It ends

Without regrets we left our Lisbon apartment at 11:00. One decent thing our host did was recommend a left-luggage place she had a reduced-rate arrangement with, so we did the 'ask for Migeul' thing there and headed on to pass the time until needed to return for the luggage at 6:00 and get to the airport for 9:00.

We spotted an interesting set of steps nearby that were laid out for dining and made a note to return there later, which we did. We stumbled on Largo de São Paulo, a really attractive square with one of Lisbon's many drinks-and-snacks kiosks and stopped there for a bit. Time Out Market was next, which we'd always planned to visit because of seeing it featured on TV. It was all too frenetic for our liking, though, so we just got ice creams and sat outside mulling over what to do next.

It was Carl who came up with the idea of asking in the tourist centre for advice for filling a few hours. They suggested Docas, an area underneath Lisbon's iconic Ponte 25 de Abril bridge with a string of restaurants  beside a marina. It turned out to be the perfect spot. We savoured a jug of sangria and actually seriously though of returning there after collecting our luggage. We finally decided against that and returned instead to the dining steps close to the left-luggage place. Food wasn't great, but the atmosphere was.

Time was moving on, so we haggled a bit over the bill and called a taxi to the airport. Lisbon airport has an excellent system in place called MyWay. There are phone points scattered around the terminal and all that's required is to state your name and flight and a support person turns up to whizz you through security and passport control and take you to the boarding gate and then right onto the plane. Really excellent. Our Aer Lingus flight got us in to Dublin at 01:10 on Saturday morning. Temperature in Lisbon had been 26. There were moans onboard when the pilot told us it was 6 degrees in Dublin. Ah well …

Portugal? A really great place, though we didn't like Lisbon as much this time as on our previous visit – it's much more busy and noisy than it was then, and we were really glad to get away and spend our couple of days in Évora. Porto, though, is a wonderful place, much friendlier and more laid back. Whether in Porto or Lisbon or Évora, one thing that struck us everywhere was how much cheaper everything is than in Dublin. Visitors from Portugal must get a right shock when they come here.

One thing we got a bit wrong was Covid restrictions. We'd checked before we travelled and were told that masks were mandatory on public transport and indoors. We stuck to this throughout our stay and it was only on our second day in Évora that we learned restrictions had been eased on 21st April, with masks now discretionary apart from on public transport. Ah well, better to be safe than sorry.