Europe 2023 August 30th Day 27 - Coaches, Fado and National Museum of Contemporary Art Lisbon style

Had a lazy start to today after what seemed a whirlwind adventure yesterday. Down to breakfast at 9am and sat once again in our usual place next to the disused water fountains. Once again manners of some people leave a lot to be desired. Older male, yes even older than me, picked up at least a dozen pastries and put on his plate before being admonished by his wife. So he then manhandled a few back onto the serving plates with his hands, brilliant hygiene 🤬. Back to the room and got online to  purchase our trains tickets to Porto for tomorrow before heading out for the day.

We had decided to return to the National Coach museum and have a look so this entailed grabbing a multi ticket for the Metro, bus and trams. Down to the Metro (Lisbon's underground) and instead of an all day ticket, a single trip was purchased. 2 stops and then off and onto Tram No.15e which took us directly there. What another amazing transport museum. This is a massive collection of all the royal coaches of Portugal and a great number of others. It includes one dating from late 16th century used in 1619 for King Philip11 of Portugal (King Philip 111 of Spain) to travel from Spain to Portugal . This unique and largest in the world collection was created by Queen Amelia in 1905 and is now housed in a modern building, it was just awe-inspiring to view. Baroque style, German, English and Portuguese style , plus children's coaches and sedan chairs that took a good hour and half to view. There was also an exhibition of an artists paintings of all the king's and queens of Portugal to view . After this we went down to the cafe for very enjoyable light lunch of empanadas and cod fish cake with fresh traditional lemonade and a raspberry lemonade.

It had heated up by now and we decided to have a look at the air conditioned National Museum of Contemporary Art at Belem and it's Berardo collection. A well thought out and extremely detailed collection commencing from the beginning of the 20th century until present with examples from all the great and supporting casts . We then started to look at collections on the other levels but legs were tired and visual overload was happening, so time to leave. 

We had a coffee and cake before finding the tram back to the city, and as we hadn't bought the all day ticket we needed to try and buy another journey on the tram. Only had a €20 note and of course the ticket machine only took max of €10 note or coins. Finally rustled up the required €6 in coins and it wouldn't accept them, so just sat down and hoped 🤞Got to our stop, left quickly and walked the extra distance back to the hotel. Once back it was already after 5pm so time for a little nap before heading out for dinner.

We wanted to go to a Fado restaurant and experience this Portuguese musical style. First couple we tried were not open or full, so we searched out another smaller one and we got a table. Lovely meal and the performance from both the male and female singers was excellent. Even bought a CD 😂😂. The two guitarists, one using the traditional 12 string Portuguese guitar were just brilliant and let's just say youth had left them a very long time ago. Whilst eating dinner I checked tomorrow's train tickets and of course I had stuffed up and booked next Thursday not tomorrow, couple emails later and that was sorted by the excellent RailNinja and the worrying could cease. Not the last issue for the evening though. Got the bill and went to pay and was advised their machine had broken down earlier so could we pay in cash , hahaha. Would have been ok but all we had was about €22 in cash. So the waiter escorted me to an ATM down the street where I withdrew some ( which I was intending to do tomorrow anyway) , returned to the restaurant, paid and left.

Not far back to the hotel and that was it for our last day in Lisbon. New train tickets had arrived so hopefully on a train to Porto in the morning.