Eilidh’s sleeping has progressively gotten worse as our time in Europe has come to a close. Of course, we’d kept her out late the night before with our photo shoot and sit-down dinner, but even then, she wasn’t fully asleep until nearly midnight and preceded to wake one or more adults up several times during the night. She was done sleeping altogether by 7:30, so I set her up with the iPad and laid next to her in our apartment’s living room, buying everyone at least a few more minutes of shut-eye before our day began.
The ensuing morning was fairly unremarkable, as we prepared our bags for our penultimate flight of the trip. We emptied the fridge, took out the trash, wiped down tables and counters, and ensured all dishes were clean. We moved our luggage to the walk-in closet for storage while we spent a few final hours in Lisbon and Elsa readied the apartment for the incoming guests.
Eilidh is usually happy holding Noah’s hands, but has trouble keeping attached to adults (or siblings) for very long.
Eilidh was unhappy when presented with the prospect of being carried.
Our first order of business was to return to A Vida Portuguesa, where Amanda picked up a cork bowl for our home and I picked out a few painted tiles to take home as gifts. We also revisited a nondescript cork store where Emmie made bracelets for her friends Nola and Nina and Amanda picked up a few pieces of cork jewelry.
We worked our way down to the Rossio neighborhood, where we stopped at a local market and sampled a plate of grilled meats. The sausages served generally looked better than they tasted, and we left much of the plate untouched. Lunch for our final day in Lisbon was at McDonald’s, an admittedly uninspiring choice from a culinary perspective. The unremarkable food was offset by the kid-friendly atmosphere and ample space for us to spread out to dine.
The girls pose with the meat place we purchased at covered Rossio market.
Amanda teared up after Eilidh started eating McNuggets.
After finishing off our fries and chicken nuggets, we made the short walk to the nearest Metro station and returned to our familiar Intendente stop. At the apartment, Gee Gee stayed outside with the kids while Amanda and I integrated our latest purchases into our luggage. We chatted with Elsa for a few minutes before loading into a taxi for the drive to the airport.
We stopped by a store called “The Fantastic World of Portuguese Sardines,” which exclusively sold brightly-colored cans with all birth years. Joy, and later the older kids, posed with their appropriate cans.
Emmie posed in the Rossio square before we took the return Metro ride.
While we could have lugged our bags through the Metro, a van taxi ride cost only a few dollars more than 5 separate Metro tickets, and saved at least 20 minutes of travel time.
Even getting to the airport early with plenty of time to spare, there was minimal downtime between our arrival and departure from the airport. We loaded bags onto a cart, checked into our flights, answered questions about our luggage and travel destination, passed through airport security, had passports and boarding passes checked and rechecked, quickly consumed pastries and drinks from Starbucks, then finally boarded our flight.
Eilidh was excited to take a few sips of green tea from the airport Starbucks.