Things to see and do in Lisbon

I plan to retire there and write my memoirs.

It was once described to me as the most unfuckedup part of Europe and I could see what they meant.

I loved the fact that bookshops, boutiques and galleries were open at midnight and beyond in the Bairro Alto, and yet by day it's a normal area where people hang out their washing and take their kids to school and so forth.

The Chinese Pavilion is among my favourite bars ever.

Palacio da Pena in Sintra is, as was mentioned upthread, truly spectacular. Sintra is well worth a day trip even if you don't go in for castles and stuff.

Oddly enough, I've found that portuguese women as a rule don't really look to Cristiano Ronaldo, or indeed any male footballer, as a role model for what they seek to look like.

The bullfighting stadium at Campo Pequeno looked extraordinary from the outside. Any been in?

this happens on sunday

3 nights, 1 girlfriend, 1 unexplored city

any advice?

ok so the answer to this thread is EAT THE CUSTARD TARTS

Where are you staying? Just got back from Lisbon myself. Stick around the south side of the city really, near the river. It gets progressively less interesting the further away from the river you get.

But yes, EAT THE FUCKING CUSTARD TARTS. But if you're going to do it, go to Pasteis de Nata in Belem, which is the original place. It serves, like, nothing else. The surrounding area is interesting as well.

Also go drinking out in the streets of Bairro Alto until 6am.

Where DID I stay, more like! Right next to the Marques de Pombal, awesome cast-iron dude in a wig with a pet lion.

Belem might well be my favourite place in the world. We didn't go to Pasteis de Nata for our tarts, but a place down the road towards Lisbon (about 2 blocks away) on a street-corner was perfectly sufficient. I think I ended up having about seven in one afternoon.

As for Belenenses' stadium, well there's a photostory in there when I can be arsed to load my pics. Let's just say that security there isn't what it is in Britain.

And yeah, we stuck around the river pretty much throughout. Our only venture north was to the zoo, which was actually a pretty sweet one as these things go.

The city itself is truly lovely, with a hot but not too much so Mediterranean slow-life twisty vibe, great architecture, vivid colours and superb wall-tilings. We went for several walks around the city (when not bussing; that Lisbon card! So handy!) and found it endlessly delightful. Bairro Alto, nice as it was initially, became seedier the more we penetrated, and at my gf's insistence we turned off halfway down Rua de Atalaia, before we could reach all the recommended bars/restaurants but also before we had to walk past a battalion of very shifty-looking bums on the road ahead. Went to an Argentinian place instead. With views over the whole city. Rock.

Oh yeah, the food. The fish!

The funicular railways!

That fucking bridge!

L'ARANJAS!

Shame, Bairro Alto's pretty fucking cool and not as dodgy as it looks. Also those trams are awesome.

to lisbon in may! psyched. 5 nights then to morocco for a week or so. i'm mostly interested in cool old stuff and eating, what should i look at/consume??

Go to the Gulbenkian museum

I really liked this restaurant

http://chafarizdovinho.com/en/index.htm

Also, I second Daniel Giraffe's recommendation to go the Pavilhão Chinês. That bar is amazing and good fun, too.

Eat one pasteis

^^^

They're very good

Going a week today for a long weekend, can't wait. What are the nightclubs like? Been reading a few horror stories about doormen and dresss codes...

just booked a four day stay in july (for what will be my first trip out of britain), wahoo. although three of those days i'll be at a conference. unless i decide to just give my paper and then fuck off into the city.

If you want to party, the Bairro Alto area is basically several blocks full of minuscule bars, with people drinking and partying both inside and on the streets. Seedy and a bit touristy maybe, but we had plenty of fun there.

The Sea World was also really cool, especially the penguins and the sharks. (The queues are long though, so if you want to visit you should go there pretty early in the morning.) The old monastery in Belem was worth seeing too, but the fortress at the top of the city was kinda boring, except for the (admittedly beautiful) view... There were other places in Alfama with almost as nice views, though, and you don't have to pay admission.

I'll also second Michael White's recommendation of the Gulbenkian museum; there's loads of cool art ranging from antiquity to the 20th century, and not just paintings, but also furniture, jewelry, mosaics, grandfather clocks, etc.

