Bruges(Flemish: Brugge; German: Brügge) is a beautiful city in Belgium near the dutch border. Its historic city centre is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and this beautiful city is home to almost 120K people. This post is more about the pictures, which is why I decided to choose the title „Through The Lens“. My friend and I only spend two hours in Bruges but we loved wandering through the beautiful streets and enjoyed the architecture of the buildings.
The Markt (the market square)
Belfry of Bruges on Market Square (The highest building in Bruges!)
Ending this post with „Thanks for reading“ is not really appropriate I guess – therefore: Thanks for having a look at my Bruges-Photographs, I hope you enjoyed them!
xx, Sophie
Blogpost contains unsponsored ads (Airlines, Hostels, Restaurants etc.). These are all my personal recommendations based on my experience in Lisbon, Portugal. I don’t get paid for mentioning any of these places.
Hello everybody and welcome back to Aperture & Wanderlust.
Today I will be sharing with you kind of a summary of my Lisbon-Posts (click here for day one, here for day two and here for day three), I’ll call it a Travel Guide to Portugal’s capital. I hope you enjoy reading this and if you have any tips and experiences to add, feel free to comment down below!
View from the Castelo de São Jorge
The Flight
I know it is controversial, but I booked my flights with Ryan Air, since they provide cheap flights from, in my case, Luxemburg to Lisbon. I arrived on a Sunday and departed the following Wednesday. For two direct flights, travelling with a small bag (not the usual carry-on size, you need to pay extra if you want to take a normal carry-on-sized backpack on board), I only paid around 30€. By the way, I travelled with my Fjallraven Backpack as you can see in the following picture and it provided me with enough space for my clothes, a book, my hygiene stuff AAAAND my Nikon reflex camera.
The Hostel
I stayed at theHUB New Lisbon Hostel which is located in the Bairro Alto. I was really pleased with this hostel, they have a great breakfast buffet with fruit, cereal, bread, coffee, even cake etc. and a kitchen where you can cook. The room I stayed in offered enough space for the travellers, I stayed in an eight bed dorm room, however, since it was off-season when I went to Lisbon, I shared the room only with two other guys. The curtains at the bunkbeds offer you a bit more privacy and there are big drawers under the beds where you can store your backpack in (you should bring a pad lock though). Additionally, the location is good and it is just a fifteen minute walk to Cais do Sodré.
8-bed-dorm at the HUB New Lisbon Hostel
Transport
Getting from the airport to the city center is pretty easy if you take the metro. You take the red line to Alameda and transfer to the green line and get off at Cais do Sodré. From there you can easily walk around or take the famous trams to get around.
I bought a VIVA-Card at the metro station that costs 0,50€ and you can load money on it. It therefore costed me only 1,33€ to get from the airport to the city center. However, if you want to reload it, you will have to put at least another 3€ on it, just keep that in mind if you don’t want to buy a new card. I will link you the website of VIVAhere.
Food and Drinks
Lisbon is a little bit cheaper than Germany, however you will still pay around 10-15€ in an average, nice restaurant. There are many great restaurants and small cafés, make sure to check everything out that appeals to you, I’ve seen so many nice places! I will now provide you with a list of restaurants and cafés that I enjoyed.
Noods – Asian cuisine, great bowls, noodle dishes and more!
PARK – A rooftop bar on top of a parking lot, nice atmosphere but the walk upstairs is a bit scary.
Basilio Café – they offer juices, bowls and have a great variety of vegetable packed dishes. Plus, the atmosphere is just great!
Go natural – I went to a café/Grab and go place but they also have supermarkets and restaurants. You will be able to get Smoothie Bowls, juices, lunch and more there for a convenient price.
Time Out Market – Absolutely fell in love with this place, they have almost every kind of cuisine you can imagine!
Jamie’s Pizza – A Pizza place by Jamie Oliver, I really enjoyed a Pizza Funghi there!
Manteigaria– A food chain where you can get the famous Pastéis de Nata! People usually get one or two pieces of the Portuguese speciality and order a coffee and enjoy their snack next to the counter.
A Cultura do Hambúrguer – A bar located in the Bairro alto with an amazing interior design, they offer very fancy cocktails. The drinks aren’t as cheap as in the other, smaller and local bar, but still affordable.
If you like to drink beer, make sure to order Super Bock, Sagres or Imperial. Those are the Portuguese beer brands.
Go natural Café
To-See:
In and around the city center:
Praça do Comércio
Elevador de Santa Justa
Castelo de São Jorge
Alfama
Tram 28
Elevador da Glória
Elevador da Bica
Pink Street
Bairro Alto
LX Factory
Museums your interested in, I went to the Pharmacy Museum which was really interesting!
Belém:
Jerónimos Monastery
Torre de Belém
These are the things I did in Lisbon, if I came back, I would definitely go to Sintra, a small city in the west of Lisbon. It is known for its beautiful castles and a stunning view on the Atlantic Ocean.
Torre de Belém
Shops and Stores
I’ve seen many cute little shops in Lisbon where people sold Portuguese jewelry, bags, clothes and more. If you visit the LX Factory, you will find loads of them, but I also loved a small store called „Hoiko“ where they sell handmade jewelry.
Hoiko Jewelry store
Also make sure to go to one of the many sardine stores. I don’t eat fish but these stores look so nice and colourful. They even sell sardine cans from 1927! (Even though I’m not entirely sure if those sardines are actually from the nineteen-twenties…)
Sardine Store
Another store I really loved was Organii at the LX Factory. They sell organic cosmetics and you will find anything from skin care to dry shampoo and conditioner bars.
