…now that they’ve seen Lisboa? As I mentioned last week, we had three days/two nights away last week in the big city, and everybody seems to have enjoyed themselves. When planning the trip, Bernice and I decided that we would stay in a decent hotel, rather than an air bnb, and give everyone a proper rest. Having set ourselves a budget for the hotel, we found that our choices were rather limited, and we settled for a better hotel in a less central area.

As it happened, this was a lucky choice, because both the bus station we arrived at in Lisbon, and the attractions we visited while we were there, were not far from the hotel, which was also on the east side of the city, which meant that we never had to travel through the city centre to get anywhere.

Because we were travelling to Lisbon on Sunday, the public transport options were limited. We took a coach from Castello Branco, having driven there from Penamacor after breakfast. After a two-hour-and-twenty-minute ride, we arrived in Lisbon. By the time we took taxis to the hotel and settled in, and were ready for lupper (the equivalent of brunch, but between lunch and supper), we found we were in the Portugal restaurant twilight zone.

Most restaurants here close after lunch, around 3, and reopen only at 7. So, although the hotel was, as I had researched, within easy distance of 4 vegan restaurants, when I phoned around I discovered that none of them was open.

Barely pausing to break stride, we walked to the neighbourhood mini-super and bought a selection of salad vegetables, fruit, crackers, Philadelphia cheese, tinned sardines, disposable plates and cutlery. We then retired to a nearby park and shared a picnic with a gang of streetwise pigeons, on a couple of benches. This certainly suited the kids; Tao thought it was a treat; Ollie was as easygoing as usual; and Bernice and I were in holiday mode and open to new experiences.

As we made our way back to the hotel, the kids said that they planned to stay in the room for the evening, and suggested Bernice and I go out for a romantic dinner alone. I pretended that, after 50 years, dinner isn’t as romantic as it used to be, but the fact is that we both thought it was an excellent idea. So, back at the hotel, we had a rest.

I flicked through the TV’s 27 channels, which comprised, as usual in Portugal, 12 channels of news in Portuguese, 5 channels of game shows and talent shows, all in Portuguese, 4 channels of cartoons in Portuguese, 4 channels of classic cinema, all dubbed into Portuguese, and two channels of Eurosport, one of which was, of course, showing snooker (the Welsh Open final, in fact), with an enthusiastic Portuguese commentary. I then showered. (In hotels, I always shower multiple times a day, which is odd, since I probably get less dirty when staying in hotels than at any other time.)

The shower, incidentally, ticked all the boxes, offering a powerful stream of fairly instant, very hot, water, as well as proper toweliing robes. In fact, we were all very pleased with the hotel. The kids, in particular, had a very spacious corner room, enabling them to set up a carpeted play area for the kids. The breakfast on offer had plenty of options for us, and apart from the coffee (which was as surprisingly mediocre as most coffee I have tasted in Portugal), everything was fresh and of good quality.

The first evening, Bernice and I ate in a vegan Indian restaurant, which was both excellent and pretty good value. On the way back to the hotel, realizing that I had forgotten to bring whisky with me (another indulgence I allow myself daily on holiday in hotels), we stopped at another mini-super and I picked up a very reasonably priced Cardhu 12-year-old, a whisky I’m fond of.

The next day, after a leisurely breakfast, and a late start that I will explain later*, Tslil and Micha’el (with Ollie) attempted – unsuccessfully – to get their documents signed by a notary. By the time they arrived at the office, the queue outside the door was longer than the staff were going to be able, or prepared, to process before they closed, and so they were turned away, planning to return the following day.

Meanwhile, Bernice and I took Tao to the Lisbon oceanarium, a very impressive campus of two buildings joined by an aerial walkway out into the sea. The emphasis throughout is on ocean preservation and our individual and collective responsibility for that. The principal building has a very large central aquarium and four corner aquariums, each of which recreates a different ocean environment – from equatorial to Antarctic. Each of the aquariums is two storeys high, and the animal and plant life can be viewed from the two levels, representing sea-level and immediately below, and the ocean-floor and immediately above.

