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Teaching Time in Lisbon
  • Laurie Reynolds

Teaching Time in Lisbon

A 15-day adventure by Laurie Read more
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  • Trip start
    November 14, 2025
    Laurie ReynoldsTeaching Time in LisbonLaurie Reynolds
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    Arrived!

    November 14 in the United States ⋅ ⛅ 17 °C

    It’s been a rough two weeks, and I wasn’t sure that I should go, but the class is all set and I do love Lisbon. But it took me a long time to get here, that’s for sure. Many hours in O’Hare, and then I missed my connection in Heathrow. I had a seven hour wait for the next available flight to Lisbon. Luckily, I had lounge access and was able to find a sofa in a corner for a couple of hours, but it was not a lot of fun.

    To add to the fun, I went to the hotel where I had stayed last year (as per my instructions), only to find out that there was no reservation for me. The guy at the desk spent some time calling all the other hotels in the same chain to see if maybe I was booked in one of those. No luck. I was about to just check in and figure it out later, but then I had the idea to call the hotel where I had been two years ago. Sure enough, they had my reservation.

    Not surprisingly, I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow a little after midnight. I woke up this morning at 7, had a very good breakfast and
    by eight I was in an Uber. It’s my only day to walk.

    I was dropped off at about 8:45 at the Cabo da Roca, pulled up my Wikiloc tracks and off I went. What a beautiful day, probably my best day hike from Lisbon. The first couple of kilometers were really hard — several very stony descents, followed of course by steep ascents. But always with gorgeous views of the coast.

    When I got away from the coast, I was in the Sintra Hills. First little detour was to a 4000 year- old anta/burial chamber. It was amazing. From there up to a little sanctuary, Peninha,
    and then through the hills to several of my favorite Sintra sites. The paths were great— a mixture of sand, dirt, and gravel, with lots of pine needles as an extra cushion. First the Convento dos Capuchos, a tiny 16th century monastery. All the doors, some of the benches, and even some of the ceilings were lined with cork. I remembered this from years ago and was so glad to go back and have it pretty much all to myself.

    Next step was the Monserrate mansion, built by Brits in the 19th century. Then I passed a few more of these magnificent Quintas on my way to my last stop for the day, the Moorish Castle. Great views.

    https://www.wikiloc.com/hiking-trails/cabo-da-r…

    I took the bus down to the historic center of Sintra, and even though it was about 530 on a Sunday afternoon, the streets were mobbed with tourist going up and down a tiny streets lined with souvenir shops. I did get a travesseiro in Piriquita, and they were just as good as I remembered them. But then, all pastries in Portugal are delicious.

    It was hard to get an Uber because of traffic restrictions, but one finally made it to me. There are plenty of good little restaurants in this neighborhood, but none are open on Sunday night, so I’ll get a salad downstairs in the Hotel bar. Classes tomorrow!    Read more

  • Laurie ReynoldsTeaching Time in LisbonLaurie Reynolds

    First day teaching

    November 17 in Portugal ⋅ 🌙 14 °C

    Leaving my hotel this morning, I saw that the Portuguese communist party still has their headquarters across the street, with their lovely mural— a joint project of almost 40 artists. But the general tide in Portugal seems to be moving far away from the communists. Yesterday, in my Uber back from Sintra to Lisbon, my driver (from Bangladesh originally) told me how the anti-Immigration fever has hit Portugal full force. He described incidents where people have come up to him in the street and told him to go home. His daughter has even gotten insults, and she’s four years old and was born in Portugal. As if to put a point on that, this morning, walking to school I saw a billboard that I couldn’t have imagined would be possible here in Portugal. Anti-Immigrant parties are on the rise, and the Chega! (Enough Already) party seems poised to get at least a plurality in the next elections. I suppose this hateful xenophobia, and the other right-wing ideology that accompanies it, has always existed, but for a country that transitioned from a dictatorship to democracy in 1974, it is surprising to me.

