¡Olá Portugal!

Hello! and welcome back to my blog.
Hannah and Sarah came to BARCELONA for cinco dias.
Then, I went to: Portugal: with Hannah and Sarah.

They flew into Barcelona from Italy and were a frazzled little crew. Sarah lost the only form of plastic she brought with her and Hannah's debit card got a hold put on it, OH and Hannah lost her camera in Rome.. So it didn't help that it was raining when they arrived into my city. Either way we had a great time and they were thankful that someone who knew the city could show them the good stuff to see, instead of going on group organized bar crawls. Plus the sun came out for 2 days, AND, well I'll make another blog for that or something.. we went to Primaver Sound Music Festival in Barcelona, and we saw: The Swell Season, Portishead, Cat Power and the Go Team! it rocked.

Lisbon, PORTUGAL:

I had heard only great things about this country so I was really excited to visit for a few days. Unfortunately we only had the chance to get to Lisbon (the capitol) and a small city 45 minutes outside called Sintra. When I make it back to Europe, more Portugal traveling is definitely on my list: Porto, Lagos, etc... It wasn't raining when we arrived, so we were stoked, and I was sweating in shorts so that was even more exciting, FINALLY DRESS SEASON! Ok here goes:

This is where our AeroBus dropped us off from the airport. This is also the entrance to a main street in the city center that just so happened to be the location of our hostel, the nicest/best/inexpensive combined with how awesome it was, hostel. We didn't know that so we still walked in a ten minute loop and realized we were there the whole time.

This is the Oldest cathedral in Lisbon, called: the Se I'm pretty sure. It had to be restored a little bit because during an earthquake or some natural disaster, all the marble on the walls fell off and was destroyed. I was waiting to get a really cool typical picture of the yellow tram car driving by in front of the church but I never got it.


Ok, the tile walls in Lisbon are something to note. Everywhere, every neighborhood, there are beautiful tile walls, some are just portions of the wall or bordering or a lot of the time the whole wall covered in beautiful tiles. I had no idea it was such a Portuguese thing, then I went into the touristy shops and everything either had tile on it or a rooster, I'm still trying to figure that one out. Ok, look:



Lisbon is a very small city... one of the barrios called: Barrio Alto resembled SF a lot.. lots of hill, trams, some old run down buildings, variety of people, you know all of that. Well due to its small size, we pretty much saw everything in a couple days leaving us ample time to relax, because as the girls were already getting exhausted with carrying huge packs around Europe, we decided... Portugal was going to be our vacation FROM vacation.. so on our descent from the Lisbo castle, we found a little gem.. a terrace overlooking the river, bridge and city, covered in couches and reclining chairs. PLUS, the beer was only 1.30E a glass,,, that's a steal. So we spent a bit of time napping in the sun and eating strawberries and fruit smoothies. It was... perfect. Here it is:



This is the view from the terrace...city of Lisbon and the golden gate bridge in the background, ja ja ja

Ok, this is a cannon that shoots over the castle walls, protecting the city. I just really liked the clouds

Entrance to the Lisbo castle. (I like saying Lisbo, sounds like...) Anyways, sort of a lame mote but still pretty cool... It just reminded me of the opening scene in Mulan when the Huns scale the walls and Shin Yu tells the guard to warn the Emperor that the Huns have invaded China then he burns the flag. Sabes?

Another view from the castle, Lisbon is a ciudad antigua




So we woke up on Monday morning, our 2nd day, and had a plan to walk around the city because the 1st day we just saw the castle and stayed in the neighborhood. Well during breakfast (free breakfast included with our reservation) we got talking to our roommate, a young Canadian, who was headed out to Sintra, a small town outside of Lisbon. We had planned to do that our last day, but instead, decided to go with Anthony for a fun day trip. Turned out to be the perfect day to go, because Sintra is just a gem, with a really awesome Moorish Castle and a Palace atop a HUGE mountainside. Luckily, Sintra has become very touristy and there were busses to take you to the top, instead of hiking your own way. Although we weren't stoked to pay the almost 20E they charged to go inside and see both the castle and the palace, we figured that we'd already come all the way out there, it would be a shame to not see them both. They didn't have student discount, which I still can't understand, because what the heck, senior citizens have retirement money right? and we have....student loans... to pay back. Either way, no student discount, but it was happy hour, so we got tickets to both the castle and palace for 13E! alright! There's not much else to say except it sorta looked like the great wall of china, and it had an INCREDIBLE view of Portugal, you could even see all the way to Lisbon... Some of the stairs made me nervous but in the end it was worth it. So enjoy these fotos:

The hike up to the Moorish Castle

The flag says: Sintra in Arabic


Hanner and I at da castle

This climb wasn't easy, I still can't understand how I jumped from a plane at 13,000 feet but had a hard time doin this... cool pic tho huh? Look at Portugal down below!

Our next destination after the castle: The Pena Palace.. took us a bit longer to make that climb



So here are the fotos of the Palace:

Our last night in Lisbon, we had a hankering for a meal that wasn't: Portuguese seafood, a ham and cheese sandwich or shwarma.. So we went wandering through the barrio called Baixa (pronounced like Caixa as in "Caixa Catalunya" or "La Caixa," and those are pronounced like: Ky-sha or for Baixa: By-sha, got it?) And finally, after exiting the slums and ghetto of the city just before dark, we stumbled upon none other then a restaurant called: MEXICAN FOOD (comida mexicana) generic enough but we weren't mistaken what they offered so of course, we were down. We also had learned how to say chili sauce (quería pira-pira) so we were stoked... Side note: Portuguese is similar to: Catalan, Spanish and French. It made me realize how bad I'd like to live in Europe again at some point in my life and conquer more then just Español.. so many languages are tan interconectados and was really cool to actually recognize the similarities. So the mexican restaurant was really cozy and warm and they had those glasses from Mexico with the blue rim around the top and the chairs too, I felt like I was home! Mexican food in Europe is always a little off, because everything is imported and they just don't understand the idea of flavor and spice, but surprisingly, the meal was alllllllright. Hannah and I shared fajitas and sarah got some chicken dish, but we successfully ordered chili sauce, and we left with burning tongues and locationally disoriented in the city.

So that's it for the Portugal blog. I still don't know what the importance of the rooster is, but I bought a patch with one, and maybe I'll know someday. Like I said earlier, I'd really like to see more of Portugal, it's such a beautiful country and I do really like the language, it's super-sexy.

Last trip: Balearic Islands: Ibiza, Mallorca, Menorca...June 13th-18th

ok, bye!

¡Saúde!