Portugal – 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.