    My class has fewer than 20 students for the first time in many years, and I am so happy about that. There are about four Portuguese students and the rest are Erasmus — from all over the European Union. It seems like a very good group, and I have to remember that law students in Europe are much younger than my law students in the United States. This is their first university degree, and that seems to make them more bright eyed and bushy tailed than your average US law student. The three hours sped by, for me at least!

    I realize how lucky I was to have had a rain free day yesterday. The weather pattern seems to be cloudy with occasional hard showers. Yesterday I had nothing but sun after my first little burst of rain. I will have to remember to bring my umbrella with me everywhere I go.

    One of my favorite meals in Portugal is a piece of grilled fish, some of those delicious Portuguese potatoes, and a green vegetable. There’s a little hole in the wall restaurant near my hotel, and I went back for yet another €13 dinner.    Read more

  • Laurie ReynoldsTeaching Time in LisbonLaurie Reynolds
    What!!! La Gorda in Lisboa too???? Not just Oviedo!
    1This used to be Adega San RoqueOut of commission.Best place to buy socks, if you want them to last!Conserveira, the authentic place!!!Christmas market.Go-to place for Belgian chocolates!

    Afternoon walking

    November 18 in Portugal ⋅ 🌙 15 °C

    Teaching for three hours a day is a small price to pay to have the rest of the day free in Lisbon! I started walking before 2:00 and got back to my hotel just after it got dark, around 6, having walked about ten miles (with a lot of stops). Sunny and cool, it was perfect. I was surprised by the number of tourists, after all it’s mid November, and was also surprised to see how many places I remember that had closed with new businesses in their place. And this was just since last year. I know change is inevitable, but one really made me sad — the Adega São Roque, where Joe and I, and my girlfriends and I, have had many excellent seafood cataplanas. It is now a modern jazzy little place serving exotic drinks. The place had been closed for years, but now another business has opened there.

    Christmas decorations are going up (many will be turned on this Saturday, so I’ll be sure to head out after dark next week) and Christmas markets are opening. I went to one of my favorite miradouros (look out spots) and walked through some of my favorite squares. It feels good to be here. I’ve FaceTimed Joe while walking, so he has seen some of our old hangouts.

    I did a couple of my essential, every year, shopping errands. First, to Pedemeia, believe it or not, a sock store. Katy swears that these all-cotton Portuguese socks are the best in the universe. I was able to Facetime with her so she could pick out some favorite designs. Then over to the Conserveira de Lisboa, the authentic old sardine place, not the glitzy “Fantastic World of the Portuguese Sardine,” where you can get a can of sardines with the year of your birth on the wrapper, or take your picture next to a merry-go-round, or enjoy any of the other circus-like decorations. But my Lisbon friends tell me the sardines are bad and more expensive, but that since the shops have so much going on, the tourists just flock there. Don’t go there! Go to the Conserveira de Lisboa, where they still wrap their cans of sardines in brown paper.

    One last stop on the way back was Leonidas, the Belgian chocolate shop. I’m going to some friends’ for dinner this week, and they are real wine experts, so chocolate is a much safer bet for me.

    Dinner tonight in a popular local place, Lucimar, where I was happy to find my favorite soup, caldo verde, followed by a yummy vegetable version of Bachalau à Bras, a typical way of preparing dried cod.    Read more

  • Laurie ReynoldsTeaching Time in LisbonLaurie Reynolds
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    More walking in Lisbon

    November 19 in Portugal ⋅ ☁️ 16 °C

    The clouds have returned, but thankfully did not bring rain with them. So I once again set out on another ten mile walk, this time to wander through the “castle side“ of Lisbon‘s hills. To get there from my hotel, I decided to take an unfamiliar route, a chance to see something new.

