11/9 – Lisbon and Evora….or not

Our grand plans for today are predicated on being able to get to Europcar in the Santa Apolonia Train station in a timely manner. Sadly, again there are 5 ships in port and we get the BAD port, down by the Ponte 25 de Abril bridge. It is a 50 minute walk up to the station, 30 minutes just to get to Praca do Comercio. There is a shuttle bus for 14.50 euros, but it takes you to Restaudores which is way the heck up in the middle of the old town and a 30 minute walk to the train station. Sigh.

While we have arrived early everywhere, today, yeah, we’re just on time at 10am. The car is booked for 10 – because of course we figured we’d be at the Santa Apolonia pier. When we are finally released, we hurry out onto the pier and wind our way out of the little terminal and then across the swing bridge to get to the mainland in search of someplace to wait for an uber. We end up walking way down the street with another passenger who is going to go hang gliding somewhere. We get into the conversation before realizing we’ve walked way too far down the road, and don’t need to cross over the tracks as she does to catch the tram.

Ok. Easily handled. We actually find a location for the uber driver to pick us up, and he’s there really quickly. Muhammed from Pakistan. Has lived here for 5 years, just started driving for uber and loves it. He is a doll. Talks to us the entire way about Pakistan, life here in Portugal which is very safe he tells us (because he got mugged and robbed in France when he went to pick up this car). As he’s talking though, he sort of loses track of the GPS and makes a wrong turn which ads 20 minutes onto our drive. Ay yi yi.

He’s totally apologetic and does manage to make a u-turn that cuts down the delay to 15, but we’ve now shaved almost an hour off of our time to get the car, drive almost 2 hours to Evora and get back before sunset. We’ve got plenty of time in port -we don’t sail until 11, but we don’t want to be driving in the dark. Finally arriving at the station at 10 minutes before 11, we bid Muhammad goodbye and make our way to Europcar.

We’ve rented here before and know exactly where to go. Luckily we are the only ones there, so we walk right in where the agent looks at our reservation, looks at the computer, looks at the computer some more, looks some more, calls the lot guy over, chats in Portuguese (which we can never decipher), tells us he’s having some problem, just a minute, and proceeds to get on the phone to someone who he tells must bring the car back to the station to get new paperwork. Uh oh. The agent signed someone else out on our contract. A gentleman names Steven Alder has signed all our paperwork, and while he has the correct car, we can’t get a car until he brings the paperwork back. Uhhhh….. you see where this is going?

And the time is just ticking, ticking, ticking away…..

Again, the guy is super apologetic. He calls his boss, and you can tell he’s getting reamed over this. Tick, tick, tick…..He finally gets off the phone and does something on the computer, then explains the situation. He will have to cancel our existing reservation, make a new one – which he will give us a better price on because of the problems – and then refund any monies back on our credit card. At this point, Ed and I look at each other and decide, nope, too many things have gone wrong already, we don’t want to be superstitious but sometimes, things work out for a reason – let’s just go to Plan B and ditch the car.

The agent is super nice and says he will call and email to tell us when he’s canceled everything and refunded any money, and totally apologetic still. We are actually fine with the decision, as Evora was just a time filler to do something different in Lisbon. So no harm, no foul. Now we have our whole day to fill!

Ok – we’re walking!

First things first – cappuccino! On the sidewalk right outside the station. Perfect. Then a nice little stroll through town to Menina Sardinho, the lovely turquoise restaurant where the owner sweetly made up cappuccino on our last visit but we never made it back for food. This time they are just about to open, having their service meal, and we can sit outside at a table to wait until they are ready.

We tell them not to rush and bask in the great weather – alternating between sunshine and super menacing clouds, but clouds that keep the temperatures nice and cool. Perusing the menu, we were going to go with seafood and maybe try the sardines (horrors) but ended up with the flaming chourico (which we love) and the special pasta of the day, tortelloni de carne a Napolitana, which the owner says is excellent today. Ok, we’re game. A fabulous glass of wine, an artisan crafted beer brewed right on the premises and we are happy little campers. We even get a video of the flaming chourizo, lit afire right at tableside. Fabulous.

Everything is absolutely delicious and we are so glad that we managed to make our way back here on this trip.

Lunched up, we head to the main pedestrian street to revisit the Pasteis de Nata shop for more tarts for our new “guys” here aboard. Why not? None of them are going to be able to go anywhere from the BAD port. Mission accomplished, we turn around, encountering one of the best statue buskers we’ve seen in a long time. He looked just like a statue – the picture doesn’t do justice to him because you’d swear he was carved from stone.

Then onto the Rua do Arsenal and then Avenue 24 de Julho for our long walk back to the ship. Of course we had to stop at Ginja de Obidos, which is now called Ginja de Ribiera – the same name as the restaurant next door. Hmmmmm….we’re thinking they must have been bought out, but the ginja tastes the same (even though it is a different brand now) and the price for the shots is the same, so ginza shots in chocolate cups, beer and wine it is. The only difference is they have run out of Pasteis de Nata. Oh well. We have 2 extra for us in our bag which we can eat later or tomorrow.

Retracing our steps (in reverse) from our last visit, we follow Avenue 24 de Julho, past the wolf mural, past the college, past, well, everything, until we arrive at the BAD port. Making a pit stop to dump all our purchases and lighten our load, we immediately head back outside to see how long it will take to walk to LX Factory, the place we had lunch last visit where we found the restaurant with the excellent octopus. As it turns out, it’s a long slog to get there. Although we did find a much easier way to cross the tracks at the port – oh and a tram stop RIGHT THERE which we could use if we decide to come back here for dinner. Hmmmm…..

We wander up and down the street a bit, stopping for drinks at the Micro Burguers & Music because they have a happy hour special and outside seating. Then we decide to see if we can actually get over to the Santo Amaro Docks where there are a ton of restaurants which may be closer and easier to get to from our ship. Also maybe not quite as Asheville-touristy as the LX Factory is.

The walk here is also brutal, on main streets with precious little sidewalks, but once on the dock around the marina it is fine. There are a bazillion restaurants, but, really? They are all various shades of touristy. There is one place at the beginning of the docks that looks much more sedate and local, but as we are walking back along the harbor, through a skate park and basketball courts and on the back side of the big office/warehouse complexes, we come to the conclusion we don’t want to come back out here and walk this in the dark. There is perfectly good food on the ship and it isn’t like we haven’t been here a lot in the past and have had a lot of great food. Decision made! We’re staying aboard.

And it is a wonderful evening full of food, wine, beer, and an excellent sunset with pictures of the Santuario de Cristo Rei across the river.