Lucky you, it's really good. The Oceanario was terrific - I think that's the same thing as the Sea World? But if you only have a short time, probably stick to the old town, eat custard tarts, etc. The view from the castle is super.

Yeah, the Oceanario, that's what I meant, couldn't remember what it was called.

if you want to see tiles, go to the National Tile Museum. After visiting I felt like I never needed to see another tile as long as I live, a feeling which sticks with me to this day.

Lovely place. I haven't been back for a couple of years. We took the train to Belém and went to Casa Pastéis de Belém for the Pastéis de Nata, addictive! If you want to blow the budget then Bica do Sapato for food and then nip to Lux for dancing - that was a great night.

Already mentioned, but: Custard Tarts. Seriously.

Day trip to Sintra. V Pretty.

Indeed, at Casa Pastéis de Belém I was told they made 10,000 a day. Might be a bit of an overstatement.

ooh, thanks everybody. worst case scenario is being stuck giving my paper on the last day of the conference so i have two days worrying / finishing it rather than being able to relax. if that doesn't happen, this all sounds nice.

i'll be there from sunday evening till thursday evening - what's the weekday nightlife like?

Lisbon is the one place in Europe where I have seen men and women in their sixties drinking in bars at 1am on a Monday night.

If you are a carnivore please do not ignore this suggestion: eat at Tomo La Da Ca
Veal cheeks especially recommended
Cosign on Oceanarium, Sintra, Chinese Pavilion. Shows at ZDB. My favourite city ever

Tomo La Da Ca is in my top five restaurants ever, it's a simple take on Portugeuse food by a French chef

when my cypriot friend who arrived in advance is warning me that lisbon is exceptionally hot, i know that i am absolutely fucked. still looking forward to it though!

Loads of shade and little windy streets to walk around though.

such a lovely place, with my single free half day yesterday I just decided to wander with no specific plans, found myself in the Gulbenkian gardens and visited the museum itself before heading south and strolling along the riverside and around the old town, doing basically nothing but nicely so. Though the highlight was the conference afterparty, held at this crazy place http://deleuze2013.fc.ul.pt/camp/venues.php run by one of the keynotes, a bunch of philosophy ppl dancing to a salsa/merengue/etc band until 1am and about a hundred locals, young and old, doing some more traditional/learned dancing outside until well past 2am.

anyone have tips on Porto?

or Lisbon stuff not mentioned upthread/that a gr80 would like

see who's on at Lux Fragil

the Berardo museum of modern & contemporary art (in Belem) is mindblowing, I had to leave and come back to the entire country a week later because I got overloaded

Drink loads of port, obviously. This is tourism 101 but Solar Vinho do Porto is an awesome port bar half way up the cliff with awesome views over the river and a ridiculous selection of port.

Serralves contemporary art museum is great, beautiful gardens around there to chill in if it's hot (which it probably will be).

The Rem Koolhaas music centre is pretty cool, not much around there but it's worth looking at.

There's an area up the top of the hill that's just a mazy rabbit warren of streets full of decent late night bars and clubs.

Eat a francescinha. You'll feel like you're about to die afterwards but they are the most incredible unhealthy food imaginable.

Worth getting the tram down to Foz on the coast, but there's also a decent beach slightly further north that you can get to easily by cab, I forget the name.

oh yeah my suggestions are for Lisbon, not Porto

Lisbon:

Put up with the queue to eat seafood at Ramiro, and do the thing of having the steak sandwich for dessert.

There's a branch of the Solar Vinho do Porto in Lisbon too, up near the Bairro Alto - it's nowhere near as good as the one in Porto but still very pleasant.

Read "The Book of Disquiet" before you go.

got a place in bairro alto for the weekend, will be in porto during the week

also i am a vegetarian travelling with a vegetarian friend fwiw

You should definitely not go to Ramiro!

We enjoyed a newly-opened bar at one end of the Bairro Alto which was called something like Lisbon Pub. It was the only place I found any local-ish small brewery beer.

Pub Lisboeta, that was it. Just a little bar but I liked it, especially the Portuguese porter.

