It's been a while since my last trip anywhere out of the UK, but it's time to head off once again.
Another cheap weekend trip Thursday-Sunday. This time to Lisbon.
Never been to Portugal before, but was told that October was probably a good time to visit. The weather is still nice and the worst of the crowds gave left.
This TR is a bit text heavy at first. Don't worry, there are pictures later

The day started with a walk to my local train station to catch the train to Manchester and then another one to the airport. The train to Manchester was a few minutes late (faulty points outside Birmingham then stuck behind a slower train) but the train to Manchester Airport was similarly delayed, so I ended up getting both the trains I planned for.

As I was sitting waiting for the first train I noticed a smell of poo. It was still there when I got on the train. When it was still there when I got to the second train I figured it was me not someone else. I had trodden in something on the way to the station
Got from arriving at Manchester Airport through security to airside T1 in under 20 minutes. But I didn't really want to subject my fellow EasyJet air passengers to my stink, so I made some efforts to clean the shoes in the loos. I got some of it off, but it was persistent and I didn't really have the tools for the job. Oh well, I tried.

Didn't have lounge access so I filled my empty bottle of water at the taps and ate some sandwiches I had brought with me.
When it came time to go to the gate I was the first one in the non-express queue. But we were missing a plane. While waiting for it to turn up I noticed a few drops of water on the floor. Had a look around in the ceiling to see where the leak was, but didn't spot it, although I did see some people looking at me and then looking at the ceiling (there's a famous experiment where Milgram did this in 1969, so it always makes me smile).

When boarding started, SpeedyBoarding were allowed to board. Honestly they must have been over half the cabin. When I got on and started to set about storing my underseat luggage, coat and hat, I realised that the drips had been coming from my bottle of water that I put in my pocket and must have not had the top fully sealed. So I started to fold up the coat, moist pockets and all. I am in the aisle, and mr & mrs window and middle turned up so I let them past. Lady takes the middle. But just as she is about to sit down a member of the flight crew shouts to stop her. There is a flood on my seat and hers. FC says there's a row further forward and would we all like to move. I am feeling sheepish thinking I must have had some more water issues, but instead it was Mr Window who had a large travel bottle full of coffee which he had dumped out in its entirety as he went past me. Lucky for him the FC was on the ball as Mrs Middle was wearing expensive looking white trousers. Since Mr Window had managed to leave his own seat dry, I declined the offer to move and got a window seat with a completely free (if slightly moist) row to myself. Upgraded to CE! (And no-one has to smell my boots).

Arrival was a bit of a scrum. There were only a couple of electronic passport readers in action. It would have been quicker to go down the 'any passport' channel, but I was stuck in the queue by then.
No luggage to pick up, so I went and got a 7 Euro 24hr travel pass from the vending machine at the Metro and took the two trains to get to my hotel near the centre.

Hotel National. Cheap and not very cheerful, with a crazy hole punched card system for the room doors and they issue you with the remote for the TV at check in and make you return it at check out. A little disconcerted that there were no pillows on the bed when I got in, but found some in the closet, maybe not everyone does pillows in Portugal?
Thankfully the hotel room had a toilet brush, so I was finally able to soak my boots to remove the offending ordure and then shower and clean up.
Next order of business was to get some supplies so I walked to the local shop to get wine, water and nibbles. They had bottles of actual wine for 1.6 Euros, but I didn't dare try it, so splashed out 3 Euros. The market was reasonably priced, but they had managed to come up with a cute trick, the only bottles of wine they sold had corks. And they sold crummy corkscrews for 3.9e Later I also saw them removing all the cheap own branch Spar bottles of water from the shelves at peak times and then putting them back later. These small shopkeepers are always thinking stuff up.

Supplies dumped in the room it's time to go into town for dinner, I don't have anything booked but I thought I'd try Casa do Alentejo. It turns out to be okay but not brilliant foodwise, but the place is amazingly tiled. There is also a cheap little bar downstairs and I would recommend you go to that rather than the restaurant (which only opens at 7pm) if you want to see the place. The doorway is a very unpreposessing one off the street, but Google maps got me there just fine.
Anyway, after a full meal I waddled my way back to the hotel to prepare for an early start on the first day proper in Lisbon.

