The One With The Hill - Touring Tuesday

While on this expat adventure, we are trying to visit as many places as possible.  For our summer holiday, we chose to spend ten days visiting Lisbon, Portugal and Barcelona, Spain.  Kudos to my husband for planning a vacation to two beautiful cities.  He found great airfare for our family and selected two wonderful apartments, which I just posted about.

Our holiday started in Lisbon on a gorgeous sunny Tuesday.

As you can see Matt had no problem with the sun, but the Kiddos needed a bit of time to acclimate to the big star in the sky.  British sun is not this bright or hot.  After riding the metro into the city (Youngest Kiddo lost a tooth on the way), we were off to find our apartment.

I never doubt Matt's ability to navigate a city.  He has a photographic memory with an internal compass.  All he has to do it look at the map for a few moments, and he's got the city down pat.  We quickly learned that there is one thing the city map does not show.

Hills.

Big hills.

While Matt found the most direct route to our apartment via the map, the hill climb was almost as strenuous as when I played netball at the kids' school.  The photos below were taken a few days after The Climb because there was no way in heck I had the energy to snap a photo en route. The kicker to the whole hill climb, is that it could have been avoided with a ticket for the funicular.  The photo below shows only part of the hill, but you can see the funicular waaaaaay down at the bottom.

Just check out the angle the funicular needed to take in order to keep the passengers level.  

Look how narrow the sidewalk became part way up the hill.  Just imagine the four of us with suitcases at this point in the climb.
    

   
Matt's navigation was spot on, and we reached our apartment shortly after reaching the top of the hill.  However, we all felt like Ross in leather pants when we finally stopped moving.  

Later in the week, we decided to ride the funicular.  It allowed us a leisurely ride down the hill to see what we actually walked up.  The wait to return back up the hill was really long so we decided to relive the whole experience again sans suitcases.  Matt showed off and let Youngest Kiddo ride on his shoulders up the hill.

The hill has weaseled it's way into our hearts.  We shall never forget it.