If you want to eat proper vegetarian (not fish) in Lisbon, most of the local restaurants are not good, or at least that was our experience when we were in Lisbon... However we found a couple of really nice veggie restaurants, I'd recommend both of these:

http://www.restaurante-psi.com/
This one was located in the middle a small park in pretty quiet neighbourhood. There's a "proper" restaurant part, but half of the tables are inside a glass gazebo, and I'd definitely recommend that if you want to have a nice, atmospheric dinner in the evening. It's a bit hippieish, if that bothers you. The menu wasn't huge, but we enjoyed the place so much we went there three times. They have some kinda of Indian(?) stuffed crepes which were delightful.

http://www.restauranteterra.pt/English/Welcome.html
This one was a bit less atmospheric than PSI, but the food was really, really good. It's buffet-style, and most of it is vegan, but not "health food" style vegan, there was fat and juices and tastes. Most of the tables were on a terrace walled with trees, so it was a nice place to have dinner too. A bit crowded, at least on the weekends, but definitely one of the best vegetarian buffets I've ever come across.

Thanks for the veg recommendations - anyone know a good hostel in Lisbon?

portugal has most of the best hostels in the world - so you can't go too far wrong with like booking.com

i stayed at alfama patio hostel - it was in a really nice part of the city and everyone there was very friendly. i guess consider whether you actively want to meet people and go on hostel-organised events etc.

if you are solo or looking for privacy, you can get a private room in the hostels for about 40 or 50 euro a night i think. it's very clean and nice and has some good common areas for reading or chatting to people.

apologies if you know the city, but an advice dump:

go to sintra if you can. a short day trip. this is one of the coolest things i've seen on a trip: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quinta_da_Regaleira

there are amazing views if you keep walking up hills kind of away from the coast, lots of vantage points and that kind of thing.

good food p much everywhere.

that looks amazing, will definitely go there! I don't know anything abt Lisbon :P

how weird i've just got back from there

we airbnb'd it, lovely apartment in bairro alto for £30 a night

that's very affordable! do you have a link?

I get a feeling Lisbon's kind of.. trending.

possibly trending due to massive recession

i suppose that's when places trend

oh yeah this is cool too if the phrase "chapel made of human bones" is something that piques your interest:

http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/portugals-chapel-bones

xp sadly

I dunno, was just agreeing with a friend that if we could get a week off we'd go south - when picking a destination we thought of Lisbon without thinking twice, I guess it's maybe some kind of collective unconscious that sometimes surfaces in the consumer choices you make. Or coincidence/misinterpretation.

!!! congrats

what part of the city?

thanks! I'm in Arroios, close to the Alameda station - a very nice area imo

Planning for upcoming spring vacay in April, was in need of a warm-ish European city with a quaint old town center, and I think Lisbon is the answer, with an overnight trip to Sintra and possibly a 20-hour layover in Casablanca on the way?? It sounds unreal tbh.

Will I go to hell for using Air BnB for accommodations in the Alfama area? Are they displacing ppl from affordable housing/disfiguring the historic city?

it is a paradise of a city you will live it

seville is also brilliant

weve airbnbd a few times there. idk about hell im as lapsed as you are.

Are they displacing ppl from affordable housing/disfiguring the historic city?

Well, yes, but such is life.

I don't know how many other cities in Europe this is now true of but I find Lisbon pretty disconcerting.. Been here about a month, signs in English are almost everywhere, airbnbs and accomodation in general isn't chap, walking down the street you hear more English than Portuguese and not just in Alfama or Alcantara. After going to a couple of coding meetups I've realized, these aren't tourists, they're expats. I'm in Beato, and first time I went into the local shop, on a seemingly dead street the guy asked if he could help in English

It sort of feels a bit like SF, I feel I could get a job offer just sitting in a cafe with a code editor open

Weather is great (was 66 on Saturday), getting around is easy the sea is a little bracing this time of year

Please go eat at Jesus e Goes if in Lisbon.

I liked Porto as much as Lisbon tbh.

expat in X complains about there being too many expats in X.

I dunno, when I was last in Lisbon I found it pretty Portuguese. Yes there are tourists and expats but no more so than in any other capital city, in fact a bit less so was my impression.

haha:)

Yeah, was curious if it was an outlier or if this is something which is prevalent across European cities (I have read that it is more pronounced in Barcelona, but the tech/startup sector in Lisbon is quite strong and it is a smaller city)

i think the tech stuff is def a factor there

crazy hipstery town too but they carry it well

The thing about expats/tourists is that they tend to hang around fairly well defined areas. Jump on just about any tram/bus, stay on it for a half an hour, get off, and you'll find yourself in a district with little discernible expat influence.

