Getting there

Given that I travelled on a whim and time was of the essence, I tried Lastminute.com which proved to be a good move.  Initially, I didn’t take too much notice of the finer points of what was available, merely noting the flight times and that the price was well within the budget I’d set myself. I clicked on the button that said something along the lines of ‘would you like to try one of our mystery 5-star hotels,’ given the absence of a ‘would you like a 1-star rat trap, given that you’re not going to be there long?’ option.

Although I figured that the mystery element of the hotel would be that it was in Casablanca, the Dom Pedro Hotel was in the centre of Lisbon in the elegant Marques de Pombal district and was deserving of every one of its five stars.

Both of the visiting football clubs I’d come to watch, Fiorentina and Ukraine’s Vorskla Poltava, both chose the genuinely palatial Dom Pedro for their short stays in the city.

All a bit swish for a football fan who hadn’t even brought any decent shoes or trousers, but I wasn’t complaining and slept like a brick.

The flights via British Airways were of 2 hours and 20 minutes duration each way.  The outward economy flight from Heathrow was comfortable enough, but the return provided a surprise I hadn’t spotted on the paperwork in that it was in business class.

A little extra leg room and ‘would you like some champagne, sir?’ didn’t go amiss and both legs of the flight left and arrived on time.

Parking, with a private contractor just outside Heathrow, was also included in the price.

You really should….

Buy a Lisbon Card as soon as you arrive at Lisbon airport.  I bought a three-day card for 33.50 Euros, which entitled me to use public transport – metro, buses and trams – throughout my time in the city.  The airport isn’t on the metro system, but is well served by a bus service that runs frequently to all parts of the city. 

I simply hopped on the first available bus out of the airport and got off at the first metro station. The metro is ridiculously easy to use and has just four lines.  It helps if you download a map of the metro before you leave and use google to ascertain which metro stop is nearest to anywhere you’re headed.

Anyone planning to watch Sporting Lisbon or Benfica should probably get a match ticket on arrival to avoid disappointment.  Sporting’s ground is adjacent to the Campo Grande metro stop (green or yellow line) whilst Benfica’s is on the blue line at Colegio Militar Luz.  Advance tickets are only available from the stadiums. 

For a day out to remember, get a train from Cais do Sodre and take in the stunningly beautiful scenery along the coast en route to the seaside town of Cascais, where even the tourist tat seems tasteful.  The 45-minute journey cost a piddling 3 and-a-bit Euros, but was worth 50. 

You needn’t bother…

…getting a taxi, unless you’re feeling particularly lazy.  According to a few locals I spoke to, Lisbon cabbies have a reputation for taking the scenic route and charging well over the odds, so take care.  I was quoted 30 Euros to get from the airport to my hotel; something I managed easily enough by public transport.

Lisbon is a city that gives particularly good statue and fountain and is best seen on foot.  The sight-seeing bus around the city is probably good value at 15 Euros if you can get a seat on the open-air upper deck.  I could only get a seat downstairs, so should have probably have taken my trip around the city in the early evening when the service seemed far less busy. 

Eating out…

….you will found yourself spoilt for choice, whatever your budget or taste.  It was a treat to find somewhere in the Euro zone where I could have a two course meal and a couple of beers for 20-25 Euros or under.  If you really can’t do without the fast food that’s readily available at home, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.  But if it’s both value and variety you’re looking for, hop off the metro at Restauradores (blue line) where just about every taste is catered for by restaurants that are pleased to see tourists and treat them accordingly. 

 

   

 Perhaps the best thing about visiting Lisbon is that it made me feel a bit shame-faced about not speaking another language.  It’s the sort of place where there are just so many conversations to join in and it’s frustrating if you can’t.

Dining al fresco outside a cosy little restaurant in the Restauradores district on the first night of my visit, I was enjoying my own company when four Italian Fiorentina fans settled down at an adjacent table.  The waiter, who spoke excellent English but no Italian, was soon on the case with a round of drinks, but was struggling when the young Florentines tried to order dishes that weren’t on the menu. 

I’d been ear-wigging their earlier conversation, of course, but could only pick up words of a football related nature.  And then one of the boys asked for ‘baccalieri’ and I was in like Flynn. 

“That’s salted cod!” I told the waiter, who looked surprised and impressed in just about equal measure. 

I’d like to tell you this is something I picked up during my travels, extending my encyclopaedic knowledge of fine cuisine still further.  The truth is that this is a little bit of trivia I picked up whilst I was watching my Sopranos DVD box set again, rather than spending my time more productively. 

Impressed when his meal of choice turned up, one beaming fellow hurled a heartfelt ‘Grazie’ in my direction and he asked me if I spoke Italian, which, of course, I do. 

