One Night in Lisbon

As the post title might suggest, we only stayed one night in Lisbon.  Mostly we were just passing through on our way to the South of Portugal.

We spent the night at the Lisbon Poet’s Hostel.  This was the first hostel that we’ve stayed at thus far, and it was the first time Nolan has ever stayed in one. We had a great time chatting with the woman at the reception desk. She had a pretty crazy story (and grew up in Seattle less than a mile away from Nolan’s house there!). She told us that she had stayed at the poet’s hostel two years ago, fell in love with Lisbon, bonded with another girl staying at the hostel while they both both really hungover, and the two of them decided that they wanted to move there permanently, live in an apartment together, and and work at the hostel. And as if they were the characters in a movie or something, that's what they did! They actually live together in Lisbon now and both work at the poet's hostel. So far it seems to be working out for them. Monisha and I pondered a bit about doing something similar, but decided that we really like our friends and family back in the states. If we do go work in another country, it most likely won’t be for more than one year.

Since we had such little time in Lisbon, we weren’t quite sure how best to explore the city. Luckily for us, the hostel offered a “Sunset Tour.”  A guy named Mosh (who works at the hostel, and is also gave the receptionist her first tour of Lisbon) came by and grabbed a group of ten guests to take us on a walking tour around the city.  He took us to several great viewpoints, and helped us avoid the more touristy spots in favor of equally good (and substantially cheaper) options. 

  

On our way to one of the viewpoints, we walked through several stories of a parking garage. The whole parking garage is filled with quite impressive street art. This is one of the most hidden, non-touristy spots you could imagine. It was neat to get to see neat little insights to the city that are certainly not part of the typical sightseeing itinerary.

After the tour, we asked Mosh for some local food recommendations. He told us to check out a place called Restaurante Cabaças that serves “stone steak.” We went by, but there was a huge line and people outside told us it would likely be at least a half an hour before we were seated. Monisha went inside to ask how long the wait was, and when she asked the man told her to sit down now! A table for two had just opened up, and we grabbed it right away. It was a good thing we did, because stone steak is really tasty. As the name might suggest, it’s basically just a slab of meat served on a very hot stone.  You cook the steak yourself, which meant we could cook it just the way we like it: VERY RARE!

After eating a stone steak, we headed outside and saw a large crowd of people gathered around a brass band playing loud music. People were dancing along and everyone was having fun. Lisbon nightlife seems lively!

Our last stop of the night was another recommendation from Mosh: a tapas bar called 11 tapas in a small alleyway. We were about to head to Spain, but we just couldn’t wait to eat our first tapas. We ordered garlic shrimp and a baked goat cheese salad. Both were incredible. The shrimp were served whole, which kind of grossed me [N] out.  I’ve never eaten whole shrimp before, and I had a bit of trouble getting over the whole “un-gutted” nature of the dish. But it was delicious.

One more pastel de Nata in the morning concluded our adventures in Lisbon ;) Off to Lagos!