Portugal Trip – Day 4 – Porto PM
After a morning of uphill biking we were ready for lunch. The hotel reception had recommended a place which we decided to check out. Unfortunately, We kept getting lost trying to find it and had to keep walking up steep hills. After many attempts we finally found it only to learn it was closed! Lots of the nicer restaurants which we wanted to try are closed Sundays and Mondays.
At this point we were tired and hungry so we wandered back to the river for lunch. In my cranky state all the cool restaurants I saw the day before looked like over priced tourist traps and nothing looked appealing! We ended up in some random place where I ordered pizza which looked like the kind you get frozen from a box and LS ordered a “francesinha.” This is a popular local sandwich with 2 slices of bread on each side, steak, salami and many other meats inside, topped with a fried egg and swimming in gravy! Heart attack waiting to happen. It tasted okay and we at least felt accomplished for trying something local.
We still had many hours to kill and kept wandering until I was too tired and laid down on a bunch in the sun and took a nap.
It eventually became time to collect our bags and head to the train station. This time we decided to try calling an Uber instead of a local cab. Much better experience! It was half the cost and better service. From what I understand Uber is being fought in Portugal hard by the local cab companies. It also sounds like the local taxis have a bad rep for cheating people which we witnessed with such high fares compared to the Uber! I would highly recommend Uber – I wish I had used it just to get up some of the hills!
We rode the 2.5 hour train from Porto Campanhã to Lisboa Oriente and enjoyed a gourmet meal aboard – wine from the cafe car with the left over pizza from lunch and chips from the past day!
We got into Lisbon close to 10pm and had a room reserved at the Hotel Ibis which was walking distance to the station. It was your typical economy chain hotel, which did the trick for the few hours we were there.
I was surprised to see the neighborhood around the station (Parque das Nações) was actually pretty happening with restaurants, bars and shops. In retrospect I would have booked an earlier train back from Porto and we could have had a nice dinner here.
Tuesday morning quickly came and it was time to head home. The airport was a short 10 minute Uber ride from the hotel and it was time to say goodbye.
Bye Portugal!
Read the Portugal Tips & Tricks
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