Olá, Portugal!

Jan 21, 2025

Mark Twain once observed that “travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness.” The experience of traveling to a foreign country always fills us with appreciation and wonder and opens our eyes to the beauty of new and unique places and people. We were able to feel all of that when we had the opportunity to travel to Lisbon, Portugal at the beginning of January for a very quick trip.

Elder VW, along with our Area Legal Counsel (his boss), needed to meet in person with the Portuguese attorney hired by the Church for an employment issue. As you might remember, one of Jon’s main responsibilities is helping to advise the HR department in any legal matters for all of the countries in the Area. There are 400 employees of the Church in our Area—300 in the U.K. and 100 spread throughout the other countries.

His meeting was on a Friday, so we were able to stay over through Saturday to be able to see a little bit of this beautiful, ancient city. While we didn’t get to see everything in the short 72 hours we had, I feel like we got a wonderful feel for the city. And we appreciated the fact that it was at least 25 degrees warmer than England (even if it was overcast/foggy/drizzly at times).

Lisbon is known as the “City of Seven Hills” and, boy, did we feel all of those hills. But the hills make for unique streets and architecture and fun navigating. You never know when you’re going to be faced with a very steep hill or staircase just to get to the next street.

I’ll just share loads of pictures and describe the cool places we got to see. First, here’s a quick little compilation of a few videos I took:

I love the layers and textures and colors…

We first visited the hilltop Castelo de São Jorge, built over numerous centuries, beginning around the 11th century.

I loved this stone with an ancient inscription commonly found on primitive Christian temples. It says: “With the help of Christ”.

They needed His help then, and we need His help now!

And can we talk about Portuguese tile? So beautiful! Many of the styles you see on the buildings and on floors are called azulejos. Click here for more info about azulejos tile.

I want all of this tile on every surface in every room of any house we buy when we get home! :)

We walked all over the city, seeing the Praça do Comércio (Plaza), the TimeOut Market with lots of delicious food, the Arco da Rua Augusta (arch), the Elevador de Santa Justa (elevator), and more.

On Saturday morning, we decided to take a trip outside the city to Sintra, a hilltop fortress with numerous castles and ruins. The best method of travel around the outskirts of Lisbon seemed to be Uber, so we were able to get a ride up to the top of the “mountain”, where we were dropped off at the Palácio Nacional da Pena. You can go to the link if you want to see what the view might be if there was sunshine, but our view was just fog! However, it did give the castle and the whole area a cool moodiness, so we appreciated what we could see. :)

It’s an amazingly colorful castle, covered with beautiful tile and unique architectural elements.

Then we walked through a beautiful misty, green forest to another site called The Moorish Castle, built in the 10th century. So amazing!

There was so much more we wanted to see in this area, but we only had a few more hours to explore the rest of Lisbon. We had noticed on our way up to the top of the mountain that it was a one way road up and our driver had told us that traffic often gets backed up by the middle of the day. We had planned to use Uber again to get back down into Lisbon, or possibly the local bus back down to the town of Sintra. We reserved an Uber ride and it looked like it was taking a while for it to arrive. It was wet and muddy on the road, and we heard from another driver that the road was closed and no more cars were coming up. Of course, he was trying to get customers to pay for a ride down the mountain in his van, which required cash that we didn’t have (oops, rookie travel mistake). We decided to wait 5 or 10 minutes and watch the road, and sure enough cars started coming up the road again, including our Uber driver. Whew!

Our last stops in Lisbon were along the River Tagus. We loved seeing the beautiful bridge that reminded us of the Golden Gate Bridge and it turns out it was designed by the same engineer.

The Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, the Belém Tower, and the Monument to the Discoveries

Our most important stop was at a legendary bakery called Pastéis de Belém near the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos (monastery). The bakery is famous for the “pastel de nata”, an egg custard tart created by the monks at the monastery in the 1700s.