The oceanarium is highly recommended, and not only by me. On the basis of customer reviews, the booking site Tiqets holds an annual awards ceremony featuring museums and tourist attractions in nine countries: France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Netherlands, UAE, UK and USA. In 2022, the Oceanário de Lisboa was voted Most Remarkable Venue, beating the other national winners, which included Germany’s Alte Nationalgalerie, Italy’s Duomo di Milano, the Netherlands’ Rijksmuseum and Britain’s Windsor Castle.

We then all met up for lunch in a very nice vegan restaurant 200 metres from the Oceanarium and only 15-minutes’ walk for the kids. The weather was mild enough to sit outside and, apart from one mix-up with the order, which the restaurant immediately rectified, the service was very good and the food excellent. Between the five of us, we sampled much of the menu, and everyone was very happy with their choices.

It was then back to the hotel for the rest of the day. The kids raided the supermarket again, while Bernice and I had enough left over from what we had bought the previous day to have a light supper in our room. Everyone then enjoyed their second consecutive good night.

To be honest, I always enjoy a good night, but Ollie is not the best sleeper, and the kids are chronically sleep-deprived. While we are in Portugal, Bernice offers to split the early shift (late evening and first part of night) with Micha’el. She has a golden shoulder, on which almost all children will fall asleep within minutes. (Raphael, as of yet, appears not to have got the memo about Nana’s shoulder.)

The following day, Micha’el made a relatively early start for the notary – only to discover that, since it was Shrove Tuesday (Mardi Gras), the office was closed. On his return, we packed and checked out and stored our luggage with the hotel. This meant that we all made our way together to the magnificently-named Pavilhão do Conhecimento – Centro Ciência Viva (Pavilion of Knowledge – Living Science Centre) which is a very hands-on science museum located 100 metres from the oceanarium. The museum came to us highly recommended by friends of the kids whose then 4-year-old had enjoyed a wonderful day there.

We began, at Tao’s request, on the ground floor, at the special exhibition Dinosaurs: The Return of the Giants. This was an excellent one-hall exhibit with a central display of life-size models of a range of dinosaurs, with animated mouths that produced their various roars. The T-Rex was only 20 years old, and therefore had another 8 years to grow, but a ruler stretching to the ceiling indicated the height he would reach every year until he was fully grown.

Around the room were various activity areas, including: a sandpit with half-buried bones that the visitors could excavate with trowels and soft brushes; a microscope with relevant slides and explanations; a wall-mounted dinosaur skeleton puzzle, which the children could assemble from the bones lying around, and several other equally interesting and engaging activities. Everything was labelled clearly and in detail, in Portuguese and excellent English.

From there we ascended to the first floor, which consisted of two very large rooms, each with 15 or 20 activities. We only explored one room, which included very imaginative and fun activities based around such themes as light, sound and mechanics. Children aged from 3 to 10 were having the time of their lives, as were some parents (and, I confess, grandparents). For Tao, the highlight was a complete child-scale construction site, including a two-storey building under construction, foam building blocks, wheelbarrow, a 6-metre tall working crane and so forth. 3–7-year-olds were invited in, issued with hard hats, and put to work.

After almost three hours there, we returned to the same restaurant as we had eaten in the previous day for lunch, then the kids walked straight to the bus station, so that Tao could have the ice-cream that the restaurant was not able to provide, while Bernice and I returned to the hotel to pick up the luggage (our two carry-ons and a laptop backpack, and the kids’ rucksack, three grips, carrier bag and potty bag) and take a taxi to meet the kids.

After another smooth bus ride, and a 50-minute drive from Castelo, we arrived home safe and sound, after a thoroughly enjoyable mini-break.

* Unfortunately, I seem to have run out of space this week, so the explanation as to why our second day started late will have to wait until next week, when I will offer you another, very different, account of our three days in Lisbon.