We scouted out the location of our car rental (which is EuropCar), which we will be picking up on Saturday. This is actually a fairly long story (in time and distance, because of our failure to look to the right), which we will not detail here. After talking to one of the very nice people at EuropCar, we determined that the best course will be to take a taxi to the car from our hotel, rather than bring the car to the hotel through the very twisted streets of Graça.
And, because of our connectivity difficulties, we checked out some of the internet points that exist and found one that is not inconvenient. Shahen, on Rua Madalena, is reasonably priced and allows us to plug in our USB memory key. The USB connection makes it quite easy to upload a few photographs. Our pursuit of some improved internet connectivity also took us to the Cafe no Chiado, where we had a nice lunch - omeletas com queijo.
The highlight of the day was meeting Helena, our online friend from The Travelzine who recommended the hotel we are staying at. Helena is a lovely, gracious woman who kindly arranged to spend the evening with us. A drink in front of the opera house, Teatro Nacional São Carlos, was followed by a delicious dinner at Martinho da Arcada, which is the oldest café in Lisboa, founded in 1782. (For those of you keeping track, everyone had carne, washed down with a nice bottle of Herdade Grande 2003 from Estremoz. Helena suggested that we try a wine from the Alentejo region as it is one that we will not be visiting.)
Helena is very interested in history and knows a great deal about Portugal and Lisboa. She acted as our guide as we walked to the restaurant, telling us lots of interesting things about the area that we passed through. At dinner, she phoned her husband João (twice!) to get information for us about Porto. It was a great evening - muito obrigado, Helena!
It was a beautiful day (a perfect 3.0) in Lisboa.
