Lisbon Lovin'

February 25th-March 1st I traveled with some friends to Portugal. A very belated post about everything Lisbon...

February 28th was Día de Andalucía here in España, and school was canceled to celebrate. Most of the kids took advantage of this 4-day weekend to travel. I planned a trip to Lisbon, Portugal with three girls from Tufts University that I met on my program - Elley, Erica and Susan. When I made my list of places to travel while in Spain, Portugal was at the top so I was super excited to go. We arrived in Lisbon early Friday morning and left late Sunday night so we had three whole days to explore the city. In those three days I fell in love, and I fell hard. Lisbon is one of the most beautiful, interesting places that I have ever been. It is a big city, but very compact which makes getting around easy on foot, or by bus/metro.

Lisbon and San Francisco are often referred to as sister cities because they look so much alike. Both are extremely hilly, have quaint trolley systems, and the Golden Gate Bridge. Okay, so maybe it's not the same bridge but the '25th of April' bridge in Lisbon was built by the same group of people that built the Golden Gate bridge in San Fran and they are strikingly similar (http://www.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de/staff/pfreire/paulo/Lisboa_ponte25deabril.jpg). The weather was terrible while we were there, clouds, rain, and ridiculously strong winds but we had a great time anyway, and the weather just made the trip a little more interesting. I didn't really know what to expect from Portuguese food before we left but I was very pleasantly surprised. The food was honestly one of my favorite parts of the trip (as you'll be able to tell from the rest of this post), I LOVED almost everything that we ate, and it was all really affordable.

We began our journey at 11pm on Thursday night, catching an overnight bus from Sevilla to Lisbon. The bus was really nice, they played a movie for the first couple of hours and the seats could lay back but despite that it was a long, mostly sleepless 7-hour ride. We arrived in Lisbon at 6am (they are 1 hour behind Sevilla), deciphered enough Portuguese to purchase our metro passes and groggily found our way through the dark, winding streets to our hostel. For the record, Portuguese and Spanish are NOT similar languages. We could translate a few words here and there but most of the time I had no idea what was being said or written. An interesting fact for you all, (according to my tour guide) many Japanese words and Portuguese words are very similar because Portugal was the first Western country to establish a trade route with Japan and the two cultures have had a long period of contact.

We stayed at the Oasis Backpacker's Hostel and it was really incredible. First of all, it was inexpensive which is always a plus, but the rooms were super clean, the beds were comfortable, and the shower was amazing. We stayed in a 6-person room with 3 sets of bunk beds and a private bathroom. However, when we got to the hostel at 7am we couldn't check in yet but the guy behind the front desk let us drop our bags off in the laundry room. We ate breakfast at a little café we had passed on our way down the hill, and planned out our day. We went back to the hostel, took turns cleaning up in the downstairs bathroom and headed out to hit up all of the tourist sights in downtown.

We toured the Cathedral and some smaller churches that we passed, and hiked around the Castle of Saint George, which offered gorgeous views of the whole city and the coast. We had a list of recommended restaurants, so for lunch we decided to try one out. Walking through the city trying to find the restaurant we got caught in a massive downpour. Even with an umbrella, we were all soaked in a matter of minutes and the streets were like rivers with so much water running down the hills. So instead of continuing on to the restaurant we ducked into the next place we came across. It happened to be a kebab restaurant, and we all ordered kebab sandwiches because it was one of the only things on the menu that we could understand and we wanted food quickly. Oh my goodness, it was one of the greatest things I have ever eaten. Some sort of shredded meat, a garlicky white sauce, lettuce, tomato on a toasted bun. It was HUGE and came in a little wrapper/envelope so that it didn't fall apart while I was eating it. I made a huge mess of myself but it was well worth it.

When we got to the hostel we checked in officially, made it to our room and crashed for 3-hour naps. We woke up, showered and got ready to go out for dinner. We made it to the restaurant we were looking for during lunch that serves traditional Portuguese food. We ordered different dishes and shared, trying roasted chicken, cod (what Portugal is known for. I'm not a big fish person but I really liked this one), a seafood curry, and roasted pork. With a bottle of red wine, a bottle of white wine and 2 ice cream-esque desserts it was a perfect meal.

After dinner we went back to the hostel and mingled with the rest of the guests in the super nice kitchen/dining room/living room. We met some girls from California who are also studying in Spain, a guy who is actually studying in Sevilla this semester (who we ran into randomly last weekend in a bar in Sevilla, pretty crazy), and a girl from Argentina named Sol. We all decided to go out and try to find a place to listen to Fado music. We found a club that had a show starting in 5 minutes, and as long as we each drank 5 euros worth of drinks entrance was free. We ordered pitchers of sangria and enjoyed the show. Fado is a traditional Portuguese music style (similar to Flamenco in Spain). Typically there is a singer accompanied by guitar/mandolin type music. I wish that I could explain the vocal sounds of Fado music, they are strong, sad, and dramatic, but it's really something you need to experience. The show was pretty incredible, and Sol speaks Portuguese (as well as Argentinean Spanish, Catalan, and a little French) so she could translate what was happening in the song. All of the songs were really sad, but beautiful.

The next day we had signed up for something called the We Hate Tourism Tours van tour offered through our hostel. Little did we know but this was going to make our trip. There's a guy who works at the hostel named Bruno. He was born and raised in Lisbon, is absolutely in love with the city and surfing. Working at the hostel he realized that lots of people were leaving Lisbon without seeing all of the 'important' parts or having truly authentic Lisbon experiences. To fix this he started offering tours himself, in his huge, red 9-person van. Elley, Erica, Susan and I joined 4 other girls who are studying in Madrid on this all-day tour. Bruno took us to all of the hot spots in Lisbon and the surrounding cities: Sintra, Belem, and Cascais. Along the way we stopped at many small bakeries to sample the very best pastries that Portugal has to offer. As Bruno explained, the Portuguese love sugar more than anything, and one has never truly experienced Portugal if they have not tasted the sweets. Bruno was full of life advice and just listening to him would have made the tour worthwhile. In addition to the incredible desserts, we ate a chorizo (Iberian sausage) fresh bread calzone creation at a cute little roadside stand/trailer. Bruno has the owner's phone number so he calls her to let her know he will be stopping by with a tour. When we got there she was just pulling 9 of these amazing things out of the oven so they were fresh. Heavenly.

During the course of the day we visited and hiked the grounds of the Palacio de Pena in Sintra, which was built high on a hill by a king for his queen to express his love for her. It was beautiful, and the grounds legit reminded me of a scene from Fellowship of the Ring. We stopped at the western-most point of continental Europe and nearly got blown into the ocean by the wind. I'm not exaggerating, I've never been in wind like that, you could lean back and it would hold you up. We saw the Tower of Belem, which was built to welcome ships returning from the New World to Portugal, a huge monument built for all of the great Portuguese explorers, shipmen and mapmakers, and the Jeronimos Monastery. We also made a short stop at beach in between Cascais and Belem. It was so great to take my shoes off and walk through the sand! The beach has a steep sand ledge that drops off into the ocean, and the beach is eroding more and more every day. While we were there, huge chunks of sand would suddenly drop off into the water, making the beach a few feet shorter. It was crazy to watch. We were going to drive along the ocean into Belem but the police had closed down the highways because the waves were too high and were coming up over the road. We parked the car as close as we could and watched these unbelievable waves; I've never seen anything like it.

After our awesome van tour we walked over to a local fruit stand that was up the hill from the hostel and bought some fresh fruit and a cheesy bread thing called pao de queijo and had a picnic on our room floor. After some more epic naps we got dressed up, went out for dinner (once again, fantastic food and wine), and tried to find a place to go dancing. We found a few clubs but we were about 30 years too young. I've never seen so many 'older' people having such a great time. At 3 in the morning the club was packed with people who were old enough to be my parents rocking out to '70s and '80s music. We decided to leave the partying to them and headed to bed.

The next day we checked out, but once again left our bags in the laundry room so we could explore the city without them. We hopped on a tram to see where it would take us. We ended up having a super interesting conversation with the tram driver about everything from international politics to our shared love of pancakes and maple syrup. We rode the tram for over an hour just so we could keep talking to her. After that we took the metro to a different 'zone' of Lisbon to visit the Gulbenkian Museum, then grabbed our stuff at the hostel and hit up the bus station. The ride home was much better than the ride in, probably because we were so tired. We got in to Sevilla at 4am, I came home and crashed until 2pm.

All in all, an amazing weekend. If any of you ever have the opportunity to visit Lisbon, take it! You won't regret it.