Congratulations on the plans for your first trip to Europe! I think Lisbon (Lisboa as they call it in Portugal) is a good intro. I visited for several days 3 years ago and enjoyed it immensely. It was February not November so I'm not sure what difference that will make in weather.

Here are a few tips I can give based on my travels in Portugal, Europe and beyond (currently in Denmark):

• My Portuguese contacts tell me that they can understand Spanish easily but it doesn't work well the other way.

• The AC power voltage is 230 V and they use a different socket but you can easily buy adapters on Amazon. These are the ones I've used since 2013: https://www.amazon.com/OREI-Europe-Adapter-Plug-Schuko/dp/B008JCVF0U. I like them because you can plug two items into them at once and they are useful in many countries. Just check your electronics to ensure any you take are okay with 230 VAC power before planning to use them with the adapters. All phone chargers and laptop chargers should be good to go but some electric razors or trimmers aren't.

• I'm 99.9% sure your Visa bank debit card will work (without knowing the bank or type) however it will probably add a 3% foreign transaction fee to each purchase made in Euros. Not huge but using a debit card may also be less secure. I typically use my Barclay Arrival Plus card since it earns 2x points per dollar and has no foreign transaction fees. It has a nice sign up bonus worth $500 at the moment. Also Charles Schwab has a nice debit card that refunds ATM fees worldwide. This is the card I use to withdraw local currency from ATMs at good FX rates.

• The Metro in Lisbon is very easy to navigate in my opinion. If you exit the airport on foot there is a short walk across the plaza to the airport metro stop and you can take it to the Marquês de Pombal stop right by your hotel (with 1 train line switch). It looks like the cost for that is only EUR 1.45. Super cheap! I had the Lisboa Card when I was there which included unlimited public transport but with trips that low in cost I doubt it's worth buying the Lisboa Card for transport only.

• If you like grass-fed steak (seems like maybe so since I saw your post on ethics of eating meat) a restaurant I can't recommend enough is Cafe Buenos Aires. Maybe it was a one-off but the quality of the meal I enjoyed there and the novelty of the atmosphere compared to any US restaurants has made it stick in my mind as my favorite meal at any restaurant any where to date. Perhaps it was the port. It's about a 1 mile walk or short metro ride from the Hotel Fenix Lisboa. It's very small and intimate so reservations may be needed. I went at about 7PM with my wife and they were about to turn us away before they asked if we could be done by 10PM since the table was reserved. We didn't need more than 3 hrs for our meal so we jumped at the chance. So glad it worked out.

• For extra activities -should you want to know any I would repeat or take a friend to- I would say: Take the roughly 1 hr train to Sintra and visit the remains of the Moorish Castle and Quinta da Regaleira. The latter is a unique "garden" with secret tunnels, underground towers and dark overtones.

• For an ocean/beach/fishing village environment -not sure what it's like in November- visit Cascais (the "s" has a "sh" sound here) which is also a ~1hr train ride from Lisboa.

I'm sure there will be local Steemers at Steemfest Lisbon so maybe some of these ideas are superfluous but I wanted to share them anyway since I thought it was a great destination and hope to go back sometime myself. I'm new to SteemIt so I don't really know about the Steemfest(s) or if they are something I should look into participating in. I'm curious though.