Monday, April 10 – Starting our 3rd week, hard to believe! Started my morning jog a little later this morning, the sun was already up and the city was on its way to waking up. Some joggers, no dog walkers and a lot of cars, trams and buses.

Back to more hills and cobblestones, but I found a (relatively) flat route along the river and through the grid design of the Baixa neighborhood.

After my run, Dan and I walked down to the train station and caught a train to Belem, home of Portugal’s discovery monuments. It was another beautiful day, perfect for strolling along the water and checking out the various sights.

In another fortunate happenstance, we found that the Maritime Museum was open and had few visitors. It provided really good insights into Portugal’s days as a world maritime power. To add fun, it had an entire wing of royal barges and even a few airplanes for our resident plane nut. Not sure how these flowed with the history of the explorers, but they were fun to see.

We had lunch in Belem, and, of course, stopped by Pasteis Belem to sample what is allegedly the original version of the national pastry. To be honest? In my mind, still another egg custard pastry—the allure is completely lost on me, Dan got the 2nd half of mine. But, I will admit, they have an awesome marketing program…I think every person in town purchased at least one–I saw some folks with boxes of them…

We got back just about 30 minutes before the arrival of our favorite daughter. She is the reason we scheduled our visit to Lisbon at this time–the newly minted Dr Erin is presenting a paper at a conference here in Lisbon this week. We are all staying at the Airbnb she stayed in 5 years ago when she visited on her own.

We haven’t seen her since her birthday in early February, so it was a delightful evening sharing wine and tapas at a nearby cafe. She’ll be busy during the day, but we’ll get to share time together in the evenings—priceless! It was, indeed, a good day!

23,448 steps, 11.5 miles