I wouldn't say I'm complaining about it as such, it was just quite disconcerting as I've not experienced it to this level anywhere else - the area I'm in (Beato) is much less touristic. its a double edge sword, and thr ar positives about it too. theres a lot of possibility here, especially if you're in software/web.

When we stayed in an airbnb in Alfama a few years ago our host was telling us about the nightlife and an Alfama nightclub, but she said people mostly stayed on the other side of the town until 2, when they would start to head towards the nightclub. As a tragically unhip 40 something geezer I just stood there baffled, thinking "does she mean... 2am??"

Gonna be in Lisbon for three days this spring, the whole family. Other than a destabilizing global pandemic, anything we should keep in mind and/or specifically seek out? I've never been. We're staying in Chiado, which seems hip/swank.

Some worthwhile touristy things are Pena Palace (in Sintra) and Sao Jorge Castle; take Tram 28 for a city tour.

Museu Berardo - top-notch contemporary art museum. Nearby is Pasteis de Belem, with its beloved custard tarts.
Carmo Convent is near Chiado and worth a quick visit - a church that lost its roof (topless church?) in an earthquake long ago.
Estufa Fria is an indoor botanical garden and a nice escape.
Cemiterio dos Prazeres (cemetery) - mausoleums galore, photo ops for Joy Division bootlegs LPs, if that's your thing (you can board Tram 28 on a nearby stop from here).

The food situation there is amazing (but do a little research), if your family is into that.

Keen to hear more about the dive bar where the estimable Daniel_Rf had his sublime fado experience, plus any other Lisbon recs ahead of a short break in a couple of weeks...

What a beautiful city. Caught a bit of Santo Antonio festival madness and now want to go back every June.

Aw sorry I didn't see that at the time, would have tried to dig up the place!

We didn't catch any fado in the end, but were treated to a busker segueing from RHCP to 4 Non Blondes, so were culturally nourished to complement the many amazing meals we had.

gonna be there for 3 days in mid-june, i read thru this thread (very helpful) ... open to any recent/new suggestions but specifically curious if anyone has recs for good record stores, vintage stores, bookstores etc or neighborhoods where you can just walk around & stumble upon such things

Peekaboo Records, within the Espaço Chiado shopping mall, is the best record store in Lisbon and owner can prob point you to other points of reference re: vintage clothes and hangouts - just say Reifferscheid sent you.

Carpet & Snares, in the same building, is also a good record store.

amazing thanks daniel

Just got back from Portugal and had an amazing trip (Lisbon > Madeira > Porto > Lisbon, all great in different ways).

We were over by Martim Moniz during our first pass through Lisbon, probably the best parts of which were all the Indian restaurants on Rua do Benformoso (literally the street was just Indian restaurants & grocery stores, and it was popping at night) and proximity to Miradouro da Graca (really nice sunset spot).

When we came back to Lisbon we were on R. Prior Coutinho (not sure what neighborhood that would be). Wandered into a Russian craft beer bar (Sputnik) in search of the best Portuguese beer we had found (Ophiussa) where there was a Russian poetry reading in progress and the bartender's puppy in a box by the bar. Also found some really great Tibetan food, a nice park (w/roosters, hens, and ducklings wandering around), and another amazing miradouro (I think it was da Senhora do Monte, which you can see from Graca).

On our last day we went to LX Factory, which did have some good record stores and some vintage clothes. The Jazz Messengers shop (in the big bookstore there) was great, I got a Dorothy Ashby record. And there was another boutique-y record store there with tons of great Brazilian, funk, and dance records (pretty pricey but good stuff). But it was just as good to wander down by the shipyard and watch fish jumping out of the water for an hour.

Also once we succumbed to using Bolt that made getting to different parts of the city much easier, you can get anywhere for like 5 euros or less.

thanks so much jordan

my understanding is that our trip overlaps w/ santo antonio festival so if any locals had any tips for how to navigate that lmk

lol I had a hard time keeping you Jordans straight

lol, just prepare for absolute madness. go with the flow and enjoy it.

Hoping to finally make it out to Lisbon this year. That's it, that's the post.

Btw I don't know how long you have there, but Porto ruled too. We got an incredibly affordable Flixbus between the two.