Lisbon Highlights
Lisbon is one of those places that is on everyone’s travel list or social media feed (or so I’ve heard, I don’t do Instagram). It’s inexpensive for western Europe and all the cool places to take pictures of. It’s got history and food. And after my trip, I can 100% say, it is a really fun city to visit. October isn’t the height of the tourist season, so there weren’t many crowds, but aside from it pouring on my last night there, the weather was basically perfect.
Because Lisbon is ubiquitous for people interested in travel these days, I’m not going to talk about the plazas or the pastel de natas or Barrio Alto. Instead, here is what was amazing, what was bad, and a couple less-famous sites that are worth visiting. Even though it isn’t my favorite city, it’s worth visiting at some point, at least for a few days.
The Amazing
Jeronimos Monastery
The Jeronimos Monastery is a UNESCO heritage site and frequently listed as one of the top places to visit in Lisbon and it is 100 percent deserved. This was hands down one of my top three places/experiences in Portugal (Along with the Ebora Megalithica tour and the entry below). King Manuel I of Portugal oversaw the birth of the Portuguese Empire in the Indian Ocean in the early 1500s. With all the money from spices rolling in, he funded so many buildings, there is an entire style of architecture named after him – Manueline. The Jeronimos Monastery is the Manueline-style at its peak.
It’s very ornate, but without the over-effusiveness or gold leaf of baroque buildings. It felt more organic than that. The monastery is broken into two attractions – the church which is free (although the sacristy has nominal additional fee) and the cloisters, which require a ticket. All of it is beautiful and worth seeing.
It’s more impressive in person
Sala do Joao Sa
If you only go to one restaurant in Lisbon, go here. Every trip I like to go to a fine dining restaurant and do a tasting menu. A surprising number of places have vegetarian ones. And Sala was my choice for Portugal. The food there was incredible – on par with the one I did in Rome. The tasting menu was five courses, the best of which was the mushroom-filled potato croissant. It is very thinly sliced potato wrapped around mushrooms in the shape of a croissant, and baked. But the true mark of a great chef/dish is making you like ingredients you don’t normally like. And that is precisely what this place did. Who knew I’d enjoy a celeriac dish?
Finally, if you are travelling alone, the open kitchen is on the other side of the little 4-person bar. You not only get to watch them prepare and plate the food, but the cooks themselves serve and explain each dish to you. And that is just another level of awesome.
The Bad
The Museu do Fado
This museum was one of the more frustrating places I’ve visited. Not the set-up, it was a well-set-up museum with excellent signage. The audio guide was even useful as it allowed you to listen to clips of fado music from dozens of singers. No, what frustrated me was the content. It was a truly egregious example of lies by omission. Fado, has a complicated history, because it was appropriated and effectively the music of the fascist (well, that is actually a debate but gives a clearer picture than “corporatist authoritarian”) dictatorship that held power in Portugal from the 1930s until 1974. And the museum ignored that entirely. It also elided past the concept of empire when casually mentioning that fado was popularized internationally first in Africa … where Portugal had colonies until the ‘70s. I understand a country wanting to ignore or erase the horrible stuff of its past – the US is guilty of that a thousand times over. But it is a damaging practice for everyone past, present, and future.
The Worth Visiting
Carmo Archeological Museum
This is actually the first archeology museum in Portugal, and it was founded in the ruins of a former Carmeline Convent. The convent church was largely destroyed after a massive earthquake in 1755 and was never rebuilt, but the intact bits were turned into a museum. As a result, a roof-less, ruined church is effectively the first display of the museum. Carmo is small and doesn’t require a lot of time, especially as the signage is limited. But it’s a striking place, both in it of itself and with the displays which are interesting but also rather odd. One display was an Egyptian mummy incongruously flanked by two Peruvian ones.
Castelo do Sao Jorge
I’m not sure if this qualifies as lesser known, but it is a site worth visiting, and for more than just the views. The Castelo, as castles often are, was built on the top of a hill over the city. It’s more of a complex than a site, with several open areas, a museum – which is small but informative, particularly about Lisbon under Muslim rule, if you read the placards. The objects themselves are meh – potsherds aren’t the most exciting of finds. There is also the castle itself, which is largely empty but you can walk all along the walls and towers, and the archeological site where they have tours about the history of Lisbon from the Iron Age to the 1400s.