I could easily have recited that night’s Fiorentina team sheet, including substitutes, without hesitation.  I could also have listed my favourite places in Florence and, if a discussion on mail delivery had cropped up, I’d have known that “Il Postino” meant postmen.  But otherwise I was stumped.  So I merely gave a shrug I hoped was authentically Tuscan, raised a glass and a thumb and said “Ale Viola,” which seemed to go down rather well. 

When he gave me my bill, the waiter called me “The Codfather,” for which I gave him 9 out of 10 and a pretty decent tip. 

Anecdotes of a mono-linguist apart, this was essentially a football trip; my little treat to myself after summoning up the bravery to take two teenage daughters to Ibiza for 11 nights.  I knew I’d be working seven days a week from September onwards, so this was effectively my last chance for a busman’s holiday for eight or nine months.  Given that my three days in Lisbon were organised very much at the last minute and on a whim, everything had to go according to plan to make the trip worthwhile.  It did.

Day One

Having had a game to report on at Chelmsford the previous night – Monday – I knew I’d need to take out a temporary membership of the wide awake club to simply get the trip started.  Hence I came home from Chelmsford around midnight, filed my report and, with caffeine seeping out of every pore, left home at 2.30 am to drive to Heathrow.  The drive went swimmingly, particularly on a virtually traffic-free M25, until I took the wrong turning off the M4 – my fault entirely – in looking for the private parking company with whom Lastminute.com had arranged for me to leave my car.  Half an hour, several bad words and much gnashing of dentures later, I was back on track and being dropped off at Terminal 3.

As a nervous flyer at the best of times – simply being in an airport is a laxative for me – any delay gives me time in which to get more and more anxious.  In the event, British Airway’s 7.40 departure to Lisbon left bang on time.  After a snack, I felt relaxed and comfortable enough to get an hour’s sleep, rather than fret about dropping out of the sky from a great height.  Accordingly, when we touched down in Lisbon I felt refreshed and more than a tad chipper.

It took just a few minutes to skip through passport control and buy a travel pass for my stay and I was soon on a bus heading towards the centre of the city, barely 5 kilometres away.  Having worked out where I needed to be with reference to a map of the city’s underground system, I baled out at the first Metro station I came to. 

Knowing that the two stadiums I was due to visit both had huge capacities; I always felt I’d have no problems in obtaining tickets.  I wanted to be on the safe side, however, and made buying them my first priority, even before I’d checked in at my hotel. I’d long since worked out where the stadiums were in relation to the metro and, with a little chopping and changing here and there, I had two match tickets in my hand within two hours of my arrival.  Even though a little research had led me to believe I’d pay a fraction of what it would cost me to watch a top European game in England, coughing up 20 Euros for each ticket – which were by no means the cheapest on offer – did send me off in search of my hotel with a spring in my step.

On reaching the Dom Pedro Hotel, I was shattered having had no sleep the night before.  And whilst ‘five stars’ was certainly marked on all my travel documents, I somehow hadn’t reckoned on being billeted in a hotel quite as opulent as the Dom Pedro turned out to be.  And whilst most of the players had left the hotel ahead of that night’s game, this was where the Fiorentina party had chosen for their short stay in Lisbon.  I felt like a tramp checking in wearing shorts, trainers and a t-shirt and carrying nothing but an overnight bag, but such considerations were soon forgotten as I was asleep within minutes of locating my room (1212 on the 12th floor), having allowed myself three hours kip ahead of dinner and the Champions League game later that night.

Showered, fed and watered some five hours later, I’d taken my seat at the Estadio Jose Alvalade, a stadium of which I have never seen the like.  With all 52,000 of the seats brightly coloured and to no particular pattern, I’d guess that the sensation of entering the ground is akin to waking up after a rough night to find that Picasso has re-tiled your bathroom while you were asleep.  I watched the ground fill ahead of what proved to be a really good game.

I tried to watch from a relatively neutral perspective – even if watching Fiorentina has started to become a regular thing – and maybe pick up a little Portugese along the way.  I didn’t as it turned out, but maybe the phrase “Oh do get up you tart!” has entered local parlance, giving the regularity I hurled it at Sporting’s Brazilian Liedson; one of those supremely gifted players who wastes his talent by hurling himself to the deck at every given opportunity.  

At the final whistle, Alberto Gilardino’s classy late equaliser gave Fiorentina the upper hand going into the second leg as the game finished 2-2.   It could and should have been a better result for Sporting, but the 58th minute sending off of Simon Vukcevic, who picked up a second yellow card in celebration of scoring his side’s first goal, proved a handicap they couldn’t quite overcome.

