As some of you may have seen on my socials, my boyfriend and I traveled to Portugal this Spring. We were just talking about how lucky we feel to experience places like these at a young age and to see some beautiful countries. My boyfriend, Samar, travels for work so he was already in Germany this time around. Although I was a little nervous traveling across the country alone to meet him I knew it would be so worth it. Plus, the travel was paid for because he was already in Europe (so kin of a no-brainer to take advantage of the opportunity). You know when you are going to a new place you start to envision how it will look, feel, and be. Well Lisbon, Portugal completely exceeded my expectations.
I was picturing Lisbon as a super small city, not very modern at all, and for some reason, I pictured it attracting an older crowd. I was wrong! Lisbon was the perfect mixture of modern yet cultured. We ended up booking a hotel called Monte Belvedere and it was in the perfect spot. Only 5-10 minutes to the historical sites, views, and great food. I could not recommend this hotel enough! The staff was so sweet, they had an amazing free breakfast (which we only ended up having one day because we wanted to explore coffee shops) and the views from the rooftop were top-tier. We even watched the sunset the first night here.
Every single corner you turn in this cute little city was met with steep hills covered in independent restaurants, bars, coffee shops, boutiques, and more. At one point I was so overwhelmed with the choices we had for food and coffee. What makes a vacation satisfying to me is trying good coffee and food so I thought I would share some of my favorite places:
I could go on and on about the food but just trust me when I say foodies will not be disappointed.
One of our favorite experiences was booking the cart to take us around the city and to see all the best panoramic views and beautiful churches. It cost us about seventy euros and lasted an hour. Here are all the places we stopped at:
During our last day here we decided to take a trip across the red bridge (which resembles San Francisco so much). I actually found out that the SFO architect designed the bridge in Lisbon too! Anyways if you want the best view of Lisbon you have to head over to Almada.
We took a day to drive out to Sintra which is where you can explore the coast. Our main goal was to go see the Pena palace. Unfortunately, we did not book a ticket ahead of time so we were unable to go inside the palace but we walked around the park and took in the beauty of the architecture and the landscape surrounding it. However, we didn’t spend too long as we wanted to get back downtown for dinner and to sit by the water.
All in all, I absolutely loved Lisbon. I even told Samar that I could totally live here (I may or may not have been looking online at apartments lol). It was such a beautiful city full of history, culture, and amazing food.
I feel like the perfect way to explain it is a perfect blend of San Francisco’s west coast feels, a touch of a Florence, Italy atmosphere, Spanish influence, and city, and beach life all mixed into one!
Definitely will be back one day!
If you want to see the full video of our trip, check it out here: