Verdict

Now the trip to Lisbon is all done and dusted, it's time for the verdict.

Squirrel, Tiger and Shark concentrate mostly on the shortcomings of the Hotel Tivoli bathroom and breakfast facilities, so apologies to the Lisbon tourist board about that.

Grit likes the way that you have to climb a ladder to get to the top town. The restaurants upstairs are much more interesting than those on the ground floor, especially that one who made great efforts to please the children, had an excellent vegan and vegetarian selection and put pine nuts on my aubergine. I would name the restaurant in fact, only no-one here can remember what they were called.

Dig is not playing the Lisbon verdict game. He is a diplomat.

Detailed results from my questionnaire follow.

Q: What did you like most and least about your stay in Lisbon?

Shark:

• When you lie down in the bath you can see the plumbing under the sink. (Clearly the Hotel Tivoli plumbing arrangement is simply wrong, wrong, wrong.)
• That man at the door tries to steal your luggage. (That's the Doorman, Shark. He takes your luggage up the hotel steps to the reception, so ladies can enter the hotel looking perfect. Next time please do not wrestle your bag back off him.)
  
• The peaches were nice. (Considering you and Squirrel entered into a competition on day two to see who could eat the most peach halves and between you managed 31, I'm not surprised.)
  

Squirrel:

• They do not give us chocolate every night. (Ahem. Er, I have a confession to make about that, Squirrel.)
• Someone takes your breakfast plates away before you have finished with them. (They are trying to prevent you eating any more peach halves.)
• The rooms were too small. (Actually, the rooms were quite large, but Squirrel has ideas above her station in this direction, having formerly requested that her room comes equipped with a swimming pool.)

Tiger:

• The toaster in the breakfast room is rubbish. (I think we'd all concur with that.)
• My sisters get everything all the time, and it's not fair. (Tiger, I'm stopping this questionnaire right now because once again you are talking rubbish.)

The Castle of St George

Ahhh! Castle visiting! Everyone is happy, except Shark, who says she's had enough of castles and wants to go back to see the fish. No, we say, enough fish for now. Today we are seeing castles.

I think we are castlephiles. Well I am anyway, and I don't care about anyone else. If we're in reach of a castle, we have to go, that's it. Probably, they just humour me. But Shark, Squirrel and Tiger wouldn't cooperate if they really didn't want to go, would they? No, they'd be refusing to put their knickers on at home, or making ridiculous excuses like 'I want to make a chair. It's not fair. You know I wanted to make a chair. You said I could make a chair yesterday and now you won't let me'. Either that or they'd all engineer a great big fight so that everyone gets grounded, and the moment those words are out of my mouth, 'Right! That's it! You're not going to the castle!' then everyone would shut up arguing and go back to playing, mission achieved.

They could, of course, adopt a more straightforward approach of screaming and kicking in the car, so we stop at the bus stop again and I refuse to drive any further until the police move me on. And then I say that in my confession I would have to tell the police how badly my children behave, and then I would be deemed an unfit mother and my babies would all have to go to foster homes. I think that's the pointless and incoherent argument I use regularly at bus stops. Anyway, if we did get to the castle, Tiger, Shark and Squirrel could make it feel like a walk through Hell until they got their way and we left.

So when I say today we're all going to the Castle of St George and not the fish house, there's only a bit of ritual grumbling, which makes me think they secretly like castles.

Well they certainly like the Castle of St George. Tiger sees a lizard and is ecstatic about it, pointing to a precarious set of steps. She says she and daddy have just been down there and seen it, and no one else goes that way. I tell her I can't understand why not, looking at the loose stones, wonky steps, precipitous drop and nothing to hold onto. Then Shark says she wants to explore the turrets and legs it towards some particularly dangerous looking elevated pathways that seem to be walled only to knee height. I have visions of her tripping over and start to calculate whether her fall would be broken by the tree below and how many bones she can get away with breaking before it's fatal.

When I'm not assessing the risk of fatal injuries with Shark I'm nervously watching Tiger and Squirrel chase each other between the turrets before scaring me witless by suddenly disappearing as we come upon a fifty foot drop on both sides.

By the time we have to go to pick up the luggage and catch the evening flight home, Shark, Squirrel and Tiger all say they'd like to stay another hour. I'm just glad to be back once more on the paved area of the courtyard where I can't see any opportunity to be disemboweled, impaled on a tree or smashed to pieces on the flagstones. In fact the only hazard I can see is me slipping on the smooth stones in my eagerness to get to the flat bits, or the junior Grits pushing each other into the prickly bush by the toilets in an attempt to get out of the way of the patrolling cat.

'We can't stay any longer' I say briskly. 'And anyway' I add, 'I think I might be going off castles'.

Fish

Back with our '10 things to do in Lisbon' guide. Actually, after two minutes, we could abandon it, because we know exactly what we're doing today, guide or no guide. We're going to see the fish. There's no escape. It's the Oceanarium, otherwise Shark will explode.

Shark has been fascinated with fish since, well, forever. Not like anything else. Thomas the Tank Engine came and went. At age three, Shark, Squirrel and Tiger all loved Thomas so much there were daily squabbles about him, sometimes with weapons. Probably in practice for when boyfriend Kevin comes round in ten years time, poor sod. But unlike the future Kevin, I could make five of the cheeky little Thomas engine faces appear: Shark, Squirrel and Tiger each had one to carry about, while two more could be stuck under the sofa and it didn't matter. Well Thomas passed on, and now he's in a box with Percy and Diesel and all his chums waiting for Grit to get her act together on ebay. But while Thomas went, fish stayed.