    I didn’t exactly come up with a walk of jaw-dropping beauty or interest, but I started out in a very pretty “upscale” residential neighborhood, Abalate, with lots of cafés and little boutiques, and from there I traveled down the economic scale and made my way through several neighborhoods that were not exactly rough, but were clearly not as affluent. Lots of grocery stores and shops from far flung places made it interesting.

    My first destination was a Miradouro/ lookout that sits on top of the hill across from the castle. To get up there, Google maps took me up a pedestrian path and stairway that was about six or seven stories high. I seem to have a knack for finding men who are doing immodest things when I walk in Iberia, because as I turned a corner, there he was. There was no way to go but up, so I just kept on walking and averted my eyes.

    And once I got there the view was very nice! From there, I wandered through more familiar territory, old Lisbon on the hills, and made my way to two more favorite lookout spots. I took yet another route back to the hotel, passing one of my favorite fancy old cafés.

    My day’s purchases were nowhere near as interesting as yesterday‘s — stamps to send postcards home, a few bottles of olive oil, postcards, and my daughter‘s favorite wax earplugs.

    I went for an early supper to a place close to the university where Joe and I have eaten many many meals. Grilled robalo/sea bass is what I got. I have lost whatever little skill I had at taking fish off the bones, but I managed. And with a mango for dessert, what could be healthier?    Read more

  • Laurie ReynoldsTeaching Time in LisbonLaurie Reynolds

    Walking along the river

    November 20 in Portugal ⋅ 🌙 12 °C

    About 10 mi/15-16 km seems to be a good afternoon walk for me after teaching. Today I took an Uber to Belém, out along the river about 5 miles from the center, and I started walking at the Tower of Belém. The Torre was under scaffolding and it looks like they are giving it a good cleaning, so it will soon gleam white. The other Belém attractions are all along the way back to town, the Monument to the Discoverers, the Jerónimos Monastery (also being cleaned to a brilliant shade of white), and the Pastéis de Belem store, where the most famous pasteis de nata are sold. I think the hype is a bit much, because you can get a delicious pastel de nata in so many little places that make their own. So I didn’t wait in the long line, but went to a little pasteleria a few blocks down and got a perfectly yummy pastel de nata without a 25 minute wait!

    Lisbon has cobbled together a good walk that extends all the way back to the center along the river. This has been a relatively recent development, but for whatever reason, the city has decided to definitely “embrace” the river. Lots of esplanades where people can sit and soak up the sun at water’s edge on a day like today. The path does go through some of the working port area, but nothing dangerous. I was glad to have my Camino friend AJ’s tracks on my phone, because there are lots of places where it’s not clear which way to go. Yes, I know, the obvious thing is to keep the river on my right, but there are docks and fences and piles of containers that sometimes block the way. With the tracks on my phone, I just got a beep if I went too far off-route. No need to be looking at my phone every few minutes.

    From the central Praça do Comércio on the waters edge, it’s hard to find new routes back to my hotel. I did take a little detour off of one side and was happy to find three of the restaurants that we have enjoyed over the years that were still open.

    I’m going to a friend‘s house for dinner in a few minutes, and I’ve known their kids since they were small. Now one is working on her Ph.D., another is a law student, and the third is almost done with high school. Not that that makes me feel old or anything!

    I’ve had some really good walks this year, and maybe I’m so motivated to do it because I’m wondering if this might be my last year coming to teach. I’m trying to soak up as much of Lisbon’s charm as I possibly can.    Read more

  • Laurie ReynoldsTeaching Time in LisbonLaurie Reynolds
    The universidade de Lisboa, not a terribly inviting campus, but it's a very good university.

    Not much walking today

    November 21 in Portugal ⋅ ☀️ 15 °C

    I slept in a little, did some wash, and after breakfast decided to go to the gym to do my elliptical workout. There are no classes on Friday, so I had to choose between whether I wanted to go walking for a few days nearby or get on a plane and go to visit my very close friends in Madrid. Since I hadn’t seen them in more than two years, it was an easy choice. This is another family whom I’ve known for more than 20 years, and on both professional and personal levels, we are very close.

