This weekend I went on the best trip so far to Lisbon, Portugal. We took an overnight train to Lisboa, and, with a time change we didn't anticipate, ended up in Lisbon at 7:45 am Portugal time, 8:45 am Spanish time, 2:45 am Iowa time. Confused yet?
We ate our breakfast in the train station, and then set out on what was to be our first lousy encounter with Portuguese public transportation. We had weird directions to our hostel, which is really a bungalow (there will be discussion of my feelings on this to come) and we didn't know which bus to take. I had directions saying from the airport take bus 750, and my friend had directions saying to take 750 to our hostel, but 714 back. Really, does 714 only go one way? That makes no sense. After consulting a map, realizing we had no idea where the airport was so that option was out of the running, and also realizing that their maps were about as confusing as possible, we decided to just walk and try our luck. After far too long, we found bus 714! We ran to catch up with it, hopped on, and the bus driver stared at us like we were stupid. After all 7 of us are crowded in the doorway of the bus he finally says "I go up there (points up the street) and stop." Fuck you one way busses. You make no sense. Discouraged and tired and grumpy from carrying our backpacks, we group-huddled it up, and decided to just take a taxi. This ended up being the best idea, since split 3 ways the taxi was only 50 cents more than the bus would have been, a lot faster, and a hell of a lot more convenient.
We got out to our hostel, located in a national park, and checked in around 10 am. Yeah, we wasted that much time getting there. So anyway, checked in and made our way to our bungalow. Now, I am SO not an outdoorsy girl. I hate bugs, I hate the gross humidity, I hate being far away from everything and mostly I hate bugs. So yeah, this was not my cup of tea. But my friends were so excited for this bungalow deal, so I went along with it, and tried so hard to be a good sport all weekend. This got tested Saturday night when a dead spider (didn't know it was dead) fell from the bathroom ceiling, nearly landed on me, and then I couldn't open the bathroom door. It was also tested Friday night when a beatle scurried across the floor near me. I tried so hard, dammit. I apologize to all my friends for my disdain of nature.
So anyway, we settled in, made a game plan, and actually caught a bus into Lisbon! Oh wait, it wasn't that easy. First, the bus passed us as we sat in the bus shelter (oh, sorry, was that not where we were supposed to wait for the bus?) so we had to wait another 20 minutes for the next one. Wow, this is convenient. When we got to Lisbon we went to a train station (weren't we just there? No, it's a different one) to go to Sintra, a nearby town that we'd heard was amazing. So we walked in and started buying tickets. It struck us that the station was oddly empty for 11 am, but we just tried to make the fickle machines work. One of my friends put in a large bill and in attempting to get change back, the machine ran out of coins (note: she was getting 45 euros back. In coins. Shitty luck) so she got a receipt that told her to come back tomorrow to get her change, but, not reading Portuguese none of us knew this until a nice man came up and asked us if we needed help (which we obviously did, because at this point we were trying to explain to a janitor at the train station what happened, but we spoke English and Spanish, and she only spoke Portuguese, so it was failing) and he explained that the train company was on strike that day, so we would have to come back tomorrow to get her change. The rest of us proceeded to buy tickets (with exact change only at this point) and made our way up to the platform. Thanks to the strike, however, that was a very wasted 4 euro, because we could have made it to the platform without tickets, and no one ever checked them. So that was great. Then, also thanks to the strike, the trains were unpredictable, so our 12:20 train ended up not existing and we took the 12:40 train.
After that confusion, we ended up in Sintra. I can only describe Sintra as a fairytale. It was absolutely the most beautiful place in the world. It was almost unreal how pretty it was. We walked around some attempting to find a tourism office, and on our way saw the beautiful town and tried some cherry liquor in a chocolate cup! It tasted like a chocolate covered cherry! After that, and some leisurely walking, we arrived at the tourism office. The extremely helpful man pointed out all the palaces in Sintra (4) and prices. The most famous, the Palacio de Pena, was a 4 euro bus ride and 9 euro entrance fee away, but two of my friends and I decided it was worth it while the others stayed to walk around the city. After getting lost on our way to the bus stop, we hopped on a bus, paid for our tickets, and walked through a beautiful park on our way up to the palace. We admired the view from the palace and the outside of it for awhile before heading inside. It was absolutely beautiful. It was also relatively new, as far as palaces go, since the last person to lived there lived there only 100 years ago. The walls were brightly colored, the furniture was ornate and amazing, and the artwork was awesome. It was rich and eloquent, but also warm and welcoming. I absolutely loved it.
