Welcome Back Faithful Fans of our Gastronomic Exploits!!

Hello from Lisbon!!

 

At the Newark airport

This year we will stay in Lisbon, Portugal, for 5 weeks and will make our best effort to consume the best that this country has to offer. We have our work cut out for us. It was our first day here and as we walked the streets of the many different neighborhoods in this beautiful city, we keep running into more and more places we have to come back to to explore. And I cannot even imagine the options weekend daytrips will bring. Dan and I plan run every other day to be able eat more. That’s how committed we are to this very important cause. If anyone has any suggestions for the places to try – please let us know.

Here is some background. I don't remember anymore how we picked Portugal as our choice for this year, but we are liking our decision already. The flight was short but tiring though. The kids are bigger and stronger and were resisting falling asleep even though we had a full row to ourselves and Dan found a few more seats elsewhere. We wanted them to get some sleep because we arrived at 6am Portugal time (1am at home) and could not get into our apartment until 2pm. That’s a long time without sleep even for some rugged kids not to mention adults :).



After we got into the city we wandered the streets in a bit of a haze, stopping in different watering holes to fill up on coffee and Pasteles de Nata.

We saw a beautiful Portuguese aircraft carrier in the port and a 3-mast sailboat. There will be regatta here in about a week. Perhaps they are starting to pull in. Isabella called it a day at 10:30. By 11:30 we went to Brown’s coffee and Georgia fell asleep on the sofa. I took a nap too pretending to be reading a book on my ipad. Finally, we were able to go to the apartment!



Chocolate Salami
one of earth's little miracles



In early April Dan and I went to Lisbon to find an apartment. We don’t trust photos and addresses – see our summer experience in 2010 for that soppy tale. It was a good call. We worked with 4 agents and everyone promised apartment in the city center and the pictures looked lovely. However, when we got here and walked around we discovered that the city actually has many centers… and with the economy not exactly flourishing here, the city does not have the resources to take care of all of it. So you would see  a beautiful tiled building bounded by 2 broken down abandoned buildings, and an alcoholic sleeping (or worse) in the front. And no other people on account of that being the “dead part of the city center” or maybe that alcoholic. When you are traveling with kids there are additional considerations in addition to safety, like will the stroller fit into a staircase as wide as my butt and how will it get it up to the fourth floor every day.

That's not the view outside
the apartment

There was just one apartment that fit all the required criteria and then some: it was in Chiado by Rua Garrett. Elevator to the 3^rd floor, secure parking spot inside the building, beautiful furnishings, windows all around, near all the action but if you don’t want to hear the noise, all you have to do is close windows and turn on A/C. We got to see a theater performance right outside our window. Can’t say enough how much we like it. The interesting thing is it is about 3 times more expensive than any Lithuanian apartments we stayed at but costs the same as other apartments offered by other agents. So looking at it first hand really helps. Baixa is considered equally good place to stay but after 9pm it is all dead other than some tourist trap restaurants. Hurray!!

We took the kids to the hypermarket on the St. Sebastian station. I think Portuguese do a lot to make subway travel kid/handicapped friendly and by far exceed anything one would get on the NYC subway but still it is not enough. You have to take stairs to the escalator, and then you have the option to taking the elevator to the platform does not really cut it in terms of the full service. At that point it is somewhat irrelevant. Given that some of the best places for kids are several stops away on the train we may need to get Isabella used to traveling without her stroller.

At the hypermarket it was difficult to concentrate on getting the items we needed because everything looked amazing and there was a lot to choose from. We got some Granadilla, it is a relative of passion fruit but is bigger and sweeter tasting. After sternly reminding ourselves to focus on the basic needs, we got some regular breakfast staples and pre-cooked takeout chicken, rice and cod stew. Beat our coffee bill for today and everyone liked everything. Reminder, this is not a copout – we just needed to grab something quick while kids were not fully awake. I did not have high hopes for the cod based on my last experience in one of the tourist traps. I resigned to focus on sea specialties regardless given that Portugal has the highest fish consumption in Europe per capita and I wanted to do my share of that in 5 weeks. But to my surprise the supermarket cod was very good. Even the plainest of foods can bloom if they are accompanied by sweet caramelized onions and sourdough croutons drenched in olive oil.

After that Dan went to the airport to meet Irina and get our bags from storage. Kids and I walked around Chiado and Bairro Alto, marveling at all the beautiful places. Will upload pictures tomorrow. Ruins of Convento do Carmo and views from atop of Santa Justa elevator are some of the most memorable in the city.