    Since my flight left Lisbon in the early afternoon, I didn’t really have much time to do other things, but I decided I would see how hard it was to walk to the airport. This is a question that comes up every now and then when people are wondering about starting their Caminho Português on foot from the airport. The Lisbon airport is closer to its dense urban population than any airport I’ve ever been in. It was only about 5 km from my hotel, and I must’ve been tracing the flight path, because there was a constant stream of planes that seemed awfully close to my head.

    There were sidewalks and crosswalks the whole way, and though it wasn’t a beautiful city walk, it was perfectly fine. Based on what I saw, I don’t think there would be any problem walking either to central Lisbon or to the Parque das Naçöes if you wanted to skip the first part of the Camino from Cathedral.

    The airport to the cathedral is about 5 miles/9 km, so it wouldn’t be a terribly long trek.

    I haven’t really followed all the chatter about the new EU biometric boarding process, but it is being gradually implemented and will require digital and facial identification for all non-EU citizens, I think. Better security and more efficiency are the goals, I think.

    Off to Madrid!    Read more

  • Laurie ReynoldsTeaching Time in LisbonLaurie Reynolds
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    In Soto del Real

    November 22 in Spain ⋅ ☁️ 6 °C

    Weekend in Soto. My good friends live in this little town, about 40 km north of Madrid. Walk out the door, and you’re in the Sierra de Guadarrama. Several hours walking in a cold but bright sunny day. It was terrific.

    After lunch, we darted in and out of Madrid to see a nice exposition of Madrazo paintings. I had seen paintings of his before in random museums, but getting to see an exposition dedicated to Madrazo was a nice way to get a feel for him as a romantic painter. Some of the portraits were really quite nice.

    Sunday was more walking, more eating, and the happiness that Gonzalo was able to make it home from his camping trip to see me for at least a few minutes! I was also so happy that Txema, another friend and professor of local government law, was able to drive to Soto for a get together. Such a great weekend.    Read more

  • Laurie ReynoldsTeaching Time in LisbonLaurie Reynolds
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    Walking in the Rain

    November 24 in Portugal ⋅ ⛅ 16 °C

    One thing that I am glad to have learned after so many Caminos is that it’s up to me to decide whether rain is going to ruin my day of walking. Walking in the rain in the city is a bit different, and in some ways, less fun, than walking in the rain out on the camino, but the truth remains that it is only water and it is only going to get you wet.

    One of the areas of Lisbon that I had not yet been back to was Campo de Ourique, one of my favorite residential areas, and Estrella, which is on the way back down the hill to the Baixa. I’m getting pretty good at hitting my 10 mile/16 km goal. Today Wikiloc clocked me at 16.38 km!

    The rain was not constant, but it kept on starting and stopping, for the entire four hours I was out walking around. Since Lisbon sidewalks are mostly made of slippery little square tiles, my walking pace was slow, and when the rain got really heavy, I was frequently tempted to duck inside a store or sit down in a café for a hot drink.

    The neighborhood of Campo Ourique was built on a grid in the late 1800s- early 1900s. It consists of what planners in the United States would call today the “missing middle” housing. Mostly multifamily, but low density (3-5 stories), lots of parks, small stores and cafes lining the streets, lots of trees. It is just lovely.

    Estrella, an older neighborhood on the way back to the historic center, has one of Lisbon’s biggest parks, and it streets are narrow and its buildings are old. The parliament building jumps out at you when you get down the hill and then back up you go to the Santa Catarina neighborhood with its own Miradouro.

    I have read that the horrific accident on the Lisbon street car showed that the cables were not up to standards.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20pg8pzp2no.amp

    As a result, the city has shut all of them down and is doing a revision and replacement. It’s so unfortunate that it took a tragedy to trigger this.

