Lisbon, Day 2, August 26, 2015

We went early to bed and slept for 11 hours.  We travel with a stove top mocha espresso maker, but our stove is an induction cooktop, common in Europe, and didn’t work with aluminium. We overcame this roadblock by putting the mocha maker into a proper pot with an inch of water and it worked like a charm.  Off to the market, which is just down the road.

The park by the market

The selection of fish, meats and produce was outstanding.  After a walkthrough, we bought a one-pound sea bass, our favourite fish (not Patagonian Tooth Fish which goes by the same name).  Parsley, a lemon, Boston lettuce and an odd shaped ripe red tomato rounded out our purchases for dinner and a large avocado for later, which needed some time to ripen. 

After a stop at the supermercado to get water and wine, we headed home to refrigerate our purchases, then we were off to explore the oldest parts of Lisbon; Alfama, Baixa, and Chiado.

The square minutes from our place 

Some house are decorated with Portuguese tiles 

 The long climb up to Alfama

On the road up they take illegal parking very seriously 

 Give 'er Jill

 More tiles

 The top

 Bougainvillea in a church courtyard

 Many stairs down

 Tons of graffiti 

 The view of Lisbon from Alfama

Lots of stairs

Cobblestone basalt paved roads in the old parts of Lisbon

 Graffiti and marble sidewalks are everywhere 

View from the top 

Before we headed out, we stopped for an espresso in a tiny four-seater where a very old man got up and using signs offered his seat to Jill because the sun was coming into the spot were she was sitting. She declined but expressed her gratitude. Unbelievable kindness and in the supermercado it happened again. We were lined up at the checkout and put down the bottle of water and a hunched over man who looked close to 100 years old, offered us to go ahead of him. We declined since we also had a few bottles of wine.  Blew us away.

Three huge cruise ships came into port and released around 12,000 tourists.  A multitude of tour busses brought out the traffic police to keep the streets flowing as we walked our way up to Alfama, a steep climb.  Lisbon is built on many hills and features several elevators to get you to the top and back. We walked up and took just one elevator back down just for the experience.

 You can take the elevator or...

the funicular 

We stopped for lunch and I had traditional fried pork and clams.  Totally disappointed because the clams in the shell were so small, I could not get anything that looked like a clam. Jill settled on a fresh salad with chicken.  By the time we got home we were bagged and needed to cool down with some beer and aircon.  Dinner was delish.  

Dinner doesn't start until the cook has some wine

Nothing much beats baked wild caught sea bass drizzled with olive oil, lemon and parsley accompanied by a green oak leaf salad with oil and vinegar.

Delish!