Week 16: Lovely Lisboa

Hello everyone!

Sorry this is so late--I've been having wifi problems!

So two weekends ago, we had a nice little 5-day break from classes [the puente de Mayo] and my friends Amber and Ray, and I decided to go to Lisboa, Portugal. Lisboa is absolutely amazing. It looks like its straight out of the 1800s with cute little tram cars, cobble stone streets, windy and narrow roads. It actually reminded us a lot of San Francisco [complete with a replica of the Golden Gate Bridge] because its set into a bay, its very hilly, and its got trams too!

trams

We stayed at Alfama Patio Hostel--if you're ever in Lisboa, I highly recommend staying there or at one of their sister hostels. It was awesome, they had walking tours and dinner every night (for only, like, 8 euro!). It was really great because we had full access to the other two sister hostels. We met a lot of really cool people: a Swedish couple, a girl from Australia/UK, and Manuel who was from El Salvador but living in Vienna. We ended up spending pretty much all day on Thursday and Saturday with him, which was nice because we could practice our Spanish while there!

Something really weird for us [espesh because it was our first time outside of Spain] was the language barrier. We can all read Portuguese pretty well, but speaking/listening to it is a completely different story. It sounds nothing like Spanish. It was weird not being able to communicate easily with people, and Spanish has become such a reflex for me that anytime I would bump into someone, I'd say "Perdona" or "lo siento". It was definitely really weird, but now that I've been to Portugal I really, really want to learn Portuguese.

We got there late on Wednesday, so we pretty much just wandered around and got ourselves oriented with the city. On Thursday, we did a walking tour with our hostel through Castle Hill and Alfama. It was really pretty and a lot of fun. We learned that Lisboa had a huge earthquake that caused fires and floods around 1750 so it had to be completely rebuilt in the early 1800s and which is why a lot of the architecture looks very 1800s-y. After the walking tour, we got some lunch with our friend Manuel. Before heading out to Belem [an area of the city, a little bit outside the city], we got Santini ice cream--seriously the best ice cream I've ever had. The fruit flavors are 100% fruit, no syrups or anything, they were amazing. We may or may not have gotten it every day we were in Lisboa!

While in Belem we went to the Torre do Belem which was along the river. We also went to the bakery where they sell Pastel de Belem, which are these delicious custard filled pastries. We also stopped by the Monestario de Jeronimos, which was really pretty.

On Friday, we did a day trip out to Sintra [Ams--Johnny Depp lives here!] with this company called We Hate Tourism [I know, the irony]. It was awesome! We started out nice and early and went to Sintra. We had some delicious ricotta-cheese pastries--they tasted exactly like monkey bread! We wandered around the town a bit before heading to one of the many castles near there. The one we went to was designed by a Portuguese free mason with the help of an Italian architect. It was really cool, there were all these tunnels connecting the different buildings and wells that we could explore. Not gonna lie, it was a little creepy and very spider filled, but it was still a lot of fun!
 
We got lunch at the end of the world. Cabo da Roca is the western most point of continental Europe. Supposedly on really clear days you can see the Statue of Liberty. It was incredibly to see, we could pretty much see for miles and miles and it was just clear blue water and blue skies.

We wrapped up our day trip with [another] trip to Santini's and the Belem bakery for some more ice cream and pastries. I swear, I ate so many sweets while I was there--but it was just so good!

On Saturday, we went to Lisboa's version of the Rastro and I got some really awesome street art! We attempted to find St. George's Castle, which meant that we had to climb Castle hill [again]. After walking around in circles and following grafiti-ed arrows that were painted onto buildings, we finally found the Castle. Unfortunately, the line was really long so we didn't end up going in because we had plans for the afternoon with one of the people we met in the hostel. We grabbed some kebabs [my fave!] and headed to the beach for the afternoon. The beach was so nice! Amber and I ventured into the freezing cold Atlantic, which was interesting because there was a huge shelf before it got really deep. We were pretty far out before the water even came up to our waists!

For anyone looking to come to the Iberian Penninsula, get yourself to Lisbon! It's absolutely amazing and its definitely one of my favorite places that I've been to! 

Besitos,
Kelsey

PS: Pictures to come--I'm still having some wifi problems!