In 2021, we celebrated our 5 year wedding anniversary, 10 year photography business anniversary, and my 30th birthday! Despite the pandemic, we knew that big milestones like these are absolutely worth celebrating. We found an amazing deal to go to Portugal for ~$300 roundtrip per ticket, so that solidified our big trip of the year!

We are super blessed in that our families are able and willing to watch our kiddos, so we feel confident traveling without them knowing they are in the best of hands :) Noah was probably more excited to go back to the Indiana suburbs than he was sad to see us go! Shane is super go with the flow and seemed happy as can be. What more can you ask for as parents?

Our trip just so happened to coincide with Labor Day weekend. We arrived in Lisbon, buzzing with happiness and excitement. So different than our flat Midwest home! During our time, we stayed at the lovely Quinta Colina Hotel, a cute little boutique on top of a tall hill. The Shiadu group of hotels really impressed us. From their prime locations to their chic interior design and incredible value for the price, we couldn’t have been happier with our stay. Their staff is incredible caring and was so supportive of my pumping needs, allowing me to store my milk in their hotel freezer!

We should have known that the Quinta Colina, (translation: “five hills”) would entail quite the hike to get there. Our choices to get there were either trekking multiple flights of stairs or scaling winding uphill streets. Let’s just say we were totally out of breath every time we arrived home, but it’s all part of the European experience right?

Lisbon had electric scooters everywhere, which people loved to use! Interesting to see them thriving in Portugal after Chicago banned them. Everyone in Portugal was very conscious about wearing masks at all times, much more so than the US.

Our first meal in Lisbon was from As Bifanas do Afonso for their famous pork bifana, a pork sandwich. It’s a small counter serve hole in the wall, but was always packed in the afternoons. The pork is slow cooked and placed inside a bread roll. It absolutely melts in your mouth and cost only 2.5€, the best deal you will find for a meal! You can accompany the meat with mustard or hot oil.

To get the best views of Lisbon, we visited Castelo de São Jorge, an old castle overlooking the city skyline. The steps to get to the top were no joke, but the views were worth it. Clearly hills are a recurring theme here in Portugal!

We stumbled across a delicious looking bakery after visiting the castle called Pastelaria Santo António where we tried our first pastel de nata, or Portuguese egg tart. WOW. They put Chinese egg tarts to shame!

The pastry crust is so flaky and delicious while the egg custard is bursting with deliciousness from the inside.

We later tried more adventurous flavors of pastel de nata like chocolate, coconut almond & apple, but can confirm that the original is the very best.

For our first dinner, we obviously had to enjoy the lush seafood of Portugal! We went to the very famous restaurant called Ramiro’s, where we accidentally ordered some pricey (but delicious) seafood including “giant tiger prawn,” “scarlet shrimp,” fresh oysters, and garlic clams. The giant tiger prawn was 55€/kg (if I remember correctly) and we just had no semblance of what that meant. When the waiter told us we only needed 2 giant shrimp, we went along with it thinking we’d be hungry afterwards.

So wrong! The giant shrimp are larger than your hands, fill you up like steak, and were seasoned with the most delicious herbed butter. If we could do it again, we probably would not have gotten the scarlet shrimp given they paled in comparison to their tiger cousin.

In the evening, we strolled to the Praça do Comércio to watch the sunset. Twas the most lovely view of their bridge that resembles the San Francisco Golden Gate!

The next day, we kicked off our morning with pork bifanas at the cutest family run cafe called Solar da Magdalena before taking the train to the city of Belém. The public transit in Portugal is super easy to use! Once you buy the initial ticket, keep the card to reload so you don’t have to pay an additional .5€ each time for additional rides.

We arrived at the Belém Tower only to find that it was closed due to “heritage restoration.” Tres sad! Apparently this happens often with no warning. We found that Google Maps opening hours tended to be inaccurate in Portugal as a whole. The seaside was still beautiful though, and we did get to see the Padrão dos Descobrimentos, or sculpture of the Portuguese explorers instead.

We decided on Oven Bistro for dinner given their formidable 5.0 star rating on Google Maps. It was tremendous, and our favorite meal in Lisbon!

The chef hails from Kathmandu, Nepal and prepared the most beautiful presentations of Nepalese and Indian foods. From the beautiful edible flowers adorning the mango lassi to the artfully prepared curries in golden bowls, it was truly a meal to remember for a very good value. We actually ended up eating here twice! The chef comes over to talk to you personally at every table, which was so meaningful and nice. He mentioned he saw us out on the street looking at Google Maps…sounds about right ;) We must be memorable looking tourists.

The “chicken safari” starter.

Clockwise from top left corner: Himalayan rose curry, rice pilau, Goan salmon, garlic naan. So delish!

From our second time eating there: peshwari naan (a sweet variation with mango, dried fruits & nuts), lamb shank, and fish banquet curry with rice pilau.

Just a short 1 hour train ride away, there is a beautiful gem of a town called Sintra. You will find lavish palaces, spectacular villas and the remains of a Moorish castle there. During the train ride there, we met a new friend named Felipe from Brazil. It was so fun to spend the day with him and hear his perspective growing up in Brazil and how it’s really unsafe so most people in his generation want to leave. He’s living and working abroad for a few years, traveling the world! Best thing ever as a young single person!

When visiting Sintra, the best deal to get around the palaces is to purchase a bus ticket to shuttle you around. You also get a discount if you purchase tickets to multiple palaces at once! Felipe helped us figure all of this out given he actually speaks Portuguese ;)

Our first stop: the vibrant Palácio da Pena!

The Castelo dos Mouros felt totally different than the rest of the palaces, given it was like a mini Great Wall of China, but composed of Moorish ruins. Beautiful views from the climb!

We took a break for lunch before heading to our third stop of the day: Palácio Nacional de Sintra. Despite having a pretty garden, I would actually say this stop wasn’t worth it if you only have a day in Sintra. We wish we had gotten tickets for the Quinta da Regaleira instead!

Our fourth and final stop of the day was the Monserrate Palace. Sadly, the bus to this palace wasn’t running for some reason, so we ended up walking a whopping 45 minutes uphill to visit this final stop of the day. If you aren’t walking profusely while traveling, are you really in a foreign country? ;)

We were totally beat when we arrived, but it was actually so worth it. This was the most serene and beautiful last stop we could have imagined and the architecture was stunning.

We have to give a shout-out to the best ice cream we’ve ever had in our lives at Scoop n’ Dough! It’s a vegan ice cream joint that is also famous for their donuts. We kept thinking about it even when we went to Porto and ate it twice (not enough) while in Lisbon. Their coconut lemon with blueberry jam, raspberry cheesecake, and pistachio flavors were absolutely heavenly.

Cheers to Lisbon! See here for our time in Porto, which we actually loved even more than Lisbon ;)