After we were done at the palace, we decided to take a winding walk through the parks to get back out and meet our friends at 6. The parks were absolutely amazing. We found beautiful flowers, amazing ponds, and a duck house (yeah, you tell me, because I don't know). It was just so beautiful. When we got out it was about 5:55, and we knew we'd be late to meet our friends, but not by much. Right outside the gate, however, was a sign saying that the last bus left at 5:50! We were a little upset at that, because let me tell you, it wasn't a short walk into town. However, after talking to a worker, we discovered the sign lied, and the bus should be coming around 6, and the last bus was at 6:40. What he really meant, however, was that the next and last bus came at 6:40. We sat and had a lovely chat, but were definitely way late to meeting our friends. When we made it back into town, we had coffee and french fries (nice combination) and then decided to buy groceries there so we could just go back to Lisbon, straight to our hostel, and cook dinner. We found a little market, but they were closing shop right as we arrived. The amazing man reopened just for us! We bought pasta, vegetables, and cake, and I am willing to bet he gave us discounts on stuff too, because my 1.45 euro chips and 1 euro candy bar equalled 2 euro. Work that one out. The amazingly nice man taught us a little Portuguese (goodnight, good day, etc) and we headed home.
The train ride was smooth, and we were lucky enough to catch bus 750 from right oustside the station! As we were nearing the edge of town, the driver stopped, however, and told us to all get off! We were confused, as we knew there were more stops (like our hostel, sir) but he informed us that it was the end of his shift and we would have to get on the next bus and pay for another ticket. The next bus, however, didn't seem to want to come, so, being tired and hungry, again we resorted to taxis.
Apon arrival in our hostel we cooked dinner, relaxed, talked, and went to bed. I slept with creepy crawly feeling all night. Did I mention I'm not an outdoorsy girl?
Saturday morning we had a leisurely breakfast and made our way into the city. We wanted to find a market, but didn't know exactly where it was. We did know, however, that we had to find a church to indicate the correct street. There are a lot churches in Lisbon, this didn't help much. On our way we saw a sign for free samples of port wine in a shop, so we stopped in and had some. We asked the women in the shop for directions, they pointed out the way to go, and narrowed down our church search to a white church. This also proved not to help, as we passed 3 white churches before finding the correct one, and eventually the market. We spent awhile there, and then headed to lunch. After lunch it started to rain, so we decided to make our way to the train station to get my friend's change, and a tourism office, to find out what to do. We stumbled on a Starbucks as the rain picked up, and hurried inside for warmth. This ended up being a great decision, because it turned out that this Starbucks was also in the train station! We got the change, had some coffee, and waited for the rain to subside before heading to the tourism office. They told us almost everything was free on Sunday, so we postponed all touristy things until the next day, and decided we really wanted to see a Fado, which is a dinner and show thing where the sing to you as you eat. We went and made reservations at a Fado restaurant, and then decided to take a trolley ride. The trolley ride was fun, but out in the middle of nowhere (as in nowhere close to where we wanted to be) he stopped, made us all get off, buy new tickets, and get back on. That made sense.
We rode the trolley back into the center of the city and then went to find an elevator tower thing to see the city at night. My friend had done research and knew of a way to get in for free, so we took and adventure and entered through a skywalk in the back instead of paying the entrance fee. It was absolutely beautiful up there! The view was astounding. I wish the boy could have been there to see it. It was so amazing. After awwing over the view for awhile, we headed back to our restaurant. The Fado was really good. The singing was cool, and the food was delicious. We had trouble with the bill (taxes? bad math? We'll never know) but eventually just paid extra and left. Some of my friends wanted to go out, but some of us were exhausted and just headed back to the hostel. At the hostel I had the spider adventure mentioned at the beginning. Did I mention I hate nature?
Sunday a surprise time change hit us, and we woke up an hour earlier than planned! Damn you, daylight savings! We packed up, checked out, and headed into the city. We first hit up the Belem neighborhood where we saw a really cool Monestary, the monument of discovery, and the tower of Belem. Then we went and grabbed lunch and had perhaps the best pastry ever. Then we took taxis up to a castle in the center of the city (by this point we had lost all faith in the busses) and saw that. It was pretty cool, and we all had fun, but by this point we were also exhausted from carrying around our heavy backpacks all day. Two of the girls decided to go to church while the rest of us called it a day and headed to the train station where we did homework, ate, and chilled before our overnight train back to Caceres. In combination with losing an hour for daylight savings, we also lost an hour coming back into Spain. Some people may have missed that memo, and after returning home at 5:30 am forgot to adjust their clocks. There were a few tardies Monday morning (I am proud to say I was not one of them).
Lisbon was absolutely amazing, and I loved every minute of it. So much so that I told the boy about 100 times that I really wanted to honeymoon there! I feel in love with Lisbon.
Monday was my birthday. When I came home from school, my host mom informed me that I had a large package waiting! I opened it up, and saw the most beautiful bouquet of over 2 dozen red roses from the boy! Even though he's in Afghanistan, he ordered me flowers for my birthday! I've never gotten flowers before, so it was really really sweet. There was also a little bottle of champaign with it, and a stuffed dog that said Best Friend on the shirt. That made me laugh. Apparently he ordered a stuffed bear that said I love you, but they couldn't gaurantee the correct thing since it was an order to Spain.
Monday afternoon I went out for icecream with some of my friends, and one of my friends got me a card and another got me some candy. It was really nice of them. Then the whole group went out for Chinese food. It was a great birthday! I had perhaps the best birthday weekend ever!
Love from Spain
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