card and swipe getting on & off. It deducts the amount from the card depending on number of trips. Easy to understand. Porto’s system is all about zones & distances so it is more fair, but also much more complicated. 

So, we got off and ended up at a popular tourist attraction; the funicular that takes you up to a view point; Ascensor da Gloria to the Miradoura de Sao Pedro de Alcantara. Like many attractions in Lisbon, however, there are way more tourists than it can handle. We realized the wait to funicular/tram car up would be forever. We decided, instead, to hire a tuk-tuk driver to give us a 45 minute drive to point out sites in the historic parts of the city. 

The awkward thing about tuk-tuks is that you never pay the posted price and you are expected to negotiate a price. We both suck at the haggling game! No matter what price you get, you don’t know if you still over-paid, or if you are abusing the poor hard-working guy. We paid about 2/3 of the posted rate for our trip.  Our driver was, Nelson, who has lived in Lisbon his whole life (guessing 35 years or so) and wouldn’t live anywhere else. He was very knowledgeable, personable, and did a great job. We saw a lot and learned interesting tid-bits. Such as: The relative importance of the main streets is indicated by the street lights. If the street light has 6 sides of glass, it is more important than one with 4-sided lights. The street that has 8-sided lights is the most important.

Just the 2 stops at different viewpoints alone made the price of the ride worthwhile. The high hills in Lisbon make sight-seeing on foot a major pain, but there are amazing views from about a dozen miradours around the city – as you can see in our photos below. I took way more photos than I am sharing. When we return to visit Lisbon, we will make a point to get to all of the different miradours.

When we finished, we asked Nelson, to drop us at a good spot to have to lunch, wine, and watch people. He scored with a great recommendation. He dropped us at a square famous in Portugal’s recent history of democracy. We had a great tapas lunch and were entertained by a musical group doing mostly American classic songs.

Later in the day, we decided we should take the elevator up to the convent ruins I wanted to photograph. The Elevador de Santa Justa by the designer of the Eiffel Tower was close to our apartment. It’s very cool looking. We got in a line that barely moved. After about 45 minutes, the line turned the corner and we were flabbergasted to see that it was much longer than we ever imagined so we bagged out. After that disappointment and wandering a bit, we opted, instead, to hike (ever so slowly) up the steep hill to get to the convent site the hard way. What we learned was that we could get the same view as those that chose to take the elevator from a small bar at the top. It was well worth the price of the drinks (less than the price of 2 tickets on the elevator) as we watched the sun set over the castle. We sat there long enough to see some of the people that had been in line in front of us finally get there by elevator.

For dinner, we headed to a tiny wine bar nearby that we saw on a map and on Trip Advisor. We totally lucked out getting the last available of 6 tables. We enjoyed more excellent tapas and let the owner recommend red wines by the glass. One of our best stops of the whole trip. It was a most enjoyable day in Lisboa. If we could afford it, Wayne would choose to live right in the bustle of Lisboa. It is not really an option on our tight budget, but will be easy to visit often.