Why visit Lisbon?

As I already mentioned a while ago I recently decided it was time to visit a nearby destination with at least a bit warmer climate (I announced the trip here). This was not a very challenging task, since we have recently had some periods of really low temperature in Slovenia - it dropped even below 20 degrees Celsius in some parts of the country during a couple of nights.

The destination of choice for this time was Lisbon - the capital of Portugal. We flew in from Venice.

Usually getting from any airport to a larger city center can be a bit of a challenge or at least prove to be quite an expensive thing to do. In Lisbon this is definitely not the case. Since the last stretch of subway (Metropolitano de Lisboa) was completed at the end of summer 2012 it is a really easy and cheap thing to do in Lisbon.

A one way metro ticket (to anywhere within the city) only costs €1,25 which is really affordable. The only thing you have to take care about are the metro working hours (every day from 06:30 till 01:00).
Our plane landed quite late in the evening, but we still had plenty of time to get to the hostel we were staying in.

There is one thing I should probably mention about hostels in Lisbon - there seem to be many of really good ones available at more then affordable prices. We started our search for a hostel with Hostelworld's 2012 Hoscar Awards.

As we learned there are surprisingly many Lisbon hostels on that world's top list in almost every category. We checked out feedback on a few of those and in the end chose the Lisbon Destination Hostel, which actually didn't make it to those top 10 lists. Affordable price, very positive overall feedback and top location were the things that had the most to do with our decision. In the end we were really happy with our choice - it provided everything we needed and more. I really recommend it!

Lisbon Destination Hostel is actually located inside Rossio train station. This might seem odd, but it is a magnificent old building in the very center of Lisbon. I was afraid there might be some noise and vibrations coming from trains, but we did not notice anything. A pleasant surprise really.

Apart from good accommodation we liked almost everything else about the city. It was quite affordable and there is a lot to see and do. Also food and wine was my kind of thing - I loved almost everything I tasted. The fact I love seafood definitely helped.
For more information about food and great Port wine I tasted for the first time, you will have to wait for one of my following posts.

Actually the only thing that did not meet my expectations was the weather. I was hoping for a dry holiday with as much sun as possible, but got mostly rain.
At least the last two days were pretty sunny. That allowed me to take at least a few nice photos.