Portugal 2023: Day 1 - In the middle of World Youth Day

 

Catholic Youth singing hymnals in Biaxa 

We arrived to Lisbon on time, went through passport control pretty quickly, found our bags on the carousel, went through customs and met our drivers - one, Antonio took the three of us to our place, the other - Miguel - took Olga to her dentist appointment.   

Our place is just south of the Intendente metro station, one block away from Avenida de Alm Reis/Rua da Palma (the main transport artery on the east side of Lisbon, connecting the airport with Martim Moniz and the center. We are about 300 meters north of Martim Moniz, smack in the middle of Moureira's  multitude of curry houses, kebab shops and South Asian food marts.  Our place is in a renovated house, a two-bedroom (T2) apartment with two baths.  It has a huge living room, a nice adjacent kitchen, lots of closet space and a nice balcony that spans the entire width of the apartment and gives us views of the inner court.  There are no windows overlooking the street, but given how busy it gets outside, this is actually a good thing.  The inner course has 5-6 apartments on each level, with private balconies on some levels, and walkways/hallways on others.  

Our  living room. You can see some of the courtyard structure through the windows.

Olga's appointment and delivery back to the apartment took about two hours. When she wrote that she is  getting in the car, I went downstairs and while waiting for her took a walk round the block. In the direction of Matrim Moniz, we have busy streets with the aforementioned food stores and restaurants. Going north, it's about 300 meters to Lidl, which I predict will be our main shopping venue (see below).  We also have a Continente store almost across the street. While circling around, I found one cafe that had pasteis de nata and bought four. 

While walking around, I saw several groups of teenagers - many wrapped in their national flags (Spain, France, Serbia, Mexico, Germany) walking around, sitting on the street eating food from local places, chatting and so on. Many groups have people in monk/nun garb chaperoning them, although some groups have chaperons dressed in everyday clothes.   Right after I bought my pasteis de nata, one of the kids from a nearby group walked into the cafe and tried to buy a lot of them, but the cafe had only two  remaining, so the kid left disappointed. Additionally, right outside our place there is a bunch of food kiosks selling kebab, bifanas and drinks, but at somewhat inflated prices (bifana was7 Euro).

Largo de Intendente - outside our place. Apologies for the trash cans in the shot.

About 40 minutes after Olga's arrival, we went out grocery shopping. Tatiana went with us. First order of business was to find coffee. We walked all the way to Martim Moniz because the east side of Rua da Palma lacks any padarias (and I did not notice one on the other side). Olga and Tatiana had espressos there, Tatiana did not like hers. World Youth Day crowds were all around us. I took this picture outside the cafe:

You can see a line, consisting largely of the World Youth Day folks waiting to board the 28 tram.

After coffee, we took the scenic route (Rua de Mouraria, then Rua de Benformoso) back towards Continente (cutting back to Rua da Palma as we almost reached it). This is where all the small restaurants are, and where most inhabitants of Mouraria hang out. 

Rua de Benformoso.

The actual shopping in Continente was somewhat of a downer - it's a small store missing a lot of items easily found in larger Continente supermarkets. I was expecting a more full-service store. We did get the necessities, hauled them home, grabbed a quick snack of bread, cheese and smoked sausage, and the three of us - around 6pm - went out for an evening stroll.

The weather was quite hot an humid.   We too Rua de Plama to Martim Moniz, from there, we cut to Praca de Figueira, from where we took the main drag - Rua Agusta all the way to Praca de Commerce.

Praca de Figueira

Rua Agusto is filled with dancing youth.

Lots of World Youth Day Youth sitting in cafes, singing, walking in groups. Basically, wall-to-wall traffic.  As we arrived to Praca de Commerce - we saw why. While Martim Moniz too has a stage and people talking and singing from it on occasion, Praca de Commerce has a stage with a seemingly nonstop concert going on, while the crowds thicken.

Praca de Commerce. You can see the arriving people and the stage.

We walked - occasionally navigating through the crowds and oncoming traffic to the river bank, and decided to visit the river cruise building. It houses public restrooms (important despite high demand), ticket sale booths for the businesses that can do river cruises, and a small cafe that has multiple tables with a view of the river and the (small) cruise ships.  While waiting for Olga and Tatiana, I got a seat and ordered three sangrias: two red, one white.

Our waterfront sangrias.

We have a documented bad experience with waterfont sangrias in the past (although it was in Porto, not Lisbon). This experience was exactly the opposite of the one in Porto's Ribeira.  Both red and white sangrias were fizzy, had a lot of fruit pumped into them and the white sangria is pretty much was as good as it gets.  While the price (7 Euro) is exuberant, the sangrias were awesome, and the view was nice, so we took it as cost of doing business in touristy places and moved on.

The river cruise building and the cafe where we had our sangrias.

After that we went back through the crowds.  On the way to the river front we stopped at a couple of stores - bought some coffee cups and ginja glasses (important, since I bought a bottle of ginja at Continente), and a pair of Portuguese-made flipflops (I wanted cheap plastic ones, but spotted these on sale, and decided to buy them). On the way back we rediscovered the t-shirt store we found last year. It was open despite the late hour, and thankfully - empty, so we have the salesperson's full attention. The store carries a bunch of designs and you let them know which one you want and on what t-shirt (Size, color, style), and they print it for you right on the spot. Their 2022 regular t-shirt price became their sale t-shirt price (coinciding with the Youth Day), so we took advantage of the sale and bought several t-shirt as presents (I also got one for myself. It says "School is great when it is on vacation". I plan to wear it to school.)

Passed a huge crowd of students singing hymnals (see title page), but past that point the streets were largely empty. Went home, stopped by another marketplace, got some more cheese and meat, got home, rank ginja, ate bread, cheese and sausage again and called it a day.

Steps. watch says 14647. This include sairport steps.

Alcohol. Sangrias at the river cruise pier were overpriced but really tasty,  Gingja (see photo) - good enough for several shots, but its the Cheap Continente one. We plan to bring some Obidos ginja, and buy some local and do a comparison.

Our first gingja

Day 2 plan:  Rent a car early in the morning, go the Castle of Belver and Ourem.