Mr. & Mrs. Vandebilt + kids

We drove from Madrid to Lisbon yesterday so we had a fairly uneventful day. The drive went pretty smoothly – we stopped for lunch at a “diner” on the side of the highway. Apparently my Spanish is only fair since I ended up ordering two chicken breasts on a baguette for lunch but it tasted fine. We ate quickly and hit the road again much to the delight of the wait staff at the restaurant. They were less than enthusiastic about a bunch of English speaking tourists.

We got settled into “our new house, not the old new house”. We even managed to make it to the grocery store, cook a pizza and get everyone into bed by 10:30. Did I mention jet lag has hit us really hard this trip?

We made it out of bed by 9:30 today which is considerably better than any other day and started getting ready for the day. We decided to head to the Belém area and check out some of the sights. We boarded a tram, after figuring out how to buy and load Viva Viagem cards as well as managing Nora’s need to “walk all by herself” as she ran down cobblestone hills.

We got off the tram a couple of stops early to check out the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos. Surprisingly, we weren’t invited into this palace either.

Still being a whopping 1.1km from our final destination we figured we should grab some lunch to see if we could turn everyone’s mood around. We found a cute little burger restaurant where the kids managed to be mostly well behaved and we refuelled. They brokered a deal to play in a park before heading to the floating castle, promising all kinds of good behaviour in exchange, we took the deal like suckers.

Eventually we made it to the Belém Tower, only 5 hours after leaving the apartment. Nora screamed her way across the foot bridge and then the kids were way more interested in picking weeds in the gross grass than seeing the “floating castle”. Not even a violin rendition of Let it Go was enough to capture Nora’s attention.

The day was exhausting but I enjoyed it, in hindsight anyway. We have hopefully seen the last of the jet lag – everyone made it to bed before 8:30 tonight.

Honestly though, Lisbon so far has been spectacular. It looks different than anywhere else we have seen with it’s incredibly steep hills and colourful buildings. Our neighbours have a lemon tree growing in the backyard that I can see while I hang our laundry out the kitchen window. People have been very friendly – even the man Nora kicked at the cross walk. The wine is cheap and available around the corner and the sun was shining today. What’s not to like?