I really could not have had worse luck with the soccer schedules on my trip to Portugal in October. Whether it was Europa League, Champions League or the Portuguese domestic league, the home teams of Lisbon and Porto were playing when I was in those respective cities, but in away matches each and every game. While I’ve had some really fun times at matches in Prague, Rome and Seville that will have to hold me over until my next European adventure. So, to make the best of some bad timing and with my wife sleeping in one morning in Lisbon, I took the opportunity to do a tour of Benfica’s stadium on the outskirts of the city.

Estadio da Luz, you are definitely a beauty.

Stadium tours are always a blast, and this one was no different. Since I’ve been a child, I love those first moments of walking into the seating bowl of a new stadium and taking in the view. Stadiums always feel smaller than I think they should after seeing them on TV for years.

While walking through the seating bowl is a great start, I love the behind the scenes parts of these tours. Like spending some time learning about the history of Benfica, Lisbon’s most popular team, while standing in their dressing room…

… or imaging being behind the podium of a post match press conference answering questions about my amazing managerial tactics that saw the home team through to a crucial win in front of 60,000 adoring fans.

Without a doubt, my favourite part of this tour, and all stadium tours, is the moment you get to walk onto the field as the players would to open a match.

Stepping out of the tunnel and standing at field level here in Lisbon, I tried to image what it would be like to have the eyes of a stadium full of fans on me. Luckily, before stepping onto the field, there was a virtual reality simulation of that exact moment of standing here pre-match listening to the crowd sing and cheer.

While it is strictly forbidden to walk on the actual soccer pitch, I could not resist myself to cheat a little bit when no one was looking so I could say I have actually set foot on Benfica’s field.

I’ve written many times how I am enamoured with team mascots, especially the anthropomorphic kind (like the greatest mascot ever, Youppi!, of the Montreal Expos). This tour of Estadio da Luz had something I wasn’t expecting… the opportunity to get to be face to face with the three mascots of Benfica – their bald eagles.

This last stop on the tour was a great surprise. While my favourite football team is the Philadelphia Eagles, their stadium tour had no real eagles that would stare right through you like this guy did to all of us on the tour. I like the touch of having actual, real eagles as the mascots for Benfica. Our tour guide told us stories of how they fly into the stadium at the start of the game and land on a perch at centre field to complete the team’s logo before the match begins.

While the tour continued into a museum to the team that featured their trophies and a history of all of their players (including three Canadians!) which was also a lot of fun, the stadium was by far my favouite part of the experience. Not as ideal as getting to see a match here, but a great way to spend a quiet morning in Lisbon.