    As it got dark, more and more of the Christmas lights were turned on, and in spite of the rain, it was pretty festive.    Read more

  • Laurie ReynoldsTeaching Time in LisbonLaurie Reynolds
    We lived here in 2004-05, the start of my live affair with Lisbon.Joe's old Barber ShopAdega das Gravatas--long time favorite.3The old Carnide Neighbourhood1The Tyson's Corners of LisbonBenfica Stadium1

    Old friends and the old neighborhood

    November 26 in Portugal ⋅ 🌙 13 °C

    Yesterday, after my class, I walked down to the Corte Inglés to meet up with a friend. She had spent years in Champaign at the UI, but then we lost touch when she moved on to greener university pastures. Turns out she has retired and moved to Lisbon, and it was thanks to a mutual friend that we met again. Seeing her has been a highlight of my last few years in Lisbon.

    We decided to start with a light lunch in the Tapas restaurant in the Corte Inglés. And if you can believe it, six hours later we stood up and walked outside to realize it was night time. It felt good to catch up on what had happened to us both over the past year and to reestablish that bond that goes back to when our kids were small.

    On Wednesday, I realized I really didn’t have much more of central Lisboa to explore on foot, so one idea was to take an Uber to a place like Quinta da Regaleira or the Palacio de Queluz. But in the end, I just decided to head north from my hotel, up through the neighborhood where we had lived in 2004-05, our first year in Lisbon. No monuments, no ancient churches, just walking around past my old apartment, old hairdresser, old gym, old fruit store, some favorite restaurants. There have been lots of changes, but one thing remains unchanged — the monumental Colombo Shopping Center - capitalism on steroids! I confess I did pick up a few more last minute things but didn’t spend too much time wandering around inside.

    I just about hit my 10 mile goal, which I’m sure I will pass this evening, because I have 2 km each way to the restaurant where I am going to meet my via Lusitania friends, whom I’ve known for more than 15 years!    Read more

  • Laurie ReynoldsTeaching Time in LisbonLaurie Reynolds
    13112

    Last Day in Lisbon

    November 27 in Portugal ⋅ ☀️ 9 °C

    The real downside of this year’s trip was that the only dates available included Thanksgiving. Since the kids had planned to spend Thanksgiving with the “other family,” I decided to come.

    I gave my exam today, and then had to decide what to do with my last afternoon. Last night with my Via Lusitania friends, I got a couple of suggestions, but in the end, I decided to go back to basics and walk at least part of the Camino from Lisbon. After all, the non-human thing I am most thankful for is the Camino.

    I made sure to look for some old Caminho GPS tracks, because the new ones I followed last year did not take me through the old port that I had remembered from my first Caminho Português in 2008. They have moved a lot of of the Caminho over to the riverfront, which is nice enough, but I thought it was more interesting to walk past the actual port buildings that were a bit removed from the water.

    I was surprised to come upon a big complex, the sign pronouncing that its name was Unicorn. If you can understand anything that this website describes, you are sharper than I am! https://unicornfactorylisboa.com

    I just started walking around inside and went into one of the restaurants to find out what it was. A waiter told me that the complex was a former military base, which has been turned into a “destination.” The big beer brewery was in a former electrical generating room, and they’ve left all the machinery, polished and shining. Other places had different styles and menus.

    When I got close to Parque das Naçōes, I moved down to the river walk. Lots of fancy apartment buildings going up. At the Vasco da Gama tower, I turned around, walked back past the Calatrava train station and hopped in an Uber.

    I had not seen the Christmas tree in the main square lit up, and I’m really glad I stopped there. I was FaceTime-ing with one set of grandkids while walking around the square, and it was fun to show them how beautiful it is. But it is easier to impress three– and seven-year-olds with a beautiful Christmas tree than it is an 11-year-old!

    Tomorrow I head home. A big storm is forecast for the Chicago area, so who knows when I will arrive.    Read more

    Trip end
    November 28, 2025
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