Walking around Lisbon, you will also find many old bookstores, selling new- and second hand books.
More advice
Security: Personally, I felt really save in Lisbon, even though I was travelling by myself. However, I’ve heard from many people that they often got asked wether they wanted to buy drugs. It only happened to me once when I had company. However, as far as I can tell, just saying „No thank you“ (don’t let it sound too polite) will get you out of the situation.
Don’t buy tiles (Azulejos): You will probably fall in love with the beautiful houses in Lisbon covered in colourful tiles and maybe consider buying one as a souvenir in one of the small gift shops. However, it is often the case that people steal them from the houses in order to sell them, so just don’t buy tiles and just enjoy a picture of them.
Wear proper shoes: Lisbon’s streets and sidewalks are not made for high-heels, you will be likely to get stuck wearing heels. Do yourself a favour and pack some comfortable sneakers!
Thanks for reading and feel free to tell me about your Lisbon experience!
I am finally back after having suffered from writer’s block for two weeks.
To be honest, I wanted this post to be online yesterday, but my uploader did not work and I fell asleep.
I knew that this would happen, since I am an ambitious person and a perfectionist. Unfortunately.
Being a perfectionist can be very helpful, but it often prevents me from doing spontaneous and imperfect things.
When it comes to blogging, this perfection often overwhelms me.
I really want to produce content which is interesting, or helpful, or at least a little bit special. I know my blog is nothing in comparison to other blogs, but that is not the point.
My favourite record store in the backround
It is not about readers or clicks or likes. This blog shall be about experiences, memories, happiness and spreading love.
Even if I could ever make money with blogging, which is completely unrealistic (and not the purpose!!!), it should not lose its identity.
Royal Arcades, London
Sometimes I wonder, if it is really necessary and if there is a sense why I am writing and sharing my photographs. And yes there is one: it is fun. And I love to connect with other people. To my mind, blogging is a great way to connect! Because so many people in the world are able to read your blog!
And this is, what it is all about. Sharing, caring, impressing and creativity.
Subway Station
I started my first blog in 2012. And I failed and deleted it because I thought that nobody was interested in reading it. But I do not want to stop writing and blogging again. This would be a mistake.
I know that I could prepare blogposts, but I am not at that point yet.
I am not that productive yet.
Anyway, today I am sharing with you my last London pictures. It is another mixture of Street Photographs and I hope you like them! Looking back, I really enjoyed my time in London, since it is such a wonderful city. I wish I could travel the country for a couple of weeks one day. Ireland and Scotland would be nice to see as well.
Taking the ferry
Please excuse me, when I am having my writer’s block again. I am fighting it. Have a lovely week!
One of my favourite things to do when I am travelling is going for a walk and exploring all the different streets and places.
I have to admit that I only support guided tours to a certain extent, since you are not able to explore the city on your own.
Jamie Oliver’s Diner! I wish I had the opportunity to eat out there!
But last year we took part in a Jack the Ripper Tour and it was amazing!
Our guide was very impressive, since he had a vast knowledge about history. Additionally, he used to be an actor.
This record store was just amazing!
Anyway, I really enjoyed the tour. We were able to see so many different and partly hidden streets, which made the tour a great experience.
The famous red busses.
Having wandered around, I discovered many interesting places, stores and pubs. I wish I were able to visit them all! My best discovery was a grunge/indie/alternative/vintage record store! I almost bought Nirvana’s „In Utero“ recorded on vinyl.
But I did not and I still regret it!
Telephone box twins.
When I am thinking about London, the first colour which comes to my mind is red.
Red busses, red telephone boxes, red mail boxes, red signs.
I like red, red is impressive and classy!
The streets.
I hope you enjoyed this kind of „uninformative“ blogpost.
Stay tuned and have a wonderful and hopefully sunny week!
I am obsessed with black and white Street Photography. And London is such a great place to take this kind of photographs.
Many photographers like to take pictures of empty streets and places, which is definitely a nice aesthetic. However, people bring life into boring photographs.
I love taking pictures of people working or hurrying. This may sound a little bit weird, but to my mind, candid shots are the prettiest, because they show the human being as it truly is.
These two men reminded me of the famous picture of the workers having their break, perched on the beam of a skyscraper in Manhattan.
Let’s talk about camera settings. My favourite way to take street photographs is using my 50mm aperture lens, which is particularly powerful.
When photography was originally invented, there was no zoom and you had to move, in order to get the right perspective. And this is the interesting part about photography. Using a lens with fixed focal length, you are experiencing parts of the original way to take pictures. You have to figure out how you can capture a busy street for example, moving very quickly in order to take a great shot! You need to be active, not wandering around passively, using your tele-zoom.
This is an every day situation. People in the subway station, grabbing their sunglasses, waiting, staring into my camera.
After having taken some pictures in the streets, I am using Lightroom and Photoshop to achieve the perfect „look“. My favourite settings are the saturation-, contrast- and lightness settings. Black and white street photographs are so magical, since you have to colour them in your mind.
I love this setting. All the different elements make me ponder a story for this photo- but I can barely imagine one.No caption needed, I just love subway stations.
I really hope you enjoyed reading this post and hopefully you liked my London Street Photographs.
Have a wonderful week!
Aperture & Wanderlust 