Moving on to Lisbon

Before I am moving on to Lisbon I have a couple more pictures I wanted to share from Germany.

I went out with a few friends one night and caught the perfect sunset on my way home.

My grandmother has a picture of me on her wall where I am close to Hannah's age.  The resemblance is undeniable :). We did this last year, but I think it is even more obvious this year.  

Now I have to document a funny Hannah story.  Scott bought her Rosetta Stone to learn German better.  She understands almost everything in German and does really well speaking it when we are over there, but she has been wanting to get better at speaking it. I finally set it up for her this week and she took the computer up into her room to start on lesson 1.  While she was up in her room I received an email from Rosetta Stone Customer Service saying thank you for my email and that they will look into my issue and assigned a case # that I should reference during any future communication.  I went up to Hannah and asked if she contacted their customer service and she just said yes.  I asked what the issue is and she said she just wrote them to tell them that their program is super boring. I couldn't stop laughing.  

We need to figure out what lesson will fit her level, since she does already understand almost everything.  

Visiting Lisbon has been on Scott's bucket list for a while and we finally made it happen this year.  We got up bright and early and caught a direct flight to Lisbon.  We were there by lunch time and enjoyed the rest of the day.  We did a VRBO and hit the Jackpot.  The apartment and view were amazing.  My mom came with us too, so it was nice to have enough room in an apartment.

These are the views from the place....

From the bedroom....

You will see lots of "view" pictures from the Lisbon trip.  Lisbon has seven hills and all of them have great viewpoints of the city and you always see the ocean.  

After lunch we walked over to Castelo de Sao Jorge.  Once again we had a great view from up there.

The kids had been complaining a little bit about all of the walking and being hot, so a little ice cream did wonders.

Ice cream with a view

Overall the kids did amazing walking on this trip.  We walked a lot!  Their average step count was over 17,000 steps a day during our city tours.

Walking up on these narrow walk ways up high on the castle walls was a little nerve wrecking with our crew.....

None of us had ever been to Lisbon before, so it was a lot of fun exploring the city.  I had bought a Rick Steve's travel guide and did some research.  I knew touring churches and museums was out for us since we had the kids with us.  Our main goal was to get a feel for the city by walking around and hitting some of the biggest sights.

We started the morning by walking over to the Elevador de Santa Justa.  It is an elevator that takes you up from the Baixa district to the Bairro Alto district. Even though we made it there pretty early the lines were already long and we decided not to wait.  

The elevator is an impressive structure.  The architect that designed it was a big fan of Gustave Eiffel and you can see the style resemblance to the Eiffel Tower. 

We found a Portuguese soccer store and bought a few souvenirs.  Each kid has picked something they want to collect from every place we travel to.  Hannah decided last year to get a little painting wherever we go, Evan has decided on a keychain and Nora on postcards.....

We used every mode of transportation possible while in Lisbon along with a lot of walking.....the tram, a Tuk Tuk (the kids favorite) taxi, Uber, sailboat, train and the Metro.

We love exploring all of the cobblestone streets

We ended up down by the water and it didn't take our kids long to take their shoes off

We found some fun sand sculptures

This city is really beautiful

The Tuk Tuk rides were a favorite.

Everybody strike a pose....

You can find several of the trams that take you up the hills.....we just walked alongside the tram tracks

It is pretty steep

For lunch we made our way over to the Mercado de Rebeira (Time Out Food Market).  It was huge and it was packed.  It sounded really fun, but the logistics were a little challenging since it was so packed.  We couldn't find any seating and the lines were long and everybody wanted something from a different place (which is the purpose of going to a food market), which made it hard because somebody always had to stay with the kids and we all ate in shifts.

In the afternoon we spent a few hours in the apartment just relaxing before venturing out again for dinner.
A city by the ocean has such a fun vibe....

My mom was trying to take a picture of us, but Nora kept taking a picture of her.....



Evan never wants to be in a picture, so he was the photographer for this one.....

It was a beautiful night out.




I still have a lot more pictures from the next few days in Lisbon, so I am going to continue next time. Lisbon is definitely worth a visit.