Purplelake: Day 12 & 13 - Jun 12-13, 2018 Lisbon, Portugal

After visiting Intermache, our favorite supermarket by now, for coffee and croissant as well as a freshly baked custard tart, we headed back to Lisbon to return our car and stay for two more nights before heading home to attend Eric's convocation. The car rental in Portugal is really affordable. Even the highway tolls were less than what we have expected.

We checked in to Lisbon's Radisson Blu Hotel and found out we've been upgraded to a suite. Not as big as the presidential suite in India but still pretty big for European standard. Breakfast was also included and it was fantastic. Huge layout of foods!

We didn't enjoy Lisbon this time as much as a few days ago. It happened these two days coincided with Portugese National holidays so we missed the chance to take the tram to Alfama. There was an important wedding so most of the main roads in the whole neighborhood of Alfama were blocked off. We walked up the hill instead and explored the area on foot. We could see lots of preparation were done for later festivities at night.

We planned to visit the famous Belem area the next day but found out the whole train network was on a two days strike! The line up for the tram was absurdly long so we gave up on the idea and strolled along the waterfront instead.

I'm quite disappointed in Lisbon's public transit. Although you can theoretically use one ticket to traverse multiple systems like metro, bus, tram, etc., in reality, the bus/tram frequencies are so low that your transfer ticket would expire before you can get on your connections! Plus the low frequency of bus/tram means long lines of tourists. It's not a tourist friendly public transport system at all. It basically forces tourists to use private tour services like the hop on/off, or the yellow/red/whatever color bus or tram tour companies plowing the streets frequently.