Lisbon

Our first full day in Portugal! And boy did it start early...the kids were up for a solid hour beginning at 4am. Evie was coughing a bunch and then she saw a ghost!! I finally got them all back to bed and we slept until 9am when the doorbell rang and our breakfast arrived! We were all still pretty tired. Evie and I decided to go exploring and climbed up a big hill to grab some snacks at the Chiado Cafe. We had delicious croissants with the strangest payment system ever (they gave us a card which told you how much money to put in a slot machine to pay). Evie had a blast running down the slippery, cobblestone hill back to the hotel. The weather wasn't great - lots of rain, so we decided to scrap our plan for the park and took at taxi (an Uber actually which are super inexpensive here) to the Lisbon Aquarium. Apparently all of Lisbon had the same idea and it was PACKED. Luckily I had bought tickets the night before so we were able to skip the outside line, but we still had to wait in a massive queue to get inside the actual museum. The kids probably ran up and down the ramp 100 times before we could enter but at least we were out of the rain. Once we actually did get in, it was pretty cool and a great place to spend a rainy morning. Evie got tired half way through so I carried her, but Hannah was running all over and super excited to see the fish. After we saw everything we took an Uber back to Castelo Sao Jorge and thank goodness we did because the hill was ENORMOUS! We bought tickets and walked through in the drizzly rain. The views from the top were bonkers - you could see all over the city and to the bridge and the guy with his arms out on the hill. Hannah had a blast "leading" us all over the castle and up and down the stairs to see all of the cannons. We were all getting hungry so we walked down some cute cobblestone streets to lunch at Lisboa Tu e Eu. The restaurant was teeny, but delicious. We had 2 euro glasses of wine, cheese, cod fritters and the girls ate nothing at all. They are being not so adventurous with food this trip and all they wanted to do was play in the fountain outside the restaurant. It was a bear shaped fountain so I get it. It had been so rainy and drizzly all day but it really warmed up during lunch thankfully so the kids could play outside where we could see them. After lunch we walked down to the water and the big square before slowly making our way back to the hotel. Hannah did such a good job with walking the entire time. The kids wanted ice cream but we were too tired to get it so went upstairs to our room and watched Doc McStuffins in Portuguese for awhile instead. Later in the evening we took the kids down to the Kids Club for dinner and play and then had a sitter bring them up to bed while Matt and I went to dinner at Cantinho do Avillez nearby. It was delicious (and so nice to be on a date!) but the real standout was the wine which was wonderful and so cheap! After dinner we stopped for a quick drink at the wine bar next to our hotel for another delicious/cheap glass of wine before heading back to bed!Read more