Portugal Bike Trip: Overview & Lisbon Day

Portugal!

Michael and I have been wanting to get on a trip with the two of us, but that is such a tricky thing to make happen. When Jenny and Lydia said they would be up for watching our kids for a week, we were so grateful and excited to pick a place and spend some days together!

Someday we need to visit so much of Spain, and see Michael's mission plus the parts he never got to visit. But I've always wanted to see the mosaic sidewalks of Lisbon and experience Portugal, and as we talk more and more about Spain I realized that it's probably going to be its own trip -- and a longer trip than what we can do right now. So we decided to make Portugal its own shorter trip first! We also talk all the time about how much we loved biking from place to place in the Netherlands, and I wanted to see if we could explore somewhere in that same way. We found a bike tour company owned and run by a Portuguese couple, and decided to do some Lisbon days and self-guided biking days.

Belem Tower. This fortress was seen by explorers coming and going from here since the 16th-century.

Here's the Short Version of our trip,
with a post for each day coming after that.

Day 1: Fly to Lisbon (through Montreal, overnight)
Day 2: Land in Lisbon (early morning) and skip the jet lag for a full day exploring the city.
Day 3: Drive to Fatima, get oriented for our bike tour, explore the sanctuary on Palm Sunday. 
Day 4: Bike to Batlha through Porto de Mos, explored the Grottoes and a castle on the way, and the Batalha Monastery. (Biked 18 miles)
Day 5: Bike through Leiria, explore the castle there, bike to the coast, stay in Pedro de Moel. (Biked 27 miles)
Day 6: Bike along the coast to Nazare (famous big surfing wave spot and fishing city) then on to Alcobaca (our favorite stop!) (Biked 34 miles)
Day 7: Biked to the medieval town of Obidos and explore the walled city (Biked 30 miles)
Day 8: Bike to the Peniche peninsula (Biked 30 miles)
Day 9: Drive back to Lisbon, fly home (through DC)

---

DAY 2: EXPLORING LISBON

I have zero pictures of day 1 when we flew to Lisbon,
just know that I downloaded tons of books and audiobooks and then all I did was watch a bunch of mediocre movies. It was glorious. But here's our Lisbon time in pictures:

The temple is close to the airport, so that was our first stop! Beautiful.

Loved these olive trees by the temple.

Mosaic sidewalks, everywhere. All sorts of designs. I have so many pictures of the ground.

We walked across the street from the temple to step into the church building,
and youth conference or something similar was happening that day.
So many youth there, tables with cookies and snacks out, the same art from all the buildings we've ever gone to church in. I always love experiencing a reminder that I'm part of a global church.

We stayed in Belem and dropped our stuff at the hotel early that morning and pushed through jet lag. This was our one day to really explore Lisbon and we had things to see and food to eat! This is the Monument of the Discoveries, a tribute to the explorers who left from this spot. Henry the Navigator in front, surrounded by other explorers like Vasco da Gama and Magellan.

Took the public transit from Belem into downtown Lisbon.

These sidewalks! These sidewalks. They basically inspired my entire trip and they did not disappoint.
This is a travesseiro, a puff pastry made with almond cream and egg whites.

This was quite the place to be when you have a bathroom renovation on the brain.
So many things can be done with tile!
Don't look for creativity like this in our finished bathroom though.

The doors! And the sidewalks. Just gorgeous streets all around.

The iconic Rua Augusta Arch, a memorial to commemorate how the city rebuilt after the 1755 earthquake. Portugal was on top of its game before that devastatingly large earthquake completely set the country back.

This dog. Obsessed with this whole get up.

Doors, sidewalks, and TILE WALLS everywhere. So many beautiful tiles.

Another food stop -- Bifanas, a little shaved pork sandwich that's everywhere as easy street food.

Look at the tile walls.

Every sidewalk just so impressive and so different.

Time for the most famous Portuguese dessert!

A Pastel de Nata is a little egg custard tart. All the monks and nuns used to use egg whites to starch their clothes, so egg yolks were leftover. Portuguese desserts are a bunch of creative combinations of egg yolks with almond, or spaghetti squash, or other little cream pastries. These are eaten with cinnamon and sugar sprinkled on top and are the iconic dessert of Portugal. They're at breakfast, they're all over every city, they're just constant. We ate... just so many. 

The mosaics in the plazas were beautiful.

Lisbon is HILLY, and has a bridge that looks just like the San Francisco bridge. The cities mirror each other in quite a few ways. Trolleys get a lot of people around because the hills are quite something, but we never rode one because there was so much to be seen on our walks.

I was nervous to travel as an American right now. Just embarrassing and tragic how much we're burning bridges and burning our own reputation. People were so KIND. Multiple people we talked to mentioned that everyone has leaders at times that do not represent who the people are, and that this will pass. The man from our bike tour company who drove us from Lisbon to Fatima said, "If you're American and you're here, we know you don't want what's happening. The ones who want this don't travel here anymore. They're not exploring anymore." I thought that was so interesting. What a divide. I was grateful everyone we met assumed that we were just as sad about the state of America as they were for us. We were planning on pretending to be Canadian :) but didn't have to go that route thanks to empathetic people.

Such a seafood spot. They eat all the things! I say I like seafood but that means I like grilled fish and shrimp. This is beyond that :) But we tried some new things!

Our first night our waiter was very sweet to hold our hands all through ordering some things out of our comfort zone. Those are barnacles! And sea urchins. The barnacles were pretty good. The sea urchin was not.

Don't they look like dinosaur toes?? The waiter had to show us how to eat them. You pry through the thick skin and pull on that hard part to get the inside out, then bite it off. Truly could not think of anything but dinosaur toes as I did this. They taste very salty and similar to mussels.

They brought us bibs for the barnacles and we thought that was a little unnecessary, until we learned it very much wasn't. Michael opened one of the bigger barnacles and it splattered so much sea water onto him. I did not even know these things were edible so of course I didn't know how to eat them! This was hilarious to me, I was laughing so much.

That's the part you pull out and eat. We also ate seafood rice, which is kind of a soupier paella. It had red shrimp, clams, lobster, and another kind of large shrimp. It was delicious but we were SO full and the water came and found all the seafood in it and put it on our plates. I felt very much like a child who was told to finish their dinner haha. He also noticed I didn't completely polish off that sea urchin and told me to do that before he took it away :) Haha these things are too delicious for them to see us leave any behind!

Night walk around Belem Tower along the Tagus River.
This is the best picture from our whole trip because a couple from Thailand took it and she took SO MANY pictures and had a total vision for this shot. Love her for that.

Sunset along the docks by our Belem stop. We've been awake for 31 hours at this point apart from nodding off here and there on the plane ride over (I was getting over being sick and spent most the flight trying so hard to not cough so that people wouldn't just totally hate me) so we are VERY ready for a bed but totally loved our Lisbon day.