Tiger likes fish. Squirrel says fish are fun. But for Shark, fish are essential. Shark wants to be a diver, or a marine biologist, or a chef. One who doesn't cook fish, obviously. If there's a whiff of Dig's salmon about, she complains for up to an hour about whether the fish liked the experience of being caught and eaten. It's like having your own little fish union leader, sitting in front of you with a glower and a set of demands.

So today there's no contest. With Lisbon boasting one of the world's most impressive tanks of fish, we go and see fish. Correction. Today we worship fish. Big ones, little ones, ones with funny faces and smiles, ugly ones that skulk around corners or lie flattened under the sand. And I ignore the fish, but take photographs of Shark, with her nose pressed against the glass, swimming with the Sun fish.

Staying local

I have to put the '10 things to do with kids in Lisbon' plan aside today because Dig is working. On working days, my co-worker's absent, so I keep my ambitions local.

My first problem without a co-worker is managing triplets across town. For a start, I have only two hands. Crossing roads, getting on buses, getting off trams, going down escalators or through tunnels to metro stations - indeed making sure everyone is walking in the same direction at the same time, and not engrossed in some petty squabble at the roadside about the colour green - is all hard work. Add to this I have to read a bus timetable, work out the ticketing system or extract information using bad Spanish gathered at age 14 while Squirrel is crying. Tiger's stood on her foot because Tiger saw a dog, and Shark is hanging onto my coat because of the mass hysteria that seeps through everyone whenever Tiger sees a dog. This is all a challenge anytime, and I'm not up to that everyday, particularly when I've had more to drink than is advisable last night down the pizzeria.

My second problem is that whenever Dig's busy, actually earning the money that allows us to do this thing in the first place, the kids all hate his absence. They fight, they argue, they pick fault, they scream. The minute Dig walks back in the room, they all fall asleep like angels, utterly emotionally exhausted with the trials of the day. So if someone's looking like they're about to go beserk, if we're not too far from our hotel I can march back indignantly, if indiscreetly, and I don't have to haul a screaming child on a tram, or a metro or a bus.

So today we go to see the great view into Lisbon from the top of Parco Eduardo II and come back down to play in the playground that my kids-&-Lisbon research has thrown up. It's all a short walk from the hotel. Which is just as well. Because Shark has a major scream in the playground and I have to march back with her trailing behind. I shall say no more about the scream, simply that it involved a lot of snot and a lot of watching French people. And I'm glad that today I kept it local.

Kids in Lisbon

Today we are armed with '10 things to do with kids in Lisbon' which I've ripped out from Ruk's diary somewhere in blogland. Running down the Liberdade, sliding over the tiled pavements and shouting doesn't seem to be one of them, so I tell Shark to shut up, walk, and look where she is going because Lisbon is notoriously crime ridden and she may be stolen at any moment.

OK then, probably not. I wouldn't take a chance with Shark. She's as heavy as a mule and has a kick like one too. And she didn't get her nickname for nothing with those fangs. On top of that, there's the shouting she has to do. This is basically along the lines of 'I have to walk like this, a sister is pushing me'. On balance, she's probably safe.

First thing up today is education, besides screaming in the Liberdade. At home we've been slogging away at our Explorers project, finding out all about Vasco de Gama in preparation for the big event when we can walk down into Vasco de Gama town, see his model boat, look at his maps, go up his street and eat his pizza. In fact it doesn't take us long to realise that he's the Daddy round here, so no messing with the name.

At the Maritime Museum, Squirrel dutifully copies out information on frigates, and Mummy Grit does her teaching job in front of a Vasco de Gama model boat, so now that's done, we can enjoy ourselves.

And we do. Shark says the monastery is very nice but she wouldn't want to live there. Tiger grumbles and squabbles going up and down the steps of the Belem tower. Squirrel buys herself an ice cream which immediately sparks off demands all round, and we all linger over the view of the river from the cafe, which means we miss out on the electricity museum, because it closes before we get there.

At the end of a long day we negotiate the transport system back to the hotel and eat pizza en route. Pizza is in compensation to Shark, Squirrel and Tiger for dragging them off to a small restaurant last night where Mummy Grit and Daddy Dig had a splendid meal while the juniors all collapsed in their chairs or went face down into a platter of rice and fell asleep.

And my goodness, those Lisbon pickpockets are good. Their haul today is one camera, which is pretty good going considering Dig says he would have had it shoved down his underpants for most of the day, if only we hadn't complained when he was getting it in and out.

Off we go

Bleary-eyed, this morning I took Squirrel off to her ballet exam class for 8.45. I upset the other ballet mums as usual, then it's back home for lunch and pre-flight argument about whether Tiger can take three unicorns and a leopard on board in her luggage. Squirrel has her toothpaste confiscated. Shark gets given a biscuit and told to sit on the stairs and wait and stop shouting. That's mummy Grit's job. Then Grit gets dressed up in her new black jeans and we all fly to Lisbon. In an aeroplane, obviously. We haven't got wings.