This was a HUGE vacation for us!! The first time the girls have been to Europe and while I essentially wanted to blog all about it, the sheer undertaking of the task got to me and I folded. SO….here we are, 5 months later, I’ve gotten up the courage to finally share all the info and photos! And if you know me from my old blog days, there are going to be LOTS of photos. Not only does this serve to provide information for you but also as a keepsake for my family! So let’s get into it…..

I know you’re wondering how TJ and I got up the guts to bring 3 small children across the water! Well, we just leaped!!! Obviously our girls are well traveled and while we have previously taken them on a long vacation (8 hour + plane ride to Hawaii), we have never done this big of a trip since having 3 kids. We usually do short tropical trips with them. Mexico, DR, Jamaica, Bahamas, etc. but for this trip we were looking to give them a different experience. Noelle had talked about wanting to visit Paris since about 4 years old and we really wanted to give her this experience. Tj and our friends had done Paris together years before having kids so we wanted to pair this trip with another country we hadn’t been to. Enter Portugal, we had just had friends recently move there and we had discussed coming to visit them so the timing was perfect.

On the plane were prepared for the meltdowns, the tantrums, and the sheer tiredness that we thought was for sure to come but surprisingly the girls did AMAZING!! I won’t lie, it TOTALLY helped that we were traveling with our favorite travel family so we had 2 other adults to pass Minka off to, had she gotten sick of us.

Our initial flight was out of Miami, a 4 hour drive from Orlando. From Miami we had a direct flight to Paris where we had about a 2 hour layover before reaching Lisbon, Portugal, our first destination. Surprisingly, but also not at all surprising, Noelle didn’t sleep a wink our entire 8 hour flight into Paris. Lois and Minka got a few hours of sleep in and I was super uncomfortable in between them! Because we are a family of 5, We had to do a 4-1 seat split. I had the girls and Dad was alone -__-

After our flight from Paris to Portugal it was nearing evening time and we had dinner plans with our friends. So we attempted to make our way to our Airbnb via Uber. OK…..let me just…..the Uber situation! I’m not even sure how to describe my distain and disappointment about the Uber situation without all my trusty emojis. Just know, I’d have like eight different faces lined up here for you to know exactly how I felt. It was infuriating because we were declined by probably 3 or 4 Ubers before finally we just kind of stopped taking no for an answer. I guess there are laws against taking more than 4 people in one Uber, so with the 5 of us, plus our luggage it was a nightmare trying to secure a ride. Ugh, that sounds so American to say, like let me just break your laws because I want to and we don’t do it like that in the states. But seriously it was crazy and we were super frustrated. Granted their vehicles are MUCH smaller than what we are use to. It was cold, the kids were tired and hungry. The fact that no one blew a gasket was very impressive I must say, especially me, I don’t do well hungry. We were finally able to convince someone we could pile all into one Uber instead of having to get a second one and split our family up, which we were just not comfortable doing. We could have gotten one just for the luggage but we were also not trying to have that as another expense. Keep this in mind, all Ubers are not created equal abroad!

Our Airbnb was right in the middle of everything in Lisboa. The area was called Chiado. We (read Tj and our friend De) found it after spending what felt like forever searching best areas to stay in. Our balcony overlooked a busy street and at night the block was hot! Now, because it was 4 adults for 5 kids, it wasn’t that kind of trip but still, we enjoy being in the mix.

That night we headed to dinner with our new Portugal resident friends. After which we got back to the room to get a full night of real rest. We had the pleasure of being shown around and doing a couple dinners with the most amazing people. People from literally all over the world sharing their reasons for settling in Portugal.

This dinner was amazing! They took us to their favorite local restaurant where we had an entire spread of all the traditional Portuguese foods. Lots of rice and meat!

We started our first full day with a boat ride around the city to see some of the major landmarks.

We ended the night with another awesome dinner on the beach. We found out Portugal is one of the safest countries in the world along with a really affordable (read cheap) cost of living! For Europe, it was so surprising to hear!

Because our trip was so short we didn’t spend as much time in each destination as would have liked but instead of not doing it at all, we decided to just enjoy the little time we had and soak it all in! We only had about 7 days during their Thanksgiving break. While I would suggest more than 7 days for a trip like this, it was all the time we had without making the girls miss school. Our last day in Lisbon was spent exploring some more must sees. The pink street, the Pena Palace and the Time Out Market, just near our Airbnb!

For whatever reason Portugal wasn’t very high on our must do list but after visiting we fell in love with it!! We definitely need to go back and get the full experience, it wasn’t enough time. There are so many other parts of the country that we need to see. If you have a family bigger than 4 I would definitely suggest renting a car. They drive on the same side of the road so it would should be easy enough to navigate. Had we been there longer, I think we would have. Many of the things we did required a car ride so we took lots of Ubers. There was also lots of walking but that was to be expected, wear comfortable shoes. If we ever go back, I’ll have more to report!

Part 2, Paris, coming up……

Until next time, <3 Leah