I woke up pretty early, but we did not leave the room until after 11:30am because I wanted to check into our flight the following day. We had a few coffees and some toast with cheese as we waited, drawing in our sketch books as well. It was actually sort of nice to have a bit of time to relax after a lot of moving around on this trip. When we finally did check into our flight we couldn’t get boarding passes, which became relevant later… We did manage to secure two seats together on the plane though at the very back where the rows go down to only two seats, I find you get a bit more leg room there. We then set out on the day’s adventure. We had wanted to see the tower on the water and the monastery, but we were feeling so drained and the bus was 52 minutes in each direction, so we decided to do that on our next trip to Portugal and instead we walked towards the water front with the intent of going to the elevators in the old town and an old church that was ruined in an earthquake. 

We slowly made our way towards the water, taking a little detour to go right down by the water and stick our feet in. We stopped briefly on a patio to have a beer . It was actually a beer museum we stopped at…very busy but great beer. I had a dark beer and Jives had an amber. The glasses were like upside down beer bottles inside pint glasses. It was really lovely and sunny.

We then walked right down to the water front. There was a beautiful courtyard with stone floors, kind of like a town square, with a tiled ground. We crossed the roadway by the coast to a portion where we could actually stick our feet in the salty cold water. There were two pillars in the water and many sailboats going by. We took off our shoes and walked down the slippery tiled steps, covered in seaweed. The water was very cold, but I think swimming in chilly Lake Ontario at home was great training for us. It was lovely, but the current was strong. As Jives was filming a rap take in the water, I was genuinely afraid he could get swept away. The waves suddenly got big and sucked the water off the steps and out into the ocean… all while Jives back was to the water. In the rap take you can actually see my hand reach out to keep him from floating away. 

Afterwards we sat and let our feet dry in the lovely warm Lisbon sun.

We walked to a bakery nearby where we ordered two cappuccinos and two Portuguese egg tarts. The egg tarts were the best we had ever tried! 

We then walked to the church (Carmo Convent) that had been destroyed in the 1700’s earthquake and subsequent fires. It was seven euros to enter and worth every penny. Mostly the roof was missing, with a grassy floor. It reminded me a lot of the church ruins we had visited in York UK. The sun was beating down through the glassless windows and open ceiling. 

There was also an interesting museum with ancient (3200 BC) artifacts from Portuguese territory; an Egyptian mummy and two very bound up mummies of two young children. This disturbed me a lot. Why were these here? It seemed unrelated to the artifacts and those poor kids looked bound like they had died in terror like some sort of sacrifice. People were taking photos of the mummified children’s remains. It seemed so wrong. 

We then walked behind the church for a lovely view of the old metal elevator that brings you from one level of Lisbon to another. The elevator was not currently in operation. We facetimed my mom and showed her the elevator and church remains. We then took the stairs down to the lower level where we bought some more egg tarts from a place specializing in them. 

We then walked back to our accommodation, on the lookout for somewhere to eat lunch/dinner. We settled on a place in the old town, not too far from our accommodation. We sat outside on a patio. I ordered Salmon with crispy potato and onions with a red house wine. Jives got a veggie lasagna with the best sangria ever, full of oranges, mint, cinnamon and green apple. It was one of the best meals of the trip. So amazing!

We then walked back up to our accommodation via the lovely look out area by the water.

Back in our room we had wine with our egg tarts we had bought. 

We went out once more later to catch the sunset on the beach. People were making sand sculptures of animals which were incredible! It was a lovely way to end the trip. We then walked back to our room to relax and pack before our early flight the next morning. 

We woke up at 6:30am after a rough sleep where it sounded like someone was smashing up the street and dragging things around. We quickly packed and had coffee and toast before walking 18 minutes to the train (two trains) to the airport (a great deal at 1.70 euros a trip). 

We arrived at the airport at 8:00am and had to wait until 8:40 am to check in. No one on our flight had boarding passes and the line was INSANE! By 9:15 we had our boarding passes, but immigration and security and two separate huge lines took up the remainder of the time before our flight (11:35am take off). The second immigration line was insane, like thousands of people long. Thankfully because we had flown into Portugal and not travelled by land AND we had Canadian passports, we got to go to a shorter line. We were so lucky. We might have missed our flight if we had been in the other line. 

We then bought some port and cheap wine as souvenirs to take home with us. 

We were flying directly to Toronto with Air Transit, but the boarding gate next to us was direct to Toronto with TAP air. The flight times were only 30 minutes different. Multiple people missed their flights as they were in the wrong boarding area. A huge family had missed their flight and everyone was in tears. Lisbon airport was absolute chaos, something really needs to change there because the system is clearly not working. Our flight was not full because many people had missed our flight, caught up in the 3-4 hour long immigration lines.

On board our flight we had two seats together at the very back, all I ever wanted!!