Santini

With this post I inaugurate Portugal Week here on the blog. Last week I spent a few days in my home country and came back with loads of photos! So today I will be showing you what I did and wore on Saturday and Sunday.

Ready to go, on my hotel room at the airport. As soon as I arrived Mr D and I went for a walk around town, to see what is going on and what has changed. A lot has changed but most things are pretty much the same.

The cat with the hat.

A traditional grocery store in Bairro Alto. Most of the shelving is still the wooden original.

The typical cobble stone sidewalks. Very pretty to look at but terrible on footwear. Forget about heels!

The decorations from the typical Summer festivities are still up. they’re all very colourful, just the way I like it.

My travel attire: Primark skirt and headband, Hello Kitty tee that I don’t remember where I got it from, I’ve had it for too many years.

Saturday night I had a little get together with my friends and it was great. It was lovely to see everyone. I changed into something nicer and I wore a Topshop dress I bought from someone at work (I think it’s seconds), the flower crown is Primark, the sandals are from Topshop but they were thrifted on my trip to Sheffield. The lovely little necklace was a present from Mr D’s grandma and it is a Hershey’s Kiss.

The next day Mr D and I joined family and friends for a nice lunch in Sintra, at the Orixas Brazilian restaurant. I had never been there before and it was a nice surprise – the food was tasty, the desserts buffet amazing and the restaurant itself very interesting looking.

Fantastic Egyptian art tile panel in an old house. I’m not sure when the house was built though but it may be late 19th, early 20th century.

After lunch we made our way to Guincho beach as I haven’t been there in years and Mr D never visited before. As you can see in the photo, I am doing the Marilyn because it is sooooo windy. It is always windy there and that is why you can see people doing kite surfing or why there are windsurfing competitions regularly.

After our tour of Guincho and Cascais we were treated to cocktails at the Estoril Palacio Hotel, where my friends were staying. Mr D had the pina colada, I had the cosmo. So nice!

I couldn’t resist a photo in that fantastic huge mirror at the hotel restroom. It really is a beautiful old hotel, where royalty used to stay at. The dress I wore that day was from TK Maxx and the sunglasses are Pucci. The sandals are the same (I only took one pair of shoes with me, I know, unbelievable).

After we got back to Lisbon we joined friends for a meal at the illegal chinese restaurant in Mouraria. It never disappoints and as always had really nice food – tofu, prawns, pak choi… the works. After that we went to Santini for some gelato and I have to say it was the best I’ve had in a while. Santini had an ice cream shop in Estoril since I can remember (I just checked and it’s been there for 60 years) and was opened by an Italian man named Santini. Just before I left for England, they opened a shop right in the centre of Lisbon and finally I was able to pay them a visit and eat some deliciousness.

I had fig and cantaloupe flavourson a cone. Yum yum! After all this we just walked home and went to sleep.

I’m joining the party at Judith’s Hat Attack! Hope you have enjoyed the part one of my adventures in Portugal. Stay tuned for the visit to the flea market and other places!