Exploring Portugal

Several of our friends recommended Portugal to us as a very kid-friendly place to travel, so we decided to make it a family vacation destination this summer. Margo’s second trip to Europe!

While I had been to Portugal before with my parents (between my two study-abroad quarters in college), Scott had never been, so we planned a bit of a sampler tour: Lisbon, Sintra, Porto, Douro Valley. It was a lot of moving around for a 10 day trip, but given that Margo’s favorite part of the whole experience was transportation, it worked out just fine. :) We explored towns, visited castles, ate delicious food, drank new Portuguese wines each day, and enjoyed perfect weather for being outside.

Proof that Portugal was in fact, very kid-friendly:

• We got to skip 3+ hours of lines at customs because we had Margo in a stroller.
• We got to skip 1+ hour of line at the Jerónimos Monastery because we had Margo in a stroller.
• People immediately stood up to offer Margo and me their seat on buses and metros.
• Lots of people lit up and waved at Margo on the street and in restaurants.
• Margo dropped her duck while we were standing at a bus station, and it went in the road. Traffic stopped to save it, and another person at the bus station rescued it out of the road. The person in the car rolled down their window to joke, “Is the duck ok??”

Excellent food moments:

• The best scallops of my life (Agua Pela Barba in Lisbon)
• The best polenta of my life (Fatto da Cláudio Coelho in Sintra)
• Such an awesome lunch at O Frade in Lisbon
• Fun and delicious dinner at Cantinho do Avillez in Porto, with Margo getting several compliments from neighboring tables
• Camping out on the bathroom floor with sparkling wine and strawberries after Margo went to bed
• Margo tried almost all the food! (and spit a lot of it back out onto her plate…)

Some things that didn’t go so well:

• A bird pooped in my hair while I was applying sunscreen at the castle in Lisbon.
• I got slammed in the face and arms by the ticket turnstile when we arrived in Sintra because I pushed Margo’s stroller through first. (In my defense, the folks in Lisbon had told us to do that there and it had worked just fine.)
• Margo stepped on a bee in our room in Pinhão.
• Right before leaving for our trip, Newark airport was deemed unsafe due to air traffic control staffing issues. We were transferring there on our way home, so we switched our itinerary and had to depart from Lisbon instead of Porto (traveling back south through the country on our last day). After checking in the morning of our flight in Lisbon, we learned that our new second leg (Heathrow to Denver) had been canceled, so we were rerouted from Heathrow to Newark to Denver. 🤦‍♀️ No escaping Newark after all, and another 7 hours of travel day, arriving home after 2am.

Funny moments:

• The transportation app in Lisbon seemed to be telling us very incorrect information, when several stops where we were going to catch the trolley were on roads with no trolley tracks. It took us quite a while to determine that the track was under construction and a bus was acting as a replacement on the detour route.
• At one hotel, we found a fruit bowl in the room that Scott said he ordered as a surprise for Elisse. It contained only one kiwi and one boring, mealy apple. Initial disappointment dissolved when Margo loved the apple and it also turned out Scott misremembered and didn’t buy it.
• After walking several kilometers downhill through the forest (with a lot of Margo carrying), we saw a gate in the medieval wall ahead, blocking the trail to the Moorish castle. We were incredibly relieved that it was actually unlocked so we didn’t have to backtrack.
• On our drive to the Douro Valley, Margo took a nap in the car and woke up to immediately say, “It’s so pretty outside, mama. It’s so green. And yellow. And blue. And sunshine. And glasses.”
• In the Lisbon airport before breakfast, Margo grabbed a glass beer bottle from the low down to-go case and put it in her stroller.
• Margo opened her water bottle on takeoff and it sprayed her in the face. Twice.
• Outbound: United had to replace the nose wheel after boarding had started, and we were asked not to move.
• Inbound: United parked 2 inches too far forward and had to back the plane up in order to connect the jet bridge.

And the photos!