Our Trip to Lisboa

January 12, 2024

Hi,

So, this week we had to drive down to Lisboa so Chris could go to the US Embassy and apply for a replacement passport. The trip down took about four hours, and only mostly because I got lost in Lisboa. Of course, we stopped a couple of times on the way down to let the dogs out and grab lunch. But getting lost in Lisboa was maddening.

I wasn’t actually lost. Google kept giving me annoying instructions. Like, she says ‘turn right now’ and I cannot see a road there! There is a road, but it doesn’t seem like a road. It looks like a pedestrian cut-through. So, I keep going straight and have to re-route. Ugh!

Still, in the end we made it to the Ibis Hotel downtown. We chose the Ibis because it is pet-friendly and was within walking distance to the US Embassy (a 20-minute walk). After checking in, we all walked to the Embassy so Chris could memorise the way. Why, you might ask? Because the Embassy website said he could not bring his phone into the embassy with him. And without his phone, he would not be able to find the embassy. 

But, as it turned out, everything was fine. We walked the route (not may turns, so it was simple) and picked up food on the way back to the hotel. We spent the night at the hotel and Chris left for the embassy at 8am the next morning. He had no trouble finding it, and had no issue requesting the replacement. Unfortunately, the website did not tell him to bring a SASE, so he had to leave and get one of those and return. He got back at the hotel around 11am and we had a day ahead of us. Lisboa lay at our feet!

However, my vasculitis did not enjoy the four-hour drive the day before, and insisted that I keep my legs elevated and not walk all over the capitol city. Bleh.

We left the following day, with one stop along the way back. There are tons of things to see and do between Lisboa and Porto, but we settled on one that would not have me doing much walking and would allow me to recuperate. We stopped in Santarém. It is a mid-sized town about an hour northeast of Lisboa. 

We headed straight to Jardim das Portas do Sol, a garden on top of the hill that Santarem is built on. The garden was nice with wide paths and a few statues, but the reason we were there was to see the wall. I don’t know if Santarem ever had a castle or it was just a walled city, but the wall around the garden was left over from one of them. It was nice to see and the view down to the valley below was awesome.

On a side note, when we left Lisboa, the sky was clear blue and puffy white clouds were scattered about. About 10-15 minutes outside of Santarem, we noticed the clouds (not sure when they showed up) reached the ground ahead of us. We drove through fog as we approached the city and as we climbed up the hill to the garden. We arrived around 11:30am and the fog was still visible everywhere. We had lunch and left around 2pm, and by then the fog had mostly disappeared. Weird situation. We were only about 30 meters high in Santarem (at the river level) and not much higher at the top of the hill, so it wasn’t like when we drove up into the mountains last month. I just don’t know where the fog came from unless it was some sort of magic.

Nola