At the beginning of this spring, I went to Portugal for ten days to find the sun that had left us in Paris and to combine business with pleasure, to celebrate my birthday in a nice place.

For this stay I tried to kill three birds with one stone: take advantage of a generous remote work policy to go and change my mind in the sun, celebrate my birthday, and take advantage of a Marriott promotion which at that time credited two nights on the loyalty program for each night spent!

The choice of the destination

I hesitated a lot and decided a bit at the last minute. At one point, it was almost a week of real vacation in Jordan, but we didn’t manage to synchronize with Olivier and in the end it ended up as a solo remote work in Portugal.

I split my trip between Lisbon and Sesimbra, not really for touristic reasons but mainly to optimize my hotel budget as you can see.

Hotels

While Lisbon was usually considered a budget destination, prices have dramatically increased, especially at Marriott. Apart from the very out of the way Marriott, an old fashioned Sheraton and a less than optimal Moxy for telecommuting, everything was well over 300 euros a night.

I will spend two weekends at the Sheraton, already visited in the past. Between these two weekends I’ll go to Sesimbra where I found a Four Points for less than 70 euros a night, more reasonable for a long stay. And I really like off-season seaside towns: it’s relaxing and affordable, the opposite of the summer fury.

I could also have gone to Cascais where the Sheraton was offered at very competitive prices but as I had already tested it last year I wanted to see new things.

Flights

I tried everything to avoid taking TAP because of my recent problems with them (a stolen suitcase and still no compensation) and knowing that Olivier also has a big blocked refund case with them. I had options on Lufthansa or Swiss but not at times or prices that suited me…so reason spoke again and it will be a flight in business class on TAP whose pricing policy is quite aggressive (and that credits very well on my loyalty program…)

For the record you will see at the end of this series of articles that a new incident will occur with them and that I will have to return 24 hours later…and without compensation of course while the fault is on their side.

Restaurants

There was a restaurant that a friend had advised me for a long time and in which I had never found a seat during my previous stays: 100 Maneiras. This time I was early enough to secure a table the second weekend.

It was more complicated to find something for my birthday the first weekend since it was a Sunday and many restaurants were closed. Finally it will be Cura, the starred restaurant of the Four Seasons.

Another table I had in mind, Terroir, cancelled my reservation the day before my dinner due to exceptional closing.

For the other evenings I’ll try to vary the experiences with simpler things and it’s not difficult to eat well in Lisbon even if I did manage to find a tourist trap despite my precautions.

Activities

I made a program with the essential sites of the city, most of them already seen but it’s always a pleasure to rediscover Lisbon. I’ll just miss one site due to lack of time as I spent half a day fighting on the phone with TAP customer service.

Here is the program of this trip and the articles to come.

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