Matteo: Olá a todos e bem-vindo ao meu primeiro bloque de Lisboa

So this is the first of four blogs I’m going to publish from Lisboa, which many of you will know and some will have visited already. Currently there is a heat wave in Portugal (and also I believe large parts of western Europe). This blistering heat makes the life in the city almost insufferable. As such our first trip and also the first thing on our check-list was to go to the beach. As we came to find out, Lisboa itself doesn’t boast any beaches within the city. As such we had to venture out into the surrounding area to go and find a spot to swim. We decided to go to Cascais, as it’s really beautiful and quite near (50 minutes by train). After having had some problems actually acquiring a ticket, which in the end we only managed with the help of a very friendly ticket inspector, we finally arrived in Cascais and were almost blown away by the looks of the village. Almost all the buildings were decorated with tiles, which appears to be like the national architectural style. So much so that they even built a museum solely dedicated to tiles. Two things that did in fact hinder our swimming experience were the completely overrun beaches of Cascais and the warmth (or rather lack thereof) of the Atlantic Ocean. But really considering the heat within the city this cooling-off was actually quite appreciated.