Portugal: Lisbon

We stayed at a great hotel in Lisbon with a great view of the city. Here's a view of the castle from our hotel:



And a view in the other direction:



The only downside to our hotel was the hill it was on and all the confusing turns you had to make to get down to the main part of the city. But once you figure out the route it's no big deal. We would often take cabs home at night to avoid walking up the hill though. Good luck finding a hotel that's not on a hill in Lisbon - it has seven hills and they're all good sized.

We have now been to Lisbon three times and have never been bored or disappointed. Our first time there we visited the Monument to the Discoveries:





And we happened upon the gay pride parade:



And we visited the castle, where there were lots of cats:





And we visited a neat church which had great carvings on the inside of it but I only have a picture of the outside:



And here are a few more pictures of Lisbon from a different vantage point. The castle:



The straight streets in this picture are in the area known as "Baixa". It contains lots of shopping and some pretty big bakeries filled with goodies:



Here's a street-level view of Baixa:



We always go to the area of Lisbon called the Bairro Alto to grab some drinks and dinner. The Bairro Alto is filled with restaurants with all different flavors of food to choose from (it is also filled with bars so you can hang out in that area all night long). And we always go to a Brazilian steakhouse named Sul for some mojitos because the mojitos are good there. I highly recommend it.

When we were in Lisbon just after Christmas, it was filled with Christmas lights. It was nice just walking through all the streets because every street had a different theme and different types and colors of lights.