(if only because I'm going to the BookCrossing Convention in London on the 18th!)

My mother and I arrived in the afternoon, rather clueless as to where we could find our hotel. We couldn't look it up because the keys to my mother's suitcase were nowhere to be found. We figured it would be easiest to find the hotel first and then solve the suitcase problem.
A bus took us into town from the airport. And we got off at the right stop. Several utterly friendly Portuguese folks helped us to find the hotel, which turned out to be really nice!
The room was lovely. And someone from the staff  picked the lock on the suitcase for us. So that was one problem taken care of.
We headed into the center on foot, walking along wonderful boulevards, dressed in our summer clothes. It was warm and sunny! It felt almost subtropical.
We ended up finding a nice place to eat and it wasn't even expensive.

The next day, we went and bought a three-day ticket for public transport, which turned out to be a very good deal. Here's a short list of things we went to see and do during those three days:

- the National Tile Museum, which was much more interesting than you'd think
- the Monastery of St. Jeronimo, very impressive
- the city quarter named Belem, where we had tea and the traditional pastry
- the river. We took the ferry to the other side especially to see it, and the Bridge of April the 25th.
- the Cathedral
- the streetcars, especially line 28, the so called historical line
- the funicular to the higher part of the city
- the lift. See the pic and you'll understand
- the city quarter named Bairro Alto, which is where people go out, and where the artists live
- an antiques shop where they sold original tiles from people's houses
- the castle, but we didn't go in. We've seen castles before.
- the Museum of Modern Art and its spectacular gardens. We had tea with two local BookCrossers there, which was very nice!
- the tiles and the architecture. We spent a great deal of time looking up.

Furthermore, the food was great. We had lovely fresh fish, orange juice, lots of great coffee (and decent tea served in generous amounts), local pastry, roasted sardines, local wines... Lisbon is full of great flavours. The people are very friendly and helpful, and almost everything you see is adorned with decorative patterns. Even the subway stations look like works of art.
It was a great little holiday. It's a lovely city. In fact you should go there and see for yourself.


Oh, and my mother ended up finding a spare key for the suitcase padlock on the same keyring her house keys were on.