Portugal (Lisbon to be specific)

WARNING: VERY LONG BLOG!! MAKE SURE YOU HAVE TIME TO READ IT IF YOU REALLY WANT TO! lol I would of course like everyone to read it, I just don't wanna get yelled at for having an insanely long blog without first warning people. I hope you enjoy Portugal through my experiences just as I experienced it with my own eyes. :)

Portugal. Wow. I don’t know if there is any way to put into words my experiences of Portugal. At first I fell in love with Spain and all its beauty and city life, but then I came to Portugal. I think Portugal stole my heart from Spain. :) They are two adjoining countries, but their differences are immense. Everything from the food, music, people and the historical sites all have their own unique character. I also learned that Lisbon is a fairly new city when it comes to Europe because the original Lisbon was destroyed by an earthquake in like 1775. Whole city. Gone. But like any good European country, they got back up and rebuilt the whole city all over again, but with the stly of the 18th century. Hence it’s a bit more modern than Spain. Another little tid bit about Lisbon. IT’S SLIPPERY! They have little ceramic tiles for sidewalks over there instead of asphalt so it’s very smooth and one wrong move will send you flying. I almost ate it like 20 times. AND those lil itty bitty tiles were all laid BY HAND! One by one..talk about a sucky job. But it’s amazing because they are all perfectly lined and centered. Just one more thing to love about Lisbon.


Let’s start now with food. Omg. A. MA. ZING. They have this one famous dish called “bacalao.” It’s salted cod fish in general but there is just something about it that makes it so much different from any other cod fish I’ve had. Maybe it’s in the way they prepare it or the oil they cook it in but it is sooooooo good!! Another really good dish I had was called “arroz com marisco.” It’s very similar to the Spanish “paella” dish, (PS if any of you reading have no idea what paella or arroz com marisco is…go look online. I’m sure they have lovely pictures. :D ) but with more water. It’s like a paella soup if you will. It took me a while to get pver the fact that they actually put WHOLE shrimp in the rice dish, meaning you have to cut the lil head off while it’s bulging eyeballs are looking at you, but hunger will do funny things to people. Last thing about the food I want to mention are the desserts. Another OMG moment in my life. Their pastries are to die for..I’m not sure how many I ate while we were there, but I’m sure a scale would tell me. Most desserts are croissant like, but then have different fillings and most importantly, CHOCOLATE. So many different chocolates, so little time. That just gives me another reason to come back to this amazing city. :)


The people there are amazing. So nice and very willing to help any way they can. It was weird for me being in a country where I didn’t really know the language too well. Portuguese and Spanish are very very close in the spelling of the language, but the pronunciation is so different. The letters look French, they speak like German’s, yet have an Italian sound. If you ever can’t figure out what language someone is speaking in Europe, it’s probably Portuguese. Many people in Lisbon speak English which is helpful, but very broken and with weird accents. But more than once people where more than willing to SHOW us where something was, rather than just give directions. Portugal, I love you for that.
I’d like to dedicate these next few paragraphs to all my memories of Portugal. If you wanna read go for it. :) I wanna be able to remember everything that happened in Portugal for the rest of my life, so here it goes…


Day 1:
We leave from Sevilla at 8:00 in the morning. Two charter buses are waiting to take all the kids to Lisbon. Little did I know that Lisbon is like 5½ -6 hours away from Sevilla..there go my geography skills..When we get into Portugal we entered in of a bridge called the “25th of April” bridge. Weird name for a bridge, but apparently on that day in a revolution occurred and the people overthrew their dictator. In honor of that day they renamed the bridge of the dictator, to the day of the year. It seriously looks like a smaller version of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco! It’s got that golden/orange color and same ability to sway back and forth in case of an earthquake. After we got semi settled in at the hotel, the group went for a walking tour of the city and one site in particular, El Castillo de San Jorge. To get to the castle however we had to walk up at least 20 hills. Not huge hills, but big enough. It’s weird how Lisbon and San Francisco have so much in common. The castle was amazing. It was like taking another amazing step back into time. You could feel the presence of all the kings and queens/ other important people of back in the day. Once again everything was just as it was 400 years ago. The views were also amazing. From the top you could see all of Lisbon. When I looked down I could imagine not only the painful fall one would endure if one slipped, but also what it must have been like defending this grand fortress. I was actually brave enough to climb to the top of one of the lookout towers and must say, I’m glad I didn’t have that job.


