Saturday June 8th Lisbon food tour and sightseeing

Saturday June 8th Lisbon about 10km of looking around town

Kelli was moderately ill most of the day with aches and pains that we believe may have been Friday night dinner related. We slept late and did laundry in the morning and shortly before 11AM we strolled over to the the arch of rua Augusta, in Praça do Comércio to meet our food tour guide Thais. 

Thais started the tour by telling us about the great earthquake in 1755 that destroyed Lisbon both by shaking but mostly tsunami from the estimated 9.0 quake. As we walked into Lisbon from the central plaza by the waterfront Thais described how the city was rebuilt symmetrically and that most new buildings had the same size windows and doors and generally were the same across the street. This was done to speed the rebuilding and when you arrived at Lisbon that wasn’t destroyed it is obvious because streets aren’t straight and buildings are all different. We toured 4 places to eat and had samples and snack sized portions at all.  All also featured a wine, which five younger ladies from London (who were all from Brazil but lived in London for the past 2-12 yet) enjoyed immensely - they were here for a “hen” party. It was a food tour and by the end the samples added up and an afternoon siesta, or Portuguese equivalent, was necessary. 

Taste of Portugal: 16 Tastings Tour by Silvia Zara and Thais

Later we walked along the shoreline to the west and to a place called the Time Out Market which is a good sized market place maybe a couple 150x75 meters wide and ringed by small specialties food vendors. Everything from Asian fusion to hamburger to seafood and desserts and drinks and CROWDED!  We circled three times but were never able to get two chairs next to each other so we headed home and just picked an Italian pizza shop run by an Indian family we believe. It was good and watched kitchen production from a front row table. 

Home to call it a night and made a plan to visit Belen in the morning but no plans after that.