Blog ≫ 2026 ≫ Portugal holiday part five
Think my notes here crossover with what I wrote on Portugal holiday part four. Repeating myself, imagine! Did I tell you I saw Guns n Roses thirty five years ago today?
Contemporary notes
After my long hot walk back from Belem, and a nice cooling splash in the pool, we had our last night in Lisbon. Went to another Canil beer bar, but near our hotel this time. If we'd found this on the first night we might not have gone anywhere else. Then to dinner, back to Local again for the vegan options for two of us and healthy chicken options for the other two. This time I had the tofu paprika, similar to one I had in Budapest last holiday.
Didn't see the Fado then, or have a Ginjinha 1. We're traveling Portillo class for the next three and a quarter hours. We've got the best seating options in a shit train. First class on the 2pm train would have been nicer, but better to be travelling at this time. I say the best seating options, we have four seats together but not a table. Everyone on here is foreign, this must be a popular tourist route. Loads of Americans, Australians, and Japanese. That station was where the cruise ships come in, and close to where we'd picked up our Segways. There are only three seats across this carriage, two, aisle, one. I swapped my seat so two guys could sit together, but then they immediately disappeared, weird. Now the train is filling up. Now the person who genuinely has this seat reserved has arrived. But they'd rather swap with my original seat. It's chaos. Two proper belly-wheelers 2 just got on and squeezed into the mini table in front of me, facing each other. Now I'm in a single seat, T2 is in a single behind me, wife and T1 are in the double next to me, to my left 3. Next stop, two more Americans got in and claimed they had our seats. They were in the wrong carriage. Not sure if I dare investigate the buffet car until it all settles down.
Back to up to date bit
We did spend quite a lot of time by the pool here and it was enjoyable. Not as much as an hour in one go I don't suppose but nice to sit there, go in for a bit, sit out and read and listen in to other people's conversations. There was a big group of Irish lads joined one day, they were here for a wedding I think, it wasn't as rowdy as a stag do. Generally this hotel was super classy. I can imagine other parts of town were not.
The last evening was fairly quiet then but it was all of us out together again so that's good. Here's the food:
Then up fairly early to walk to the tube with our little wheely bags. I can see from the time of the photos we only left the hotel at ten.
Just a couple of stops to the one of the intercity stations and to our train. Was easy to find our seats but I think because our first class carriage was the first one you come to that's where everyone else lazily assumed their seats were too and that was why it was a little chaotic.
Train config, the view from my seat, with my little lunchtime treat of a can of Sangria:
My next set of contemporary notes even cross over with this so I'll leave it here!
I can hear T1 playing Where Is My Mind by Pixies on his guitar upstairs, he's getting really really good.
- Not yet...
- Overweight people, a Judge Dredd reference.
- I went into a lot of detail here but at the same time my friends were asking me about the seating config on Signal. We talk about train seat configuration A LOT, especially when I am commuting.