July 10. Discovering a whole new neighborhood

Today was a very nice day. In the morning Irina and kids took tram 15 to Belem. We woke up late again so there was no time to get there and look for Belem Starbucks to get situated for the day.

In Belem they saw carriage museum and visited tropical botanical garden. There are several botanical gardens in the city. The one we looked for during our last visit is near Politechnic university. It looked fairly big on the map. We looked for the entrance by going around the neighborhood in concentric circles. By the time the circle equaled the city block we found it and decided to give up. The one is Belem is much larger. Kids and Irina had a great time. On the way back they stopped at the bathroom in Praca de Commercio. See an image with more info about that. 

Life is full of toilet paper choices

We got out to the food court again for lunch but this time around made all the wrong choices. For the future reference, shawarma place, soup restaurant in the end, and sandwich place next to it all suck. I actually marveled ability to make pumpkin soup loaded with veggies and completely devoid of any flavor or smell. This is some kind of special cooking chemistry. Somehow these restaurants managed to transform warming up of precooked packaged fast food in a microwave into a 10 minute process at each place .

Speaking of the food, I got a smoked sausage looking thing at the supermarket yesterday. Tried it today. It tasted a bit like smoked innards of male fish. Salty, doughy, and smelly. I could not finish my piece. Turns out it was Farinheira. Since the origin of this can be placed, I think I’ll try again tomorrow. Maybe it is acquired taste. 

At the end of the day, Dan went to the Vodaphone store to get us some Sim cards for our phones. Georgia, Isabella, and I went to feed and chase pigeons on Praca Figuiera. It is one of the prettiest squares. Ground mosaics are done like optical illusions – it feels like you are walking on the waves. I keep wanting to walk on the crests not to get “wet.” There are also lovely fountains there. As I was setting up the stroller, Isabella dropped her shorts and underwear and prepared to climb over for a swim. People around were very amused.

On the way home we stopped over at Santini for ice-cream. As much as décor would have you believe this was a part of city history since the times immemorial, it actually opened up locally only in 2010. It is very good though. Georgia liked it even better than Amorini.

Georgia needed glue for her scrap book. We asked lady at the information desk where we could buy it. Had to do a dramatic re-enactment of the glue since she did not speak English. She understood and laughed, and said the Portuguese word for glue is “cola” and then showed us how to find the store. We went there and everyone screamed “COLA!!” scaring the poor store owner.   

We walked a bit past our street in search of the supermarket to get some water and accidentally stumbled onto Bairro Alto. We knew it was somewhere close but we thought it is North from where we live. Actually it is West and North. This is the BEST neighborhood. We were in Lisbon twice already and did not notice it. Lovely grid-like streets loaded with interesting restaurants, Fado clubs, and boutiques and shops. If we thought we had no chance to eat everything before, we now know it for sure. It is nice to discover it not on the last day here.

We walked around a bit with the kids but they were tired, so we headed back home. On the way we stopped at an interesting candy store: Dream Pills. It is really cute but there is something weird about the concept.

After Irina came home we went to back Bairro Alto. We walked around a lot looking, listening, smelling. Then we headed to Black Swan. 4 stars at least and highly recommended for the lovely décor and service. We had rabbit on toast, octopus carpaccio and port. Octopus was 4.5 stars, rabbit was 3.5. They had other interesting dishes. It would be worth another visit, but we must move on J.

As we passed the square in front of Chiado station we saw a girl with a sign “Funky Monkey Pub Crawl.” We came over and she explained that for 15 euro she takes people to three pubs every night but Sunday and then to the dance club. You get 2 free shots in first pub, unlimited in the second, and one in the third plus some dancing. Even Dan was receptive to the idea, on some other night.