Saturday 22 August 2026 – An 0830 taxi to the airport should be fine, shouldn’t it? This should enable us to get up at a reasonable hour after a good night’s sleep, have a bite of breakfast, maybe a coffee and get ourselves ready to leave via a symphony of organised activities just as the taxi draws up outside.

As if!

We ended up getting to sleep far too late, getting up a bit too early and still having about half an hour’s wait for the taxi. Time, of course, drags during that half hour and allows the double angst of worrying that the taxi won’t arrive whilst frantically wondering if there’s anything we’ve forgotten. Apart from that, the morning went well.

The taxi did turn up, of course, and we had a pretty much uneventful transit through Heathrow Terminal 2, on to a TAP flight and on to Lisbon. There were the usual trials – no leg room, some children who were very noisy at times (though, to be fair, quiet on the flight), and a source of particular aggravation for me in the shape of a teenager sitting next to me who insisted on watching a film on his phone with the volume up. I’d hoped the noise of the engines might drown it out, but just enough tinny sound made it through to make it rather annoying without being so egregious that I felt able to do more than give him One Of My Looks, which he never even noticed, far less ignored.

I had been concerned about queues on arrival at Lisbon because of the new EU Entry Exit System, but actually my fears were entirely unfounded. There were loads of the new kiosks available and working, so getting the photo and fingerprint business done was very swift. What surprised me a little was that we still had to go through the e-gates after we’d done that, but all was well, and our bags were numbers 32 and 34 off the aeroplane when they turned up at the carousel.

Our driver was waiting for us and whisked us in to downtown Lisbon, where we’re staying at the Turim Hotel. We had a bit of an awkward time at check-in as the hotel were expecting us to pay for the room whereas we’d expected it to be prepaid. Jane contacted Caroline at Walk The Camino, but the only resolution was for us to stump up the funds on the assumption that some kind of resolution will enable us to get the money back at some stage. Apart from that, the hotel room seems perfectly OK, if a bit cramped and gloomy. We’re not expecting to spend a lot of time in it anyway.

The room did feature a kettle (hurrah!) but only plastic milk in little pots (boo!); a trip to the bar got us some proper milk so we could refresh ourselves with Twinings finest Earl Grey. Having done that, we went for a walk. Obviously.

The hotel’s location is excellent – close to the cathedral and the main square and a 15-minute walk from the Castle – a great base for exploring, We have a guided walking tour booked for the morrow, but thought it would be interesting to wander up (and, this being Lisbon, up is an operative word here) to the cathedral and remind ourselves about it. I can remember seeing the outside on previous visits, but can’t actually remember if we went in. Anyway, the walk there showed us a few of Lisbon’s characteristics: some very attractive tiling;

some other appealing decorative touches to some buildings;

some amazing façades;

and a very funky selection of taxis and tour operators.

The cathedral is very difficult to photograph; one ends up quite considerably downhill when trying to capture the front, standing on a tramway with trams and other traffic bearing down at speed,

but I captured the above without serious injury and we went inside. Doing this provided further evidence that we’d not been inside before, as one of the options on offer on entering (and paying for your ticket) is to go up to the museum, and I’m sure we’d never done that. So, up we went, and got a great view of the main interior of the church.

Behind us at this point was the enormous stained glass window, which we got a good close view of. I took another picture from further away, down in the body of the church, to give better perspective

but this doesn’t do justice to the close encounter we got at the closer quarters. The museum has got all sorts of religious bits and pieces, but the most impressive area is the Treasury, a room that is very lavishly appointed. I couldn’t get a photo angle that captured the room, but it has a beautiful ceiling

and some very fine tiling and artwork.

As you can see from the photo of the interior, the church has a long and relatively narrow nave, with many chapels off to the side. The sum total makes for a very large and imposing building and some of the chapels are lovely. There’s one with a very arresting display in it.

It’s a very elaborate nativity scene,

rendered in astonishing detail.

There’s also a baptistry that features some wonderful tiling work.

Having visited the cathedral, we walked the short distance back towards the hotel, which took us past numerous restaurants, so we stopped in at one, Taberna Moderna, which looked appealing.  The food was very good, but the drinks selection was a bit bizarre. We ended up having a cherry-flavoured caipirinha, as they had no gin or tonic. It was tasty, but bizarre. There was too much food, so we had a short walk after dinner to settle it down a bit, and strolled along to Rua Augusta, which was labelled a “notable” street. It’s the one which leads up from the well-known arch at at the top of the main square, Praça do Comércio.

It being Saturday night, it was all full of people, so we didn’t hang about but headed back to the hotel. We did pass an exceedingly niche shop there, though.

Every shelf is crammed full – appropriately with tins of sardines in all manner of different sauces and guises. A remarkable place.

Back at the hotel, Jane relaxed while I started the process of discovering a photo workflow based around the tablet rather than the laptop I customarily have with me, It’s going to take some refining, but it would appear to be reasonably effective. Proper editing of the photos will have to wait until we get home and I can get back to my beloved DxO Photolab, but I hope I’ll be able to work work with what I brought with me.

Tomorrow, Carlos, our guide, will spend some time showing us around Lisbon and we hope to see perhaps some of the less well-celebrated aspects of the city. Come back tomorrow to see what it is we saw.