Portugal

Ok, ok I´m sorry it´s been awhile...between my internet not working and my spontaneous trip to Portugal this week, it´s been a little difficult to keep in contact. Last week went so quickly-orientation Monday-Wednesday, mommy and Auntie El came in on Thursday and then we were off to Lisboa Thursday night. I guess I´ll pick up where I left off...

Tuesday on the bus ride home we were talking with some people and decided that this weekend would be ideal for traveling seeing we wouldn´t have any class work and we had nearly four days off. So after much contemplation we decided that Portugal would be a fantastic trip. Thanks to the Sabella´s I was able to plan the entire thing with my book: Spain and Portugal on a Budget. Matt and I went back to the house to get the book and then we met back up with Justine, Meghan, Claribel and Kate at Retiro. We discussed for awhile and decided that Lisboa would be the best bet. After we had made some plans, we returned home for a little siesta. Later that night I had my first Valentine ever (Matthew finally agreed)...He and I dressed up and hit the town. He gave me a beautiful card and bracelet with kissies (x's) in silver and gold and I made him a little flower out of scraps of paper and in the middle I put a ring that we had picked out in Sevilla last weekend. We went to a lovely dinner in Sol after which we were so exhausted we returned to retire for the evening.

Wednesday at orientation I asked one of the girls who has been here for a semester already what she thought of Portugal and she told me not to go. After hearing this, I was a little discouraged and decided that I would ask around and see what to do. I told this to Margaret, our group leader and she told me that Portugal is absolutely gorgeous. She made us a little itinerary with highlights of all the things we had to see. After orientation there was a ¨copa¨ where they had little tapas and beer and desserts and we got to meet our professors and socialize with all the other foreign students studying at UC3M. We confirmed our plans with the group and afterwards Matt and I went to the bus station to work out the final plans for our trip. We got there and found out there were only 10 spaces left on the bus, so we called the gang together and purchased our tickets. When I got back home I went to take a nap and then we were all going to go out and party it up before we left on Thursday; however, I couldn´t wake up from my nap. I had chills and a headache and I felt absolutely horrible. I decided to just stay in for the night and rest it up for the weekend. Apparently I missed a pretty eventful evening though...the party lasted until the morning.

Thursday I woke up early and packed my bag and took a nice long shower. My mom and aunt called around 11:30 and I met up with them about an hour later. We walked to Sol from their hotel and ironically picked the same exact place that Matt and I had had dinner the other night. I didn´t realize it until we were already in and sitting down. The waiter brought out the bread and after a few minutes I decided that we should have some olive oil as well. After I received a look of having ten heads, I realized that I had asked the waiter for some aseos for the whole table. When he didn´t understand, I continued to ask for it repeatedly. It wasn´t until later that I remembered, silly me, the word I wanted was aceite and that aseos is BATHROOMS. We all had paella which was delicious...and then came out the second dish. The first day we went out for lunch here we orderded champiñón de tinto which were absolutely delicious. Well the menu at this place was hand written and the word resembled champiñón so we figured it was the same thing. Definitely not. What they brought out was some phallic looking creatures with appendages and they were all covered in this black sauce. I think had it been anyone else, they would have screamed at the sight; however, my aunt and I are very daring and decided to try this nasty little creatures. It tasted kind of like calamari. If anyone is able to identify what we ate, please let me know. Anyway, I proceeded with my tour of Madrid, through Sol, the Plaza Mayor (where my mother made a huge embarassment to us all by screaming at the top of her lungs as a pidgeon flew at her head) and then we headed up toward Reina Sofia. We rode the glass elevators and my mother and aunt walked through the museum with their own quiet commentaries on the concepts of modern art. We returned to Sol and had a little snack at a Chocolateria and I walked them back to their hotel. I returned to my house and got everything ready to go for our trip and headed out. Our bus left at 23:00...we passed around the benedryls and woke up in Portugal.

Friday we arrived at 5:30, earlier than expected (we didn´t realize that Lisboa was in a different time zone) and we were completely disoriented and lost in a city that we didn´t know the language. We wandered around for a while trying to figure out where we were, when finally we just decided to give up and take a cab to our hostel. We didn´t all fit into one car, so three of us took another cab. Our driver had no idea where we were going so he drove like a maniac trying to keep up with the guy ahead of us. All