After the castle we were given free time in Lisbon. My friend Mitzi and I walked around and of course went shopping. :) I must say Portugal has got some style too. We walked from store to store and had the most amazing food. A pre-dinner dessert of waffle, mint ice cream, whipped cream, and chocolate sauce, and then a dinner to die for. We ate at this restaurant called “Cervejaria Trindade.” Best recommendation I’ve ever received. Although it took us a while to find the restaurant, we climbed a few hills, asked about a dozen people, and finally made it to our destination with very little help from a map. Go us. :) There we tried the “arroz com mariscos” and absolutely loved it. We had great time and even got some great quotes out of the evening such as, “I wanna cut his eyeball” and “I don’t even know how to use this knife right now.” All said with love from yours truly. Not sure why I always have to be the one to say random retarded stuff, but I guess that’s just what makes me special. :)


We walked the streets for a little while longer and then decided to call it an early night with plenty of time to explore Lisbon’s night life the next day.


Day 2
The next day the group visited “El Monasterio de Los Jerónimos” and “La Torre de Belém.” The monastery was absolutely gorgeous. Way smaller than the cathedral in Sevilla, but still the same breath taking moments. The best thing about the monastery was the court yard patio within the monastery. I really don’t understand how they built these things without the use of cranes and heavy power tools. I’m not really sure humans could make these buildings anymore. It seems we’ve lost our creative side and always go for the cheap and fast way to put up a building. It took these people YEARS, DECADES, CENTURIES to build this stuff and it certainly shows that time and good ol fashion elbow grease pay off.


After the monastery we went to an fortress in the middle of the ocean, “La Torre de Belém.” It’s not quite in the middle of the ocean, but when the tide is high there is water all around it. Not quite as fascinating as the monastery, but still a sight to be seen. It had some cannon’s and military stuff, but that’s about it.


Next on the agenda was free time again. :) We spilt off into our own separate groups and all did our own thing. I went with a group of 5 other people to another castle called “Palacio de Pena” in a little city called Sintra. I know you’re all thinking why the heck would you go to another castle? Didn’t you just come from one? Well yes..yes we just saw a castle the other day, but this one was even more beautiful than the one before. I am honestly glad I went to see another castle because this one was too good to miss.


To get to Sintra and the castle, however, was a bit difficult. Not impossible just difficult. We took a train from Lisbon to Sintra, then a very slow bus to the top of this HUGE mountain to where the castle was. I don’t know if I’ve ever been so scared on a bus ride before. I’m not sure how the bus driver got around the winding streets of the mountain, but I give him huge props. I definitely thought there wasn’t enough room for a car on these roads much less a bus, but somehow he knew all the tricks to get that gigantic bus to the top of that hill. But as luck would have it the bus only takes you to the semi top of this hill. You can pay another 2 euro to ride a different bus to the actual castle on the actual top hill. As poor studying abroad college students we decided to nix the extra 2 euro ride and give our legs a nice workout…I almost died. Maybe it was the shoes I was wearing or the fact that I really haven’t exercised since I’ve been here, but that hill kicked my ass. And it was only like a 7 minute walk. “Hello uneven cobble stone road leading up to ginormous castle, meet my fat ass.”


We FINALLY make it to the top and yet again must pay to get in. I suppose the economy has hit more countries than just the United States. We walk into the castle and are blown away by the beauty of it all. There are so many rooms just on the outside terrace that I lost count how many we visited. Although we were all very excited about the outside of the castle, little did we know about the amazing room with a view that lay ahead. We walk onto a patio and instantly get an amazing view of Portugal. None of us could say anything for a solid 2 minutes. The view was literally, “breath taking.” I’m never sure if I’ll be able to describe the feeling that I felt in those two minutes, but it had to be one of complete happiness. I have never felt so content in my entire life. The brisk cool air, sound of silence, the green rolling hills in the background, and the soft howl of the wind brought tears to my eyes. I have never cried from just looking at a view before, but this one would bring any hardened person to his knees. For two minutes nothing mattered. It didn’t matter that I was afraid of heights. It didn’t matter that I was thousands of miles away from home. It didn’t matter that I was cold and tired. All that mattered to me in that instant was the feeling of overwhelming joy and satisfaction in a way that I never thought possible.


