December 2025 – Where is Phil now?

Lisbon, Portugal,
October 2025.

Yay, a new country! It’s the second time in a little over year that I’ve visited a country I’ve not been to before. Norway last year and now Portugal. New countries haven’t happened much in quite some time, so two in a short period is quite some thin, and I’ve long wanted to go to Portugal. This is the perfect time of year to visit too; summer is done and the temperature is a mere 28 degrees, significantly more than the single digit days we had in Oslo. We flew TAP Portugal direct from Oslo arriving in Lisbon late in the evening, but time enough for a glass of wine in the street bar outside of our hotel.

Lisbon is a fabulous city to walk around, though I imagine many would dispute that as it is hilly, but I like hills and I like cobbled streets and old buildings, and central Lisbon has those things in abundance. We had some vague plans for things to do here, and there certainly is a lot to do, but we spent a lot of time wandering about so barely touched the to-do list. We will just have to come back.

We were blessed with weather, depending on your position on temperature it was either just right or too hot; for me it was something between the too, and we had sun for most of our visit. Admittedly, we had one quite wet morning where walking was not so practical, but there is also great food and delicious (cheap) red wine, so all was not lost.

There was a tragic incident in Lisbon in September of this year when a cable pulling one of the many famous funicular’s that ride up and down the hills snapped causing the funicular to crash, sadly taking 17 lives. All the funiculars are closed while the investigation continues. This also impacted the famous Santa Justa Lift which opened in 1902, at least the lift is still posing for photographs.

We had four nights, two on our own and two with friends who joined us from London. The same friends we travelled with last year. This sort of explains the odd choice of a joint Norway and Lisbon holiday, I mean you can’t really get two places further apart in Europe. We’d agreed to a Lisbon city break with Deborah and John after our Berlin/Stockholm/Oslo trip last year, but then the Patti Smith concert in Oslo came up so we decided to combine the two trips.

I took a lot of photos;

Twisty, steep and cobbly streets, with slight decaying and mildly decrepit buildings. I mean, there is very little that is more perfect!

We visited LX Factory on the rainy day, catching an Uber there as Eleanor had rolled an ankle and was taking walking a little easy, which fortunately did the trick. There is plenty of street art on the buildings in this little gallery/hipster shopping area in old industrial complex. There was also an amazing book and jazz specialist record shop which I poked my nose into but avoided getting in too deap.

We also visited Carmo Archaeological Museum, which is housed in the ruins of abbey and church that was destroyed in the 1755 earthquake that levelled large parts of Lisbon. It’s fantastic!

On our final evening, we planned to take the famous number 28 tram on its loop around the outer central city, but the route was disrupted with road works and there was a massive queue, so we took the number 12 for a few stops instead. It was still a great trip. We then walked up more cobbly, steep and narrow streets to the local fish restaurant Garum; which was frankly amazing.

I can’t wait to return and explore more!

Norway
October 2025.

This whole mad Bergen, Oslo and Lisbon trip (I mean who does Norway and Portugal in the same trip with nothing in between) came about because Eleanor and I have talked about going to a concert in a different country for quite some time. I saw Patti Smith was touring the 50th anniversary of her classic debut LP “Horses”, and playing in Oslo, and decided that now was the time.

So here we are in Oslo, arriving mid-afternoon yesterday. We’re staying in a nice downtown hotel, not far from the Munch Museum; which we visited the last time we came. The hotel is nice, but the breakfast was OMG good.

It’s cold and sunny and a good day to be walking 40 minutes up the Akerselva River from where it ends in the harbour near our hotel to Grunerlokka and the Mathallen food hall. We ate in the food hall last time we were in Oslo. It’s a bit like London’s Shoreditch 10 years ago, but all squashed into one small block; loads of graffiti and bars and cafes.

What we seemed to have missed last time was Nedre Foss. A small, but quite powerful waterfall just behind the back of the food hall. It was a lovely bonus to a nice riverside walk.

It was late morning when we left the hotel and we had intended on lunching though had arrived far too early to eat, especially after a large breakfast in the hotel. The walk was shorter than I had planned and though we carried on past the waterfall it seemed that being hungry again would be quite a way off.

The river is a similar size to central London’s Regents Canal, though fast running and seemingly cleaner. There are more trees and grass on the riverbank than the canal, but it was equally popular with walkers and runners.

That night we went to the Patti Smith concert that brought us here in the first place. The concert was great, though too packed for my liking, Patti was in fine voice and the band was fantastic. I’ve not seen her perform before.

The following day we spent some time in the National Museum of Oslo, which we also thoroughly enjoyed, though it’s very modern art gallery rather than national museum. The building itself is a fine piece of modern art, and it had a version of Edvard Munch’s ‘Scream’, without the crowds of the Munch Museum.

Yesterday we late-lunched in this fabulous vegan café in one of the inner city residential areas. The food was very nice and we ended up talking to the owner about life in Oslo, he’d lived in the UK in the past so had some interesting perspectives, in a good way. One thing he said stuck with me ‘Norway is a trust based country’, admittedly we were mainly talking about tax, but the concept was on display in the basement of the museum. The cloakroom was just out in the open and there are dozens of coats just hanging there unguarded. I like it.

Oslo is a nice city to wander about, though very crowded on a sunny late autumn day. I found a bit of local brutalist architecture. It’s not the most exciting piece I will admit, but this holiday is not about brutalist buildings!