Lisbon and Sintra, Portugal

After a short break in Riva I was headed out again for one of my most highly anticipated trips, Portugal and Spain. Portugal is a country that I never even though about going to when I initially found out I was going abroad. And Spain is just Spain....that is exciting enough as it is. We had a day and a half in Riva to get our stuff together before heading to the Airport. Our flight to Lisbon was run by Ryanair's British counterpart EasyJet. It was much of the same with all the theatrics and attempts to rip off the customers. I liked EasyJet a little bit better though because it felt a little bit more like a regular airline. After a fairly uneventful trip we arrived in Lisbon on Tuesday evening.

View from the hostel

Once again it was awesome to get our first views of Portugal walking through the town to our hostel at night time. There were street performers entertaining people at dinner, groups of people hanging out in plazas, and amazing buildings lit up in the night. The first thing I noticed about Lisbon was how hilly the roads were. Everywhere we walked the whole weekend was up and down and up and down with the sidewalks made of the famous Portuguese pavement. The pavement is made up of small laid tessera stones sometimes with an artistic design formed from different colors. It's unbelievable to think that each stone was individually laid like that in a city like Lisbon that has such a grand scale. After a couple metro rides and a short walk we arrived at by far the best hostel I have stayed at yet. We were greeted to a group of employees that immediately felt like best friends. The whole group had just sat down for dinner and after giving us welcome shots started to apologize that they didn't have enough food for us. The chef said he wanted to buy more to include us but he couldn't without knowing when we would arrive. After unpacking we went back downstairs to see people from all different parts of the world doing everything from hanging out around a campfire, to playing guitar inside on the couches, to discussing politics. Everyone was just enjoying each others company experiencing the world. Once again this is by far my favorite part of this study abroad experience. Especially with the election coming up and important policies to be decided, I love to hear perspective from different demographics and places in the world. I could have stayed at this hostel for a month just hanging out and meeting new people all the time.

Market

Unfortunately, there is no time for that when you are only in Europe for as short a time as we are. 2 days in Lisbon means the same as everywhere else, go non-stop to do everything you can with little time for sleep in between. After hanging out at the hostel for a while, the group took us out on a Pub Crawl to see the nightlife in Lisbon. After going to a couple bars in the city we made our way to the beach where we went to an awesome club that was literally on the water. It was a great way to finish the night and get introduced to Portugal. To cap off the night I got some free guitar lessons from a guy from France when I got back to the hostel. I had seen him playing earlier and he was working the front desk and started talking to him about it. We played until about 5 am and by the end I could hold my own on Horse With No Name by America.

The next morning was a little bit later than usual to compensate for the late night. We were still up in time for the free breakfast at the hostel though before heading off on walking tour. Our tour guide was one of the employees from the hostel who was originally from Edinburgh, Scotland named Louis. He had lived in Lisbon for a couple years and was very knowledgeable of the area. Our first stop was a huge market right near the hostel with all kinds of fresh fruit and produce. The rest of the day we walked around the city seeing all the main sites including The Vasco da Gama bridge, Praca de Comercio, and the famous Aqueducts. My favorite part was the main plaza in Downtown Lisbon. It is a huge open square with with all kinds of Restaurants and shops lining the edge and a monument of King Joseph in the middle. The square opens up to a huge ramp that goes down into the Tagus River. Throughout the day, our tour guide told various stories to explain the cultural significance of everything we were seeing. One of the bad things about this walk through Lisbon was the hills that we were constantly going up and down. Even this ended up being a plus though because the rest of the day we saw view after amazing view of the entire city, each one being better than before.

Start of the art exhibition in the village

One of the most unique things I have seen in Europe so far is a village that we walked through in one of the older parts of central Lisbon. It had a series of artistic pictures on some of the buildings that were portraits of the actual people that live there. The artist's intentions were to draw attention to the people that make the town great and he tried to capture them in their natural states of happiness in everyday work.

Walking back into the main part of town we came across a group of teenage protesters. They all had signs and would yell and run forward every couple of steps. They were protesting a potential raise in taxes to 65%!!! It is amazing when were complaining about taxes around 20 or 30 in America when the rest of the world is so different. Especially in Portugal where they are having trouble paying for government and have tons of corruption. The easy solution for them is to just astronomically raising taxes. With this quick solution I see the potential for more hard times in Portugal in the future.

Tax protestors

 Lisbon had everything going for it to be my favorite place yet, there was just one last thing I had to try before it clinched. A place cannot truly be my favorite until I try the food. I asked Louis to take us for some good Lisbon food and he did one better, CHEAP good Lisbon food. We went to a small cafe in one of the plazas and got Bifanas for 1.20 euro. A bifana is a simple pork sandwich but it was amazing and filling. Lisbon had officially clinched it as my favorite place, and it only took one day.

Most awkward meal of all time

The next day on the recommendations of many different people we took a day trip to Sintra, about 40 minutes outside of Lisbon on the metro. Sintra is an old town located at the foot of the Sintra mountains with multiple colorful palaces. After walking around the town for a while we took a bus up to the top of one of the mountains to see Pena National Palace. Pena was unique and unlike any other castle we had seen in Europe because of how colorful it was. It was built straight into the mountain with reds, yellows, and even some purple. It was cool that we were able to go into the Castle and walk around all the walls and towers. Once again being at the top gave us some amazing views of Portugal below. Even with cloudy weather it was still amazing. After coming down from the castle we stopped at a restaurant to get some seafood. This turned out to be one of the most awkward and uncomfortable meal experiences I have ever had on this trip and in my life. For the first time we ran into a serious language and culture barrier. For most places in Europe, Menu means 'combo' or a series of options on a fixed menu. This is always a problem but here it was even worse than usual. We asked to see a menu and for the rest of the time we were there the guy made it clear we had to choose between meat or fish, meat or fish, meat or fish. He then made it seem like we would get bread, meat or fish, soup, wine, coffee, and a pastry for 9 euros. This seemed like a great deal so I ordered the fish because I heard Lisbon had great seafood. After the soup my plate came out with an entire fish on it, which wasn't too bad except that every single bite I took had a bunch of small bones in the meat. On top of that that was the last thing he brought us and we just kind of awkwardly sat there trying to get his attention. After a while we decided to leave to get Bifanas at a place down the street and all was good again!!

Pena National Palace

After Sintra we headed back to Lisbon to get ready for our overnight train to Granada. On the way back we stopped at a grocery store and I further confirmed how awesome Portugal is. I got a 2 liter water bottle, 2 bananas, and a smoothie for 97 cents...97 CENTS. That would be like 8 bucks in a America. After saying goodbye to the best hostel and staff we have had yet we headed off for the train station.