Second Day in Lisbon

The reason why I do tours, is because trying to navigate a city I don’t know in a language (Portuguese) that I don’t speak can be very taxing. 

This second day in Lisbon proves my point. 

I took Corinthia Hotel’s free shuttle down to Restauradores (Restoration), the heart of old town Lisbon with a plan of finding the Tourist Office first. There was a tourist office in the square, but it was closed. I went to the Police Office of Tourism next door, and the woman there told me it was on the other side of the street, near a kiosk. 

I crossed the very busy street, and spoke to a man in a large kiosk. He told me it was in the next square, pointing south. 

This took me to Rossio Square, the largest in Lisbon. I peered around, but it was hard to find anything by sight, so I began the task of walking around the square, looking for a kiosk. I did find a kiosk, and two young women who wanted me to get on a hop-on, hop-off bus. I asked about the tourist office, and they really weren’t sure where it was. One of the women used her iPhone to find out, and discovered it to be in Praça Duque da Terceira. So I plugged that into my iPhone and took off, once they’d given me one of their brochures. I really didn’t want it, but recognized it as an informal kind of payment for their cooperation. 

My walk took me out of Rossio Square to the south, where it gave onto Commercial Square (absolutely gi-enormous) which gave onto the river, which was so wide at that point it looked like the sea. I looked around and spied the Tourist Office sign (an i) and made a beeline for it. Then I queued up and talked to another young woman, who was singularly unhelpful. No, she couldn’t help me evade tourists, because there were always tourists in Lisbon. No, there weren’t any special neighborhoods with winding streets, because all of Lisbon was medieval.

I sat down at a nearby table in the office, trying to decide what to do. I looked at the map and saw that the Fado Museum was nearby, so walked in that direction. (Fado means Fate, and is a kind of haunting song that rose up in the 1860s as a kind of working-class resistance during a turbulent time in Portugal’s history.) That turned out to be a lucky choice, for by following the map I found myself on Rua dos Bacalhoeiras where an older woman handed me a menu outside Cais na Preguiça a 4.7 star Portuguese seafood restaurant.

It was a bright and sunny afternoon, the food was marvelous and I loved the red Sangria I had with it. After lunch, I found my way to the Fado Museum, which was as interesting as I hoped it would be.

Afterwards, I needed to get back to Restauradores Square to get back on the free shuttle to Corinthia Hotel. 

And that is where things went very wrong. 

Somehow, I got lost in the maze of hilly streets that make up the Alfama neighborhood, and I think I must have walked in a large circle, before being funneled back into Commercial Square. By walking north, I found Restauradores Square, where I’d started my day. But I was exhausted. 

This is why I do tours.

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