Back at the end of March I spent a weekend in Lisbon with my cousins and had such a glorious time. I was already planning on doing a little city guide on Lisbon, but a couple of you lovelies also asked me to do it, which confirmed it to me: I needed to post my Lisbon city guide as soon as possible. It took me a little while to edit the photos and write my post, but it’s finally here: my Lisbon city guide!

Unlike my trip to Milan with my cousin back in August last year, this was actually a trip that my cousins and I booked quite far in advance. We had booked flights in October and booked our apartment via AirBnB in December. We had lots of time to prepare for this city trip we had booked and we did quite a lot of research before we went so we could explore the city to its fullest.

Where we stayed

Like I said before, we had booked our apartment we stayed in via AirBnB via a company called Feels Like Home. We stayed on the street Bacalhoeiros and had the most gorgeous view over the river. I loved staying in this apartment with my cousins, as it had everything we wanted and felt super homely. Lisbon isn’t that big of a city so everything was within walking distance from our apartment. What was even more of a surprise to us, was that there were so many great little restaurants in our street. We actually ended up going to so many restaurants in our street while we were there! We were also super close to the Alfama neighbourhood, which was such a beautiful part of town to explore.

Bacalhoeiros River View Flat, Rua dos Bacalhoeiros

Breakfast and brunch

When we first arrived on Thursday night, my cousins and I felt so disorientated. It was quite dark already so we didn’t really know where we were and where we should go for breakfast/brunch the next morning, so we walked to Nicolau Cafe near us that morning. It was super busy though and there was quite a long line, so we ended up going to a little café in our street instead, which was called Portella Cafes. We also tried to go to this place called Brunch Cafe, but it was still being rebuild. The next two mornings we actually discovered and ate at another great place in our street called Basilio, which is basically the same cafe as Nicolau, but a lot less crowded as not as many people seem to know about it yet.

Portella Cafes, Rua dos Bacalhoeiros 32A
Basilio, Rua dos Bacalhoeiros 111
Brunch Cafe, Rua da Alfândega 120
Nicolau Cafe, Rua São Nicolau 17

Lunch and dinner

We were in Lisbon for about 77 hours and basically spent most of our time there eating. When we arrived to Lisbon the first night we went to a little wine bar called Porto Wine Bar to munch on some food and drink some wine. The next day we had lunch at Time Out Market and bought ourselves a sandwich and sat outside in the park to enjoy the sunshine. For dinner we then went to Taberna Moderna where we had the best Burrata and cuttle fish to eat. I would definitely recommend going there! On Saturday we had lunch at the LxFactory at a place called Central da avenida Tasco. We ate some Portuguese tapas, had a little glass of white port wine and enjoyed the views there for a bit. That Saturday night we went to dinner at another place in our street called Baixamar, it had really high ratings on Google and The Fork, so we decided to just go for it. We ended up eating the tastiest Portuguese paella with lobster, which was super tasty! On our final day we had lunch at this place Kaffeehaus, where we just ate a toasty sandwich, which was also super nice!

We also saw this super cute little restaurant in Alfama called Union Empanadas, which is an Argentinian restaurant that looked super picturesque. Sadly enough we didn’t get around to trying it, but definitely add it to your list because it has so many good ratings!

Time Out Market, Avenida 24 de Julho 49
Central da avenida Tasco , Rua Rodrigues de Faria 105
Kaffeehaus, Rua Anchieta 3
Porto Wine Bar, Rua dos Bacalhoeiros 143
Taberna Moderna, Rua dos Bacalhoeiros 18A
Baixamar , Rua dos Bacalhoeiros 28B
Union Empanadas , Rua São Cristóvão 27

The best Pastéis de Nata

We have had quite a lot of time while we were in Lisbon to find out which Pastéis de Nata were the tastiest. We started our trip off right by having a Pastéis at Portella Cafe, which were really good! We then stumbled upon Manteigaria while discovering the city and tasted those. In our opinion this was these were the best and tastiest Pastéis we had while we were there. We also had the Pastéis at Pastéis de Belém, which were yummy too.

Manteigaria, Rua do Loreto 2
Manteigaria at Time Out Market , Avenida 24 de Julho 50
Pastéis de Belém, Rua de Belém 84-92

Sightseeing

Then finally I am going to talk you through some of the sightseeing we did. We actually did a whole lot! On Friday, our first real day there we decided to go for a long walk around our neighbourhood, we saw the famous Praça do Comércio, walked through Alfama and saw Castelo de São Jorge. We also walked a little bit into the neighbourhood of Bairro Alto, which was also super gorgeous with all the lovely streets and buildings with all the beautiful tiles. We also went to Time Out Market twice while we were in Lisbon to eat some food and explore everything.

On Saturday we discovered Torre de Bélem, walked through Jardim da Praça do Império, saw Mosteiro dos Jerónimos, tried to go to Jardim Botânico Tropical, a botanical garden, but it was closed as they were doing some construction work. We also so the Palácio de Belém and then walked all the way to the LxFactory, which is such a must visit! It’s almost as if there’s a little town built in the middle of a busy city. We then took the scenic route home from LxFactory to our apartment and walked back through all the little neighbourhoods. On our final day in Lisbon, we decided to explore some more of the Bairro Alto neighbourhood, as we had only really seen the part with all the high street shops such as Zara and H&M. We saw Praça Dom Pedro IV, the national theatre and walked on Avenida da Liberdade.

Alfama neighbourhood
Bairro Alto neighbourhood
Praça do Comércio
Castelo de São Jorge , Rua de Santa Cruz do Castelo
Miradouro do Castelo de São Jorge, R. de Santa Cruz do Castelo 1A
Torre de Bélem , Avenida Brasília
Mosteiro dos Jerónimos, Praça do Império
LxFactory, Rua Rodrigues de Faria 103
Time Out Market, Avenida 24 de Julho 49

Coffee breaks

My cousins and I love our coffee breaks. They are perfect for when you’ve been walking around lots and just feel a bit tired after seeing so much. This is the perfect time to regain some energy and sit to watch some people. We had multiple coffee breaks while we there and loved all the little cafes we stumbled across. Some of my favourites were Café Janis, Wish Slow Coffee House and Fauna & Flora.

Café Janis, Rua Moeda 1A
WISH Concept Store & Slow Coffee House, Espaço G 02a, R. Rodrigues de Faria 103
Fauna & Flora, Rua da Esperança 33

Drinks

While we were in Lisbon we also wanted to have some drinks at night to celebrate our time away as cousins. We actually ended up going to Park on Friday afternoon to drink some things. We also wanted to go to Pink Street at night that night but we all ended up falling asleep because we had done so much walking through the day.

PARK, Calçada do Combro 58
The Pink Street, Rua Nova do Carvalho

Ice cream

Of course we also had to get some ice cream while we were in Lisbon. The weather was super lovely and warm so it was the perfect way to cool off a bit. We went to Santini Bélem, which apparently is famous ice cream that the king of Spain used to fly in all the way from Portugal. We loved the little refreshment. We also saw an ice cream shop called Gelato Therapy that also looked super tasty!


Gelados Santini in Bélem, Museu dos Coches, Praça Afonso de Albuquerque
Gelados Santini in Bélem, Rua do Carmo 9
Gelato Therapy, Rua da Madalena 83