You’d think that with not much packing required (staying put and not even chairs to be used) we’d be quick as to get going. Well, no is the answer. Maybe it is the missing drive of a travel day. We did a bunch of things in the morning, though. Breakfast no.1, some more blogging preparation and the attempt of a shower. I say attempt, since the solar heated water reservoir had been thoroughly emptied by party goers last night.

That was not the only thing going a bit off script. We had a late start to begin with, since Number 3 had another bad night – at least he extended official rest time till 8 am to compensate. Long story short, it was maybe 11 am by the time we hit the bus. Good thing we were not going as far today.

We arrived at Belém only 20 minutes later. The main draw here is a 15^th century monastery, build on the riches of Portugal’s Indian trade routes. It was actually officially commissioned in honour of Vasco da Gama’s discovery of a route to said India. Interesting parallels to our last trip come to mind, where we saw multiple times the other end of that golden age in Timor Leste and Oman.

Before we would do any of that, though, a spirit boost was in order. The lines in front of the monastery made us anxious. We wandered a brief while considering our options and decided on 2^nd breakfast and a later lunch in town. There was another line in Belém full of tourists – the one in front of the famous pastry shop that claims to have invented the Pastel de Nata, here called Pastel de Belém. But we skipped the line for the much better option of sitting down inside the labyrinthine place and getting served our pastel and coffee like proper people. They were good – but a place that churns out maybe 10,000 of them in a day can only do so much. It was worth it for the crazy atmosphere.

With enough sugar and caffeine in our bellies, we were ready for the lines – and they were gone. Somehow we managed to slip into the adjourning church as the very last two people before it was closed to the public for a wedding. We saw Vasco da Gama’s grave while the choir already warmed up.

Out again, we bit our pride and got in line for tickets for the monastery proper. It was rather late, but we managed to push lunch out. As we stood in line we got tapped by two ladies telling us that people with little kids can skip the line and go to the special service counter. We could not yet quite believe it when the security guy saw us and pulled us out. It was true! In our cheerful mood, we even thought of looking out for another set of parents in the now much longer line and made one couple out in the bright noon sun very happy indeed.

The monastery was impressive, but most is probably told in the pictures. Once we felt we had taken in the place, it was time for lunch. Something that could best be come by back in central Lisbon. There would be time on the tram to figure out the details. After a bit of deliberation, and ruling out a bunch of places too far out of where we wanted to go, we decided on Indian food. Hey! First of all, big cities are food free for all, and secondly Portugal has a colonial history in India. I even ended up going for the Goan speciality (lamb in tamarind sauce) – it was great!

After that, we had only one more item on our list: Ginjinha shots! I had seen it yesterday but felt like this might be not the best idea before gaming, so today it was on. The drink, apparently first served in the joint we picked (A Ginjinha) is a super sweet cherry liqueur served with or without a soaked cherry. For some reason, I managed to talk Nina into a round of 3 pm shots in 28° C heat. It was decided afterwards that the best next step would be coffee and another bite to eat. We managed to get offered weed three separate times on the same square in the space of a minute. Do we look that much in need of a fix?

Coffee was excellent, but it was time to head home. Days with the little one in the carrier are tough. Plus, the bus ride is still almost an hour and we had some blogging to catch up on. All of it worked out surprisingly well. 

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