19:18:20 04/30/2022

We spent the day in Lisbon doing a walking tour and a bit of shopping.  

We started the day with breakfast at the hotel, not great for 10€ each, so won't be going back in the morning.  It did give us the start we were looking for though.  After a bit of food we headed out toward the fanicular up to the Alto Barrio neighbourhood, and visited a market in the park next to the fanicular, took in the views of Lisbon and then work our way through the local streets following Rick Steeves guide.

We ended up visiting a church and its museum, really impressive as most religious sites are.  The wealth is astounding, but at this particular church we did find relics of St. Francis Xavier (St.FX) which was interesting.  

We stopped at one of the most famous and oldest coffee houses in Lisbon for some coffee and one of Lisbon's famous cream tarts.  I tried a Mazagran, which is a Portugese ice coffee with lemon and perhaps a bit of rum in it.  Krista tried the espresso, both excellent and the cream tart was fantastic.  I picked up some coffee beans and Krista picked up a book from the store with some of the history as well as poetry from one of their most consistent clients who was one of Portugals poets.

We stopped in at a Portugese store where all the products are produced in country, or in the case of the seeds that we bought, the flowers are grown here.  The store was interesting with many unique items, from soaps and perfumes, and cologne to cork products, stationary, and kitchen implements.

The tile work here in Lisbon is amazing, a lot of the buildings are covered in ceramic tiles of all designs and colours imaginable.  This means that there are a number of tile stores scattered about the city, we stopped in at one which recovers old tiles for resale.  The prices ranged from 5€ all the way up to 250€ for a single 6"x6" tile.  The more expensive tiles were dated back to the 1500's the cheaper (less expensive) tiles were from the 19th century.  Krista looked but didn't find anything that suited her so we kept on moving, there are other tile stores about.

We also stopped at Cork and Co.  Portugal is one of the largest cork producers in the world, most of the corks in wine bottles come from the cork forests here, along with a wide number of other cork products (cork boards included).  We picked up a few things, some gifts for Jessica and something for Krista.

Next we headed toward the waterfront for some lunch, we stopped at a place that was well known for their seafood; Loga das Conservas.  I had the tuna sandwich, which was huge and Krista had the cod cake, and she had a white sangria, first time we see this in Europe, usually they are made with red wine, I had the local beer.  We also tried the sardines, which they are famous for.  The brought out a small ceramic BBQ for lack fo a better term, with three sardines on it.  The BBQ had some oil in the bottom which they lit and cooked the sardines right there at the table.  I typically am not a fan of sardines but these were nothing like we have at home, not canned, very fresh and really good. We sat there for a couple of hours, had a two drinks each and then went into their Sardine / canned fish store and bought a few cans of sardines, some stingray, which just sounded like something to try, and a few other cans to bring home with us.

We then had one more stop, which was another tile store.  On the way there was an open market and Krista found a nice silk scarf.  We finally did make it to the tile store ,this one had some more recent tiles, new tiles, hand painted by Portugese artist.  Here we picked up a nice scene painted across 9 tiles.  We are not going to carry these with us and had them shipped back to Canada instead.  Too heavy to carry and we're less likely to break them this way.

We then headed back to the hotel to rest our feet and wash the day off us before heading to dinner.