Lisbon, Portugal

Thursday, September 30 - Sunday, October 3 2010

As if we hadn’t packed enough trips into September already, why not add Portugal in there? Ang was invited to attend a work conference hosted by the EMEA (Europe-MiddleEast-Africa) Market Management team (our Expedia colleagues who manage the relationships with hotels) as the majority of her job involves training that team.  Dave wasn’t deemed cool enough by his manager so he wasn’t invited, but we took advantage of the free ticket for Ang and he flew down to Lisbon for the weekend.  Actually, the conference went from Wednesday through Friday so Ang flew out early Wednesday morning and Dave flew out Thursday after work in order to catch the tail end of the big company party that was happening that night (yes, he crashed it, but with permission).

We’ve said it before, but must count our blessings again -- Switzerland is such a central location in Europe!  Lisbon, Portugal is a mere 2.5 hour flight from Geneva -- just a hop, skip and jump.

Our first impressions of the city were that 1) they like to have fun and 2) they do it late!  The Expedia party on Thursday didn’t start until midnight and it ended around 4am.  We thought that was a little out of the ordinary until we noticed every night of the week that people were staying up into the wee hours of the morning (the latest being 9am by a few of our colleagues).  Unfortunately for Ang and the rest of the conference attendees, they had to wake up bright and early on Friday… while Dave slept in (who's cooler now?).  :)

All in all, the conference was great -- there were 300 attendees, many of which were people Ang has had email and phone conversations with, but never had the opportunity to meet.  It was well worth the early mornings and very late nights in order to take full advantage of the time with them.

After the closing of the summit on Friday, we headed to the city center to start exploring Lisbon.  It is an architecturally beautiful city.  One of the things that made it stand out over other cities that we’ve visited was the numerous monuments and statues scattered all over the city -- they were everywhere!  (A couple examples are on the right and left).  And if only we spoke some Portuguese, maybe we could have read what historical events they were in honor of.  :)  

After we dropped our stuff off in our hotel (and took a quick nap...did we mention Ang only got 2 hours of sleep the night before?), we decided to do a little exploring.  Lisbon advertises itself as “the West Coast” of Europe.  This seemed fitting as there is a near-replica of the Golden Gate Bridge and system of historic trolley cars.  Of course, mixed in were remains of some classic European architecture and ancient buildings.  One of the most famous structures in the city is the Castle of São Jorge, which sits on a hill just east of the city center.  It is one of the only structures that survived the massive earthquake of 1755.  

We were surprised (although shouldn’t have been) to find out that the wine is fantastic in Portugal!  Yes, there is the well-known Port variety, which originated in the city of Porto, but their other reds were also delicious.  We had the opportunity to try a few when we ran across a small wine bar near the castle (you can see us enjoying a glass with our friend Umang from Expedia).  The bar manager/owner, named Nuno, was extremely friendly and informative and was one of the highlights of our entire trip.  We tried a couple different reds, an 8-year-old white port (which tasted like buttered pecans) and a 30-year-old red port.

Dave also tried some of the stinkiest cheese known to man (Ang wussed out and in retrospect, Dave wished he would have, too).  Just to give you a little background, we are both quite fond of cheese but Dave is more fond of non-traditional (AKA stinky) cheeses than Ang.  He is also more daring to try most cheeses, but this time he finally met his match.  Seriously, we wish we could have bottled this smell for you all to know exactly what we’re talking about.  Dave likened it to the stinkiest, sweatiest feet imaginable; while Ang compared it to when she raised pigs and the way they smelled after rolling around in a combination of mud and their own, uh, waste.  Reflecting back and writing this makes us wonder why Dave would ever agree to taste it.  All part of the experience, I guess?!  Nuno just laughed at us and said the taste grows on you…pretty sure we’d be ok without that growth.  The worst part is that that the smell is locked in Dave’s memory for all time (yes, it’s that bad).  We called it a night after the wine bar, planning to accomplish a lot on Saturday.

The next morning we decided to go on a day-trip because we heard that the nearby town of Sintra was a must-see.  The only thing we knew about it in advance was that it is a World Heritage site.  Usually that equals "ancient and awesome", so we figured we were in for a treat.  It was 40 minutes out of Lisbon by train and when we arrived we looked up and saw the outline of a large palace and castle walls – good choice.  As a side note, we learned pretty quickly that Lisbon and the surrounding areas are not only beautiful, but also extremely historic.  Lisbon itself is one of the oldest cities in the world, inhabited since 1200 BC.  The castle we saw in Sintra, Castelo dos Mouros (left and right), was built in the 9th century by Arabs.  The castle we referred to earlier in Lisbon was built around the same time, but had museum displays including clay pots which dated back to the 5th century BC.  Anything older than Jesus walking this earth is a very bizarre thing to see.  Actually, we were so used to seeing structures dating back over 1000 years that it was almost anticlimactic to find out the Palácio Nacional da Pena (below), which we also visited in Sintra, was built only a couple hundred years ago.  Slackers. ;)

After an enjoyable time in Sintra, we rushed back to Lisbon to continue our site seeing.  The plan was to hit up the Convento da Ordem do Carmo (left and right), a historic church which was partially destroyed back in the 1755 earthquake and never returned to original form -- the ruins that remained were quite beautiful nonetheless.  We were afraid we’d miss closing time, but when we arrived we were pleasantly surprised to find that the church ruins were actually free admission that day because of a music festival.  We arrived just in time to see a classical singing group take stage and perform in an incredibly unique venue.  Curious, we reviewed the festival program and discovered that there were numerous performances around the city that day and among them, the headliner would be the Lisbon Municipal Orchestra later that night -- clearly something not to pass up!  Until then however, we decided to kill time by wandering around to different city sites until the show later that night (pictures below).

The show was to start around 9:30 and was held in a large square where there happened to be an outdoor restaurant located adjacent to the stage, amazingly with about half the seats still open when we arrived.  Just our lucky day -- we grabbed a two-seater and sat down to enjoy quite the special dinner (you can see a little video from our prime seats below).

After the show we attempted one of those late nights we talked about above.  We met up with the Spain Market Management team to experience the Lisbon night life.  Apparently the neighborhood in town called Bairro Alto is where the ‘scene’ is at.  The later into the evening, the more crowded the narrow streets became.  It felt like a special occasion but our Spanish friends assured us it was just a typical night in Lisbon.  By 3:00am we called it quits and apparently fell right into the European stereotype that we Americans go to bed too early.  Ha - fine by us!  It was a fun time with new friends and we promised to call up the Spanish team when we travel to Madrid in the near future.

Sunday was a little less fun only because the rain moved in.  Fortunately it was a warm rain, but was heavy rain nonetheless.  We took another 40-minute journey out to another neighboring town called Cascais.  It was a cute little tourist town right on the water but we probably could have skipped it solely based on the poor weather -- we got soaked.  Although, it did give us the opportunity to dip our feet into the European Atlantic waters for the first time.

Our final stop of the day before heading back to the airport was the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos.  It is a monastery that was built in the 16th century and visually competes with any other cathedral we’ve seen to date.  We even had a live organist filling the cathedral, which only added to the experience.

Portugal is officially in the books -- we’d definitely return one day, maybe next time to explore the coast.  It’s a must-see city and if you like warm weather and history, it’s a perfect destination!