Postcards from Lisboa

I know we all know the name of the city as Lisbon but for some reason, they insist on spelling it Lisboa over here. That's right, I'm spending a few days in Lisbon with POTUS. Before you get too jealous, the only time I really had for sightseeing on this trip was yesterday and I was dealing with plenty of issues for work. By the time they were all resolved, it was dark and rainy.

So my postcards from Lisboa are actually taken by my colleague Todd. If you are somehow living vicariously through me, then you'll have to change your focus because I live vicariously through Todd. He's based in London (and you know how much I love those Brits! :) ) and he gets sent literally around the world to cover all the biggest stories. Now this trip would not qualify as the biggest story but I'm always happy to see him because he is great. And he takes awesome pictures that I can steal and pretend like I saw all of this stuff. Who knows, it might just work out for me to get an hour or two of sight-seeing in before I leave. Just in case, I'll still post Todd's work. Because even if I do get out, his work is MUCH better than any picture I can ever take. It did help that he had the most perfect weather for his adventures in Lisboa.

So last night, I went out to dinner with some colleagues from other networks. We had reservations at 8p at some chic Lisbon place but I couldn't go with them right at 8p because I had a meeting. So after my meeting, I caught a taxi and went to go find them. Well, I don't know Portuguese and my driver knew NO English. I've learned how to get around this problem in other situations but I'm pretty sure that he took me the long way around town to get to this restaurant. That's okay because Lisboa or Lisbon is a pretty city at night. The restaurant was in their Old Town which is much bigger and much older than my Old Town in Alexandria. I'm amazed that I actually found the place because Mr. Cabbie just dropped me off somewhere in the vicinity and I just walked around until I found where I needed to be.

The food was great and we had a wonderful meal at Lisboa a Noite. I highly recommend it if you ever find yourself in Lisbon with needing a good Portuguese meal. Two thumbs up! Anyway, after dinner, we left to get back to our hotel and we encountered hundreds and hundreds of young people in the streets. Like a huge, HUGE, HUGE mob. And we all felt incredibly uncool. And old. I'm not sure if this was just a typical Thursday night in Lisbon or if there was something cool going on but it was crazy!! We maneuvered our way through the crowd and made it to the subway and among the group of us, we figured out how to get back to our hotel! It was great fun!

Today, I'm in travel pool which will of course involve a lot of running and pushing and shoving and then waiting. I'm sure I'll share all about my adventures tomorrow! In the meantime, enjoy some postcards from Lisboa. (Courtesy Todd who I am pretending I was with yesterday instead of couped up in my hotel doing work.)