Can you believe this, because we can’t…..we stayed up until 12.30am this morning which must be a record for us, but it was Christmas Eve after all. We were having problems with the WiFi you see, which was taking forever to download photos onto Maice’s iPad so whilst we were waiting we had the TV on and were listening to the music channel. Well, all I can say is if we’d listened to it any longer we probably would have slit our wrists the music was that bad. You’d have thought that on Christmas Eve they’d at least play some festive Christmas music, but no, it was all sad sad songs, how depressing!
The dogs chorus woke us at 7.30am this morning. Seems even they wanted a lie in on Christmas Day. Oh, by the way….Merry Christmas everyone. I think there’s a song there somewhere! We stayed in bed a while, blogging and sorting out photos until we thought it best to get up and go for breakfast. Seems everyone in the hotel had the same idea as the restaurant was packed, queuing to get in the door they were. We didn’t linger and once back in the room we got back into our beds to blog and sort out photos. And why not……we’d decided yesterday that today was going to be a very relaxing day. We got up again, dolled ourselves up, dressed in all our finery and went in search of the Basilica de Estrela as we wanted to go into church on Christmas Day and light a candle. Actually we wanted to go to midnight mass last night but our wine tasting put paid to that!! We wandered up the road and through these lovely gardens with the most amazing trees. We came across one poor tree and wondered why would someone want to brick it up. We’re very intrigued……are you?
We pondered this concept a while before making our way to the Bascilica. We were very surprised to find it was absolutely packed inside, standing room only as Mass had just started so we listened a while but it was so hot in there and standing didn’t help. We lasted fifteen minutes before we had to make an exit as we were both overheating. We needed a coffee but of course nowhere was open so after a brief conflab on a park bench we thought we’d head off down the avenue and find a hotel. As luck would have it we came upon the 5* Hotel Tivoli. It was lovely inside so we made ourselves comfortable in the lounge and ordered two cappuccinos. Darlings, it was so well presented, lovely cups and saucers, four little cookies and Jane, you will not believe the sugar sachets we’ve got for you. The cappuccino could have been a tad hotter but for €11 for two in a 5* hotel we thought it was a bargain and a very relaxing experience.
We still had a few hours to kill before our appointment at the Ritz Four Season‘s for Afternoon Tea so having had a conflab on the very comfortable sofa in the Hotel Tivoli we returned to the bar in our hotel for an aperitif. Two glasses of wine later we spruced ourselves up and headed on out to The Ritz, just ten minutes up the road. Well darlings, all I can say is, we know how to live the high life and we behaved impeccably. No tea-pot smelling here like we all did at the Four Seasons Budapest!! We can honestly say its the best Afternoon Tea we’ve had on all our travels around the world. The whole experience was wonderful…..champagne, solid silver teapots, gorgeous tea, sandwiches and the cakes were so light and the attention to detail was amazing. Who needs turkey dinner when you can have afternoon tea at the RItz!
So the question is….who ate all the cakes? We certainly didn’t as we were so stuffed we left six behind and of course asking for a ‘doggy bag’ just wasn’t etiquette. We desperately needed a walk so thought we’d walk through the gardens. Well, imagine our surprise when the Christmas market we thought had finished yesterday had come back to life, and it was packed. Honestly, the whole of Lisbon seemed to be there. We did consider going on the Ferris Wheel but the queue was so long we gave it a miss. We’ve never seen a Ferris Wheel like this one before. I’m surprised it’s not been done for speeding it revolves that quickly. We wandered up one side and down the other side of the park and made it back to our hotel where we changed out of our glam 5* Hotel attire into our casual wear. Oh how lovely to step out of our Bridget Jones’ ‘hold it all in’ knickers and let everything loose. Bliss. We didn’t want to stay in our room so made our way to the bar to reclaim our voucher. Apparently if you don’t have your room serviced for a day they give you a €5 voucher to use in the bar or the restaurant. We didnt know this until yesterday when I was reading the literature in the hotel room so it always pays to read what they put in the room. If only we’d seen that the first day, it could have bought us a bottle of wine at the bar!
We sat in the bar until 9.30pm before we called it a day and made our way back to our room. Hopefully we’ll sleep well tonight. Before we go off to sleep we need to send a shout out to Maice’s mum whose birthday is tomorrow, December 26th. So Happy Birthday and sending you love and birthday wishes from Lisbon …..xx
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