Lisbon, Portugal
This post covers two days, because the first day was mainly just travel between Madrid and Lisbon. Unlike when we arrived in Madrid, we didn’t fly out of the smaller terminal with the pretty coloured hallways. Instead, we were in the big terminal completely occupied by Iberia Airlines. There were no coloured hallways, but the roof line was shaped like a moustache.
We hopped aboard the plane and jetted off to Lisbon, Portugal.
It’s a fairly short flight between the two cities and before long we had arrived in Lisbon. The Viking rep met us at the airport and escorted us to a van that took us to the Corinthia Lisbon hotel.
We’ve always been impressed with the hotels that Viking chooses and this one is also nice, but it doesn’t live up to the high bar set by the Intercontinental Madrid that we’d just left. The room is plenty nice, though, and comfortable.
And coming off the experience in Madrid of having club access, we opted to upgrade to club access for our two days here, too. It’s on the 24th floor and the view is pretty nice.
There was a nice little spread of tapas to snack on as well as wine.
Look just above the cake and just below the fruit boat. See those little custard tarts? OMFG. Portugal is famous for them and it’s well-deserved. If they have those on the ship, I’m going to come back home as big as a house.
As happy as we were with this little spread at lunch, when we went back up for dinner, it was the same stuff. Not just the same items, but literally the same stuff, whatever was left over from lunch. Not only that, but club access ends at 7pm, so you can’t even go up for a nightcap. We decided that it was 100% not worth the cost and we went down to guest services and canceled our club access for the next day.
I did a quick walk around the neighbourhood the hotel is in and made a couple of new friends.
There was a guest orientation by Viking that evening (not everyone on the cruise signed up for the Madrid portion, so some people had just arrived). We sat in the back so we could bail out after we’d heard all the logistics parts that we needed to know.
Next morning, we had a bus tour of Lisbon. On our previous cruises, Viking has used local guide companies with their own buses. This time, they’re using Viking employees and Viking buses (!)
Lisbon is home to tiny, narrow, cobblestone streets and interesting buildings. If a building is old enough, then the exterior must be preserved, even if you build brand new. Many of these nice, old buildings are actually quite modern behind the façade.
We passed the house of Parliament with the big lion out front.
And then we went to St Jerome’s Monastery. The exterior was certainly impressive, with lots of carvings and such…
And considering the number of people lined up to see the inside, we figured that it must be amazing. I mean, look at this queue!
This was half the queue. These were people with individual tickets and their queue went to one side of the entry door. Those with groups lined up in the opposite direction, with a queue almost as long.
So what do you get to see once inside? After all that waiting in the hot sun?
You get to see more carved limestone in a square around a courtyard.
The walkway around the courtyard has more carvings and nice arches on the ceiling.
…and a room with a painting and some tile work that depicts the story of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (the Bible version, not the Andrew Lloyd Webber version).
And that’s it. If you’re ever in Lisbon and the queue outside the monastery is massive, save yourself the time. The most beautiful stuff is on the exterior of the building, which you can see for free without waiting in line.
Just look at that queue. Next time I stand in a queue like that, there had better be a rollercoaster at the end of it.
I went across the street to a tower monument along the shore for some photos of the river (this is the same river that runs past Toledo, Spain).
If that looks a little like the Golden Gate Bridge, it’s because it was designed and built by the same company.
From there, we stopped at another monument near the shore. Rob and I opted to stay on the bus for this one (it was air conditioned and the outside temp + humidex was over 30C). I got a picture of it, though:
Then one last stop at more recent monument, this one dedicated to the “virility of the men who fought for our independence.” And of course, any monument to the “virility of men” is going to be phallic.
Speaking of virility, this is our badass bus driver Huey (pronounced “hoo-ee”) who put that massive bus down streets that would’ve been difficult for a MINI.
Seriously, props to this guy. It’s not often that the bus driver gets a round of applause from the passengers, unprompted, in the middle of the trip, but Huey got one after backing up from the curb into a side lane full of cars, followed by a six-point turnaround in the middle of a busy street, without even touching any of the cars or obstacles on every side of the bus.
After getting dropped off at the hotel, we went for lunch at one of the three restaurants in the hotel. This was Erva, a funky little café with Portuguese fare.
Nobody was particularly hungry after putting both hooves in the trough at the breakfast buffet this morning, but we needed sometime to hold us until dinner.
Rob had the appetizer portion of cod tempura, which he said was very good. It was topped with caramelized onions and garlic aioli.
I also had a small plate: chilli cheese fries. And much like in Toledo when I ordered tacos and got something unlike what I expected, the chilli cheese fries weren’t what I expected, either.
Regardless of them being unlike what I expected, they were delicious. I’m not sure what that seasoning blend is on top of them, but I would put that stuff on everything.
After lunch, Heather and Ken went off on another tour, Rob headed up to the room, and I hit the streets on foot to go to El Corte Inglés.
It’s not a mall. It’s a store. A single store. Eight storeys and it covers almost a whole city block. Inside, you can find pretty much anything.
The bottom floor is a supermarket and assorted food court places like a bakery and a tapas bar.
The middle floors have everything from cosmetics to clothes to furniture…
an entire floor is dedicated to kitchenware, linens, and appliances…
…and the electronics area has everything from cheap power cords to Apple products to ultra high-end stuff like this Bang and Olufsen TV that costs €27,000 ($39,000 CAD).
The top floor sells gourmet food items, wine, cheese, and other stuff, plus some restaurants and a deli counter. I bought a bottle of Bhutan chilli sauce that I can’t wait to try.
It was a long, hot day today and we’re all ready to end the hotel-hopping and get on board our ship tomorrow. Looking forward to relaxing on the water.