Nasi Lemak in Lisbon???

Last weekend was our wedding anniversary. My beautiful wife and I have been married 2 years and like our first wedding anniversary, we decided to go away for the weekend. So this year, we decided to go to Lisbon, Portugal (I had other plans but apparently watching a football game live in a stadium is not romantic enough for an anniversary weekend).

Since I couldn’t go to Liverpool and watch my football team play, I decided to try and find out if there was any Malaysian restaurant in Lisbon. I thought that if I couldn’t enjoy a football game during our anniversary weekend, maybe I could find a place that serves nasi lemak and enjoy my favorite meal instead. So before we left, I googled “Malaysian restaurant in Lisbon” and got 2 possibilities. The first was “Malaca Too” which was on Rua Rodrigues Faria and the other one was “Duck Tale” on Rua de Escola Politecnica (Got the addresses from Google too).

The Farol Design Hotel in Cascais, Portugal

We left for Lisbon on Wednesday evening and arrived quite late in the evening. The hotel we chose to stay at was the Farol Design Hotel located about 30 km west of Lisbon in the town of Cascais. The setting was perfect for an anniversary weekend. The hotel was originally a 19^th century mansion owned by the Count of Cabral. All the rooms are individually designed by local and foreign fashion designers. So the rooms were absolutely beautiful.

Hotel swimming pool

Besides the rooms, the hotel’s swimming pool was situated at the back of the hotel overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. We spent a lot of time just relaxing by the pool, basking in the warmth of the sun and the beautiful weather, surrounded by breathtaking scenery and enjoy the soothing hands of the masseuse too.

On the first full day of our stay in Portugal, we decided to remain in Cascais and explore the quaint little town and all its offerings. We hired two bicycles from the hotel and cycled into town, riding past the marina and the “Cidadela de Cascais” before stopping in town for lunch. It was a wonderful day to just take things easy. We returned to the hotel in the afternoon, and spent the rest of the day by the pool.

Cidadela de Cascais

On the second day, we decided to go to Lisbon, enjoy the sights of the city, and maybe try and make a beeline for the Malaysian restaurant so I could have a go at their nasi lemak (if they had any). Unfortunately, the trains were on strike, and for a second day, we were stuck in Cascais. No matter, we just returned to the hotel for more afternoon delight in the sun and a wonderful relaxing massage on the rocks.

A lot of pavements in Lisbon and the whole of Portugal are decorated with patterns such as this

Finally, on the third day we managed to catch the train to Lisbon. This was to be our last full day in Portugal, so we had to take in as many of the sights as possible. We had lunch at the Praca de Commercio and decide to climb up to the “Castello de Sao Jorge” after that (warning, it’s a very steep climb). Along the way, we stumbled across an art gallery with some beautiful paintings of Lisbon. We couldn’t afford the paintings, so we bought some tiles which had been glazed with copies of the artists painting. We even got the artist himself to sign the tiles. It was great.

The artist, Abel Grade

After that, we took a quick tour of the city, on a couple of “Hop-on, Hop off” buses. This took us to the early part of the evening and we still had to take the train back to Cascais. So needless to say, we didn’t get the chance to look for the Malaysian restaurants in Lisbon. Well, we had a great time anyway. We enjoyed our stay in Cascais and plan on going back again. Maybe next time we will have a chance to check out at least one of the Malaysian restaurants. 

Thoroughly enjoyed our anniversary weekend in Portugal