How to turn a 6 hour layover into a city adventure.

Have you ever booked a trip, and the only way to get there was with a painful multi-hour layover?

Last week, after we booked tickets for the Pencils of Promise project, our best option for travel was a 6 hour mid-day layover in Lisbon. Rather than stay stuck in an airport, I wondered, how we can see the city and spend those six hours wisely?

In scouring Google results, I found a tour company right up our alley called We Hate Tourism Tours, which allowed us to create a DIY off the beaten path adventure. They picked us up from the airport, and gave us a well rounded and unique glimpse into the city, leaving us curious of seeing more.

Here were my favorite stops:

1) Montana Shop & Gallery Lisboa: a small shop of artisanal graffiti supplies for street artists. You can see from the picture in the gallery they have a really beautiful wall of spray paint cans that are color coded.

2) A Vida Portuguesa: a shop of vintage Portuguese brands, with trinkets like bars of soap, notebooks and other gifts with vintage packaging design.

3) We Hate Toursim Tours shop/office. (The last pics in the gallery above.) The tour company was started by a graphic designer so the brand is on point and they have a lot of fun trinkets to go along with it.

To create a mapped out itinerary of our tour, I teamed up with my friends over at Mosey. You can check that out here.

We interviewed the founder of Mosey, Matthew Loyd on Shoptalk Radio last week. Check it out here.

Have you been to Lisbon? What are your favorite underground shops and restaurants to visit?