Day Two

There aren’t too many times in life when you’re given the opportunity to think; “I haven’t paid nearly enough for what I’ve just had. I wonder if I could offer somebody some more money.”  But the train journey between Cais do Sodre and Cascais had me thinking exactly that. 

Of course, I knew that three days wasn’t going to be enough time in which to take in everything that Lisbon had to offer.  I’d always thought that the city was on the Atlantic coast when, in fact, it’s dominated and divided by the river Tagus.  And virtually everything I’d read about Lisbon told me that a visit wouldn’t be complete without seeing the Vasco de Gama bridge, the longest in Europe, which links the two parts of the city.

So having slept the sleep of a dead man and left the hotel I early, I felt that my spare day could be spent making a train journey and taking in a few sights.  And on a glorious summer day, a 45-minute train journey along the banks of the Tagus and the Atlantic coast – all for the piddling sum of a little over 3 Euros return – made me wonder how I’d spent 54 years on this earth and not done it before.  Stunning scenery to my left, amazing architecture to my right and if anyone else was on the train with me, I wasn’t aware of them.  

Cascais itself was stunning in its simplicity.  Its nothing other than a clean and tidy little seaside town in which even the abundance of tourist tat seemed tasteful and the locals pleased to see you.  In short, it seemed the perfect place to find a welcoming pavement café, have a peppered steak the size of a manhole cover, a beer or four and reflect on the fact that there are times when life can be tickety boo and a half.  So I did.

Back in Lisbon and after a long walk along the banks of the Tagus and directly under that remarkable bridge, I went to bed happy, early, tired and extremely well fed. 

 

Day Three

Released the year after my birth, I’d always thought that Doris Day’s ‘Que Sera Sera’ is one of the most profound songs ever written.  When she gets to that bit about ‘will I be Villa, Baggies or Brum?’ I’ve often reflected on who my favourite football club might have been had I been born elsewhere.  Had I been born in Lisbon, I’ve no doubt I have been a Benfiquista, but more on that later. 

The only downside to my entire stay came when I opted to take the tourist bus around the city, having handed over my 15 Euros for the privilege.  Football is nearly always my purpose for travelling, but I’d looked forward to learning about a city that has been ruled by just about every AD civilisation, had been totally rebuilt since the earthquake of 1755 and had only been introduced to democracy as recently as the Carnation Revolution of 1974.  That was the plan at least, but that was scuppered by the fact that the entire upper deck of the bus was occupied by large couples in baseball caps who all seemed to called Wilbur and Alma.  Downstairs, views were limited in the extreme whilst my audio commentary was drowned out by engine noise, so I hopped off half way round and spent a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon in Lisbon Zoo.  

To some, the Zoo is a place to take the kids with one being much the same as another.  And even as a chap who likes to see the Zoo of every city he visits and can happily watch an Okapi eat leaves for half an hour – I went to Budapest Zoo last year – I can sympathise with that point of view, even though I can always keep myself amused and entertained.  But at Lisbon, there’s a unique feature in my experience in that a cable car takes you all around the Zoo after you’ve covered it on foot, offering not only birds’ eye views of all the enclosures, but endless ways of ending it all and guaranteeing your demise makes the TV news almost everywhere.  Happily, I didn’t want to waste my ticket to the Benfica game that was taking place three Metro stops away in two hours time. 

Speaking of which, it’s best to take a deep breathe before your first sight of the interior of the Stadio da Luz.  Rebuilt as recently as 2003 to host the European Championship final of 2004, it’s a huge, red, cavernous cathedral of a ground given a fabulous atmosphere by its fans. 

Even though barely half of the 66,000 seats had been filled for the visit of Vorskla Poltava – my new bunk mates at the Dom Pedro - there was something about the Benfica faithful that instantly made me warm to them.  Less sophisticated and well groomed than their Sporting counterparts across the city, perhaps, but punters who liked to smile and were both spontaneous and vociferous in support of their team from the first whistle.  As a kid who grew up in an era when Eusabio’s Benfica were among Europe’s genuine greats – they won the European Cup in successive seasons in the early 60s – I was just so glad I came.

The game itself wasn’t that great, truth be told.  Watching Vorskla - who qualified for Europe by beating Shakhtar Donetsk in the Ukrainian Cup Final – was a little like watching a non-league side that’d been drawn away to some big boys in the FA Cup.  Much as you might admire their efforts in getting as far as they had, it was always clear that they weren’t going any further.  So it proved, as Benfica won 4-0 with consummate ease and little urgency as I lapped up every minute of the occasion if not the game. 

I hadn’t wanted to leave the following morning, as three days just isn’t enough time to do Lisbon justice.

Whilst I seldom visit the same city twice, Lisbon is surely going to be an exception to that rule.  And if you think you need a taxi back to the airport, it probably just means you’re lazy and have more money than sense.