Breakfast was the usual continental affair with lots of the local styles of breads but with a twist; the most delightful freshly made scrambled eggs too. The loaf of GF bread I baked for Lynne had survived the journey so she had two slices of that with breakfast and we both stoked up for the day.
The first job of the day was to get down town to the Praça de Comerçio to the tourist office and redeem our voucher. A taxi got us there quickly enough and we got a good look at the centre of Lisbon into the bargain. The taxi driver spoke good English and said we must go to Sintra, a village that like Saltaire is a World Heritage site. We agreed to call him on Thursday to take us. When we got to the plaza he directed us up a pedestrian side street to find the tourist office. After wandering about for a bit and enjoying the sights we eventaully realised that the kiosk in the middle of the street was what he had meant. In the process Lynne had spotted a posh frock shop and bought a beautiful designer ‘safari-like’ outfit. As we were leaving the shop the lady showed Lynne a lovely top and from that point on I could hear the gears whirring. We asked at the kiosk about the Lisboa cards and were directed back to the Praça de Comerçio to the proper tourist office. But the lady in the tourist office would not redeem the voucher because it did not look right. She double-checked with her manager in the main office and this was confirmed. They would not give us our cards for fear of not being paid by Neoturismo, the Spanish company behind the cards. Apparently this had happened several times before and they were not prepared to risk not being paid again.
We found a nice café called Brown’s that had free WiFi so we sorted out e-mail on the iPhones over a beverage and I e-mailed Neoturismo saying that we had lost more than half a day of our three days because the voucher would not print out and asking for a full refund.
We came out of there having looked at the map and decided to gently stroll back up through the city towards the hotel. This turned into a four hour sight seeing walk with lots of stops for cuppas and to look in all sorted of shops. We saw several of the city’s large squares, the biggest theatre, a delightful arabian influenced building that turned out to be one of the city’s main stations, the elevator that connects an upper area of the town with the lower area and one of the city’s three funiculars.
At the café we stopped at in the Praça de Rossio Lynne insisted I try the local speciality, Pasteis de Nata; a sort of custard tart invented in the big Lisbon monastry many hundreds of years a ago, it was delicious. We also found a café that sold the port we had tried the evening before as recommended by Louise so we bought half a bottle each of Ruby and Tawny to bring home. It was a very pleasant experience but our feet were throbbing by the time we got back to the hotel. We had a little rest to still our throbbing feet then went of an evening walk in the park opposite. It turns out it is named after our English King Edward VII and it was a lovely evening so we took loads of photos as we strolled. We stopped for a couple of pre-prandial drinks at a bar near the hotel and then returned to the hotel for dinner.
We had decided the night before that the hotel was so good at feeding Lynne safely that it was not worth the grief in such a short break of finding somewhere else to eat. And we were proved right with another excellent meal and another bottle of the excellent Vinho Verde to wash it down. This time in the bar we got chatting with a couple of guys who were in town for a conference on ICT. One, a Finnish guy Jari, was particularly friendly. So a few Portugese brandies were had and we went to bed relaxed and tired again.