My intent was to spend Friday doing elements along Bel�m (pronounced blime for some reason) and then Saturday at the Tile Museum and the historic centre of Lisbon.
A bus then tram took me from very close to the hotel to the one place I had decided I must visit in Lisbon, Past�is de Bel�m, the shop where they first sold pastel de nata. They have some sort of d.o.p. and this is the only shop allowed to call them Past�is de Bel�m, it's the original place that got the recipie from the next door Jer�nimos Monastery. I got a seat in the historic section in the back room which again is covered in lovely tiles and you can watch people making the past�is through a large window. Had two tarts, a double espresso and some water and it wasn't ridiculously priced. The tarts are great and all the other sandwiches and cakes they did looked pretty good as well, so I wouldn't hesitate to recommend you visit. They have a takeaway counter as well which can end up with long queues. That's also where you buy the merch. So I got a six pack of tarts and a T Shirt. Then decided to go visit the monestary.

The closest time ticket I could get was about 2 hours away. But I decided to go for it anyway. In the meantime I visited the church part of the site (which is a seperate queue and free entry, unlike the cloister). I also went across the road to see the impressive "Monument to the Discoveries" commemorating Henry the Navigator and other famous Portugese explorers. Vasco de Gama's tomb is in the free church part of the monestary complex as well.

Because the lines to get in to the cloister were massive I joined my times one hour entrance slot queue really early. If you join it late it can take you over half an hour to get down the queue and into the monestary, so joining the queue early wasn't a bad idea. But there was no shade and even though I had put factor 50 sunscreen on I ended up shading my bare arms using the T Shirt I'd bought in PdB as a sort of shawl. As it turns out, the cloisters themselves were a bit of a let down, so I would advise anyone else to just skip them entirely, do the church and eat some tarts.
Note that at this time the Bel�m Tower was covered in tarpaulins and closed for rennovations, so I didn't get to see much of that.

My next stop was MAAT - Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology. It's a shortish walk, but you have to navigate across the main arterial road nearer the shore by a flyover walkway. It's really two museums, an old power station a bit like Battersey Power Station (but smaller) which houses the technology part of the museum and history of power generation at the site, and another purpose built unit to the East which is a very beautifully architected place and that shows some modern art exhibitions. It was all very good, but somehow didn't have much of a wow apart from the architecture of the place itself, so I would say it was missable if you're on a tight schedule.

After that it was down to MACAM which is another museum, this time of contemporary art. It's actually a museum formed mostly from one person's private collection. But it is extensive and covers the last 100+ years of Portugese artists. There were some really great pieces in here, everything up to very recent stuff. Not as grand scale as what was being exhibited at MAAT but lots more varied pieces so lots to keep you busy. Once you have done the main collection there is a seperate building out the back which houses the special exhibitions. That could probably be hit or miss depending what's on, but I really enjoyed it.

It's now getting later than I thought and I realised that my 24 hour pass will have run out. I spent some time trying to figure out where I might by a new one, but then remembered you can just swipe your contactless bank card on the reader. So by the time I
had walked down to the Time Out Market to have a look around (very much like one of the trendy market places in London, so not really my thing) it was time to take a bus back directly to the hotel for a couple of euros.
Freshen up then it's on the go again for an evening "Tasting Fado" at the Tivoli Theatre. We were given a tour of the theatre, then taken upstairs and given a glass of port, another tart (still not really flagging although this is now number nine) and a Fado recital with two guitarists and a singer. There were only six of us in the audience, so I don't think this is a well known thing on the tourist trail, but it was definitely a nice thing to do in Lisbon.

Didn't fancy another sit down meal, so I got some takeout Japanese to take back to the hotel. Ordered tuna poke bowl. After 10 minutes, "sorry, no tuna". So I got the salmon salad. He tried to give me a bottle of water to cover the price difference, but I asked for a rice ball instead (having plenty of water back in the room). Rice ball isn't on the menu, and this is a chain takeaway where the first language of the staff is not Portuguese or Japanese (so they were all speaking English to each other behind the counter). A rice ball is a triangle of sushi rice with a strip or nori round it so you can hold it. It is a universal Japanese food item. But because they had no clue what I was talking about I ended up with an additional bowl with some sushi rice in it. That's fine. So that's end of play for day two. No alarm set for tomorrow as I only really have the tile museum to do.

Went down for breakfast. It's one of those cheap continental breakfasts where they have nothing hot apart from hard boiled eggs in a basket to go with the cold squares of the cheapest possible cheese and processed ham. But it serves to break the fast, I'll get some real food later...
Got another 24 hour pass and took the metro down to Restauradores station and walked across the the Tram 28 stop. The queue was ridiculous. It's just an old tram and I've been on plenty of them. So I'll skip that. Instead took the bus to the tile museum. (NB I should say that Google maps was doing a great job in Lisbon of figuring out the best routes to take on public transport, it worked seemlessly.) The tile museum isn't really near anything else, and there are *a lot* of tiles in there. Tiles from 15th century and every other century, finishing off with some modern tile art pieces in the last room. There's also quite a nice little cafe in an inner courtyard with plants growing in it.

The bus back dropped me near the cruise terminal and I walked from the sea to the bottom of the historic district. Almost every shop was a restaurant, thousands of them. I found one to eat some fish and read my book. Again it was okay, but not very inspiring. The tomatoes tasted like ones you could get in a supermarket in the UK which is always disappointing when you're somewhere sunny that should be able to grow proper ones. I milleed around whilst walking back to the hotel up the hill.
I didn't attempt to get to the upper levels of Lisbon downtown because the Santa Justa Lift and all the funiculars are out of service at the moment after the Gloria disaster.

Freshened up at the hotel and realised I had missed the other food I really wanted to have in Lisbon, grilled sardines. So later I took the metro down the Restauradores again and found a nice place to have some grilled sardines and a glass of red wine out on the pavement in reading my book. Luckily the sardines didn't disappoint. They were whole (including head and guts) so they needed some careful knife work, but they were moist and tasty.

After sardines it was time for kip. The flight next day is at a reasonable time 11:40 so I took the metro back to the airport the next day using up the dying seconds of my 24 hour pass.

There are thousands of museums in Lisbon (including a Cheese Museum) but rather than race around a lot of them, I only visited a few and mostly just took in the atmosphere. The atmosphere it has to be said was mostly of holidaymakers having a good time. But it wasn't as rowdy with stag and hen does as some other European capitals have been. I was confused as to why so many people were wearing green. It turns out that Ireland were playing Portugal on Saturday, but it didn't seem crazy at the pubs in town. I also saw lots of people wearing what looked like Celtic strip but it turns out that this is the strip for Sporting Lisbon who some guy called Ronaldo plays for (I'm sure his arch enemy must be the hamburgler). Manchester has a sizeable Irish ethic community so many people on the return flight had been to the Portugal game.

There's a reasonably well equipped airside space in T1 after security and before passport control (think T3 Heathrow, and just as packed). Since I didn't know what there would be after passport control I stayed that side until there were short queues back through passport control. There was much less after passport control, but there was plenty of F&B if you needed it, but not the variety in the main part of the terminal. As you get deeper into the airport all that seems to happen is that the quality of the pastel de nata goes down and their prices go up.

No repeat of my CE upgrade experience on the EasyJet flight back. Was sat next to a father and adult son who had been to the game. They were dressed identically in long grey flannel shorts and T shirts. They were *extremely* dull so I left them to their own devices for which I am sure they were grateful.

On arrival at T1 MAN we were bussed from the plane. Well almost everyone. As our bus left one lady jumped off the bus and back up the rear stairs of the plane. I was on bus 2, she was on the last bus 3 that then set off and left her bussless. Once in the terminal it was quick through the automatic passport channel (temping fate, but these used to reject me more often than not, but I seem to have been having a good run of late) then up the lift from outside arrivals into the walkway to the station and on a train home probably less than 15 minutes from touchdown. My next trips are from T2, but since they are not cheap trips and I will have luggage those will be a taxi rather than a train. So I won't have the stress of some others due to the recent change from T3 to T2 of other BA regulars.

Hope you enjoyed my humdrum weekend travel tales...

A few places for me to note for a 2026 Lisboa trip!

Great stuff, thanks for sharing

Brings back memories, but it does look a lot busier even now in the Autumn than Summer 2008 when I was there last.