(Sorry this took so long to get out to you all! Alas, F picked up some kind of ailment, probably while we were in Lisbon. Of course, it made the rounds. We’re all recovered now and ready to update!)
My first trip to Lisbon! Wow, where do I start? It was a whirlwind of cobblestone streets, screaming children, incredible scenery and political activism that I will not be forgetting any time soon. At least I was never bored!
So, let’s set the scene. As many of you know, March 28 was another No Kings protest, the scale of which appears to be under-reported by some media accounts that I follow. I had participated in such a protest back in Akron in 2025, but my immigration legal team had advised me to keep a low-profile on any activism while our visas were pending. This was a real challenge for me all through the rest of 2025. So when I read on Nancy Whiteman’s Substack blog that there was a No Kings protest planned in Lisbon on March 28, I consulted with Jack and we agreed that it would be quite the adventure to go and participate. With the kids. Looking back, I have to admire our ambition! It was…an experience.
It’s an almost-five-hour car drive from Viana do Castelo (on the northern coast) to Lisbon (near the southern coast). Although there are many train stations and systems near us, we decided to take a bus directly to Lisbon. Trains are fast and comfortable, but you’d also have to make many line-switches to get to Lisbon and wait for your connecting train. If you miss a connection, it can be hours before another one comes along. It was just easier, especially when lugging along Fiona’s carseat and our wagon, to take the bus. The biggest bus line around here is the Flixbus. With their lime-green buses and logos, they’re hard to miss! We caught the 7:40 a.m. bus out of Viana, bound for Lisbon with two stops (one in Porto and one in Coimbra).
With a Flixbus, you pay a flat fee for the trip, and have the option to ‘reserve’ a seat for a small amount ($3-5 dollars). If you don’t reserve a specific seat, you’re just assigned one at random, as we were. If you ever decide to take a bus in Portugal, my new advice would be to reserve a seat! We really regretted not doing that. We got put at the back of the bus, and a couple of us are prone to motion-sickness. Poor T was pretty green by the time we got out at the bustling Lisbon bus and train station.
We had reserved a room at the Epic Sana Lisboa hotel. Thankfully, we were able to take a Bolt ride right to the hotel (Bolt is the cheaper, more popular form of Uber in most cities in Portugal). The staff were really gracious and let us check in at 1 p.m. instead of the normal 3 p.m., for which we were everlastingly grateful! The sweet folks at the check-in counter even gave the kids a booklet of paper dolls and some colored pencils! After freshening ourselves and the kids up, it was time to get to the protest, which was being held at the Praca do Comercio. It was about a mile and a half away, down by the Tagus River estuary that feeds into the Atlantic ocean. I had the brilliant (in hindsight, overconfident) idea that we should just walk there! Shouldn’t take too long, and we could see some of the city along the way! So we loaded the kids into our Jeep wagon and set out.
It was downhill all the way so we arrived fifteen minutes before the protest was to start. So far, so good. Somewhere between 300-400 people had turned up, swarming the bronze statue that marks the middle of the wide, paved plaza. Cafes and high-end retail stores surround the immense space. It’s lovely…and very hot. I immediately realized that I had forgotten to pack sunscreen. No time to turn back, though! A volunteer offered us a sticker to put on our shirts, which is the main way that attendance is counted, and we found a space in the crowd.
Alas, although we had achieved our goal in getting to the protest, for the kids it all devolved fairly quickly. Throughout the five different speakers that we heard, the little ones got hotter, hungrier and crankier. There was little to no shade available, and after about twenty minutes Jack had to take the kids in the wagon and find shade and something to take their minds off their hunger. The Biscoff cookies we had brought were no longer cutting it. Fortunately, there was a bubble-busker in the square! A man took huge lengths of rope dotted with loops and swished it through a pan of soap, sending large bubbles sailing into the faces of delighted children. This kept T and F happy for about half an hour. Then things took a turn and we were all starting to get a bit crispy in the sun. We had to leave early. We’re happy we got to go and participate, but next time we’ll be sure to bring more snacks and sunscreen!
Unfortunately, the worst part of the trip was still to come. Lisbon is extremely hilly, and we had been fortunate to be going downhill the entire way to the Praca do Comercio. What goes down…must come up! The hard part was navigating stony uphill streets, crowded with tourists dining at cafes, buskers playing guitars, and at least one dancing troupe, with two screaming children in a wagon. The kids had reached their absolute limit and just wanted to either nap or run around. We ended up stopping for gelato halfway to the hotel just to rest. It took us twice as long to get back as it had to go to the protest. One thing was quite funny (to us)–though strollers there are aplenty in Portugal, stroller-wagons seem to be an American import and a complete novelty. Everywhere we went, people stared, laughed, waved and took pictures of the wagon. One person even included it in his livestream! I was pleased that my Portuguese is good enough to understand that almost everyone was saying that the wagon is cool or a good idea or that they’ve never seen one like it before. Between us sweating it up the hills and getting distracted by people reacting to our wagon, we missed when F threw her shoe out of the wagon, never to be seen by us again. Oops.
After we got back to the hotel, Jack valiantly set off again to find us some fast food. We picked a bad time to be hungry! Most restaurants don’t open until 6 or 7 at night, and his internet connection chose the wrong moment to go spotty. We eventually settled for Uber Eats. We were a very tired and sunburned bunch when we finally went to bed! However, the hotel had left pillow chocolates and pastel de nata (custard pastries) by our beds and the kids were big fans!
In the morning, we had some time to kill before we boarded the FlixBus yet again, so we ended up at a hotpot restaurant near the bus terminal. Jack and I aren’t as familiar with hot pot, and I appreciate our server taking time to explain the process to us! For those not familiar with hotpot, one orders broth (we got two) and then a variety of different foods to add to the broth before fishing it out and eating it with rice and sauce. I remember we got pork belly, cabbage leaves, ramen noodles, mushrooms, and beef sirloin rolls. Delicious! At the end, the restaurant proprietors sent around a person with tanghulu (Chinese candied fruit on sticks). I got a strawberry tanghulu–the berries are coated in clear candy that crunches as you bite into it. Mine was also sprinkled with sesame seeds, which added a nuttiness I really ended up enjoying. If anyone is taking a bus or train to the Oriente stop in Lisbon, I’d heartily recommend the Shoo Loong Kan Portugal restaurant!
And then we were back on the bus. At least we weren’t in the back this time! T fell asleep most of the time but poor F was miserable and screamed for the last hour of the trip. I’m sure we were super-popular with all the other folks on the bus, but at least no one was rude about it.
And so we concluded our No Kings protest experience! The biggest takeaways I have had, after thinking everything over for a couple weeks, are to always bring sunscreen everywhere (or a hat) and make sure we bring a second pair of shoes for each kid when we travel.
On to other adventures! I’m so happy to say that we have a car now and have a bit more control over where and when we explore. I’ll keep everyone posted!
Ciao-ciao!
One comment
This is an excellent read! As a parent myself, I know how challenging this excursion probably was, yet you wrote it with nice touches of humor. I really enjoy reading about your adventures and experiences.