After a long moment of silence and personal thinking time, we got back into a group and took some amazing pictures as well. I tried to capture the images I saw with my eyes through the lens of my camera, but I’m not sure any photograph will ever compare to the real thing. Deciding we must see the rest of the castle, we walked through the inside and looked at all the royal rooms. Once again no pictures allowed. The pictures in my mind will stay there forever until the day they finally do allow photos of the inside of the castle.


As we were trying to find our way out of the castle when we were done walking inside we managed to semi crash a wedding reception! We couldn’t find the stairs to go down so instead of asking, we decided to open the random closed door of the castle. It did have stairs which was a good thing, but when we got to the door at the bottom of the stair case we opened it to find the beginning stages of a wedding reception taking place. Oops. Needless to say we walk right back up and asked some one for help. :)


Now if you remember way back when in this blog when I explained the long trip up to the top of the castle, getting back down was even harder. We walk down to where the first bus dropped us off and saw a huge line of people. Not a problem since the last bus wasn’t until 8 and it was only around 6:30 or 7:00. Well apparently there was a problem. No bus had been up the hill for about an hour and people had been standing in line since then! Apparently there was some festival going on down below and they had closed the one and only road up to the castle. Awesome. Some people were determined to stay and wait til the festival was over and some started walking down the hill since none of the people working at the castle had any idea when the festival was to be over. Just as we were debating on what to do, wait in line or walk for an hour down a windy road, two buses come around the corner which filled everyone with a “Hallelujah I’ve been saved!” feeling. But only two buses for at least 60 people did not look promising.


The first bus fills up fast takes off with still many more people in the street all hoping to get on this one last bus. Since we had just arrived at the stop, we were second to last in line. Our chances of getting on that bus were slim to none. But before we knew it we were getting closer and closer to the door of the bus. Now whether the bus driver was super nice or crazy to have let this many people on a bus will never be known, he managed to fit all of the people on that one bus. We were packed like sardines. “Keep going, keep going,” people would say outside encouraging the lucky people already on the bus to move further and further back. It was a sight to be seen. Now of course the way down was even worse than the way up just because of the shear over capacity of this vehicle. I was convinced one wrong turn and the bus would tumble down the hill. But this was obviously not the first time this bus driver had had to make this trip before. He was marvelous. He got us down all safely and even managed to pick up 2 more people on the way. We got some pictures of the over crowded bus, available for your enjoyment on facebook.com


As if the day couldn’t get any more fun/comical it definitely did. After arriving once again to Lisbon we went out to dinner, went back to the hotel and decided to explore Lisbon at night. Now however, it was not just our small group of 6 to the castle but more like 13. We went to a somewhat touristy part of town, but it was still so fun. We went into a discoteca, which for all you American people is not a Disco nor do they dance Disco there. It’s a mix between a dance club and just a social gathering spot where most people in Europe meet on the weekends. We literally danced the night away and had an amazing time. It was the most fun I’ve had this whole time in Europe. The mix of people, energy, and happiness I was feeling that day all came together for these last few night hours in Lisbon.



Although I was only able to visit Lisbon for two short days, I have fallen in love. Not with anyone in particular, but with the city and vibe of Portugal. I would recommend this town to anyone and hope to visit it again very soon. Maybe even another weekend while I’m her studying in Spain. Hopefully the studying part won’t get in the way of my love for Portugal. Sorry Spain, but Portugal captured my heart this weekend. I can’t escape the obsession I have with Portugal now. Only time will tell if Spain can win my heart back


In the words of my dear friend Enrique Ingesias…
“Aunque corras, te escondas, No puedes escapar.."