Honorable Mentions

We enjoyed our stay in Lisbon.  Here are some pictures of things that we did that hadn't made it to the blog yet:

One of the parks near our home included a putt-putt golf area.  Amelie had been begging us to play so we made the time to take a break from our work and get out of the apartment to play.  It was in the evening, but it was hot!  Playing on cement greens with rubber balls posed to be quite challenging.  Bobby made a couple of hole-in-ones.  One was off a tee-box where you hit the ball to a separate basketball shaped area with a hole in the center.  Very bizarre to me.  Liam spent the entire time walking around the green with his putter and ball and would occasionally place the ball in the hole or a handful of rocks on the green.  It's bad golf form, but he's learning.  We all headed straight for the showers to cool off once we got home.

Amelie likes to hit the ball like her mom...with all of her might!

On another night, and upon the recommendation of our host, we ate Le Petit Alges near our apartment.  Bobby had a plate full of snails while the kids and I ate a Portuguese favorite; steak, eggs, and fries (batatas).  We ended up talking to a Cuban couple at a table nearby during the course of our dinner about everything from politics to baseball.  With our broken Spanish and their broken English, it made for a very humorous dialogue at times.  One piece of info we did glean from them was to try a restaurant closer to the center of Lisbon that served all you can eat Brazilian style meat. 

The following night, we headed to Columbo.  It was a huge mall with a couple of restaurants housed on the top floor.  We found the churrascaria, Chimarrao.  The food was amazing.  The servers kept bringing around meat after meat to our table.  I was most impressed with Liam's ability to put away the food.  I am pretty sure he ate more than I did (and I ate a good amount).  After eating we walked around the mall.  Amelie and Liam had fun at Disney World (what they call the Disney Store).

One of our favorite people sightings on this trip was an elderly lady eating a popsicle while riding the bus.  I'm telling you, eating ice-cream and popsicles is a must in this hot weather. ;)

This is really random, but we were amazed by the garbage system here.  When our host pointed out the 4 trash cans seen under the tree in the picture below as the place that our garbage goes, we were very surprised.  When we took our garbage down, we realized that there were big bins under ground.  Once the trash man arrived we were eager to figure out how it was emptied.  A crane picked up the large underground canister and then hooked it to the truck to then dump.  This was extremely smart as the area did not smell bad with it being under ground.  Any place there were trash bins above ground was horrendously stinky.

This was taken near our apartment where we walked everyday to get to the train station.  
Something about it was beautiful to me.  Maybe it was that the side walk here is covered by weeping willows so it was always cool and shaded.  We could see ruins of something on the other side of this fence so it was intriguing as to what it once was.  Who knows, but I don't want to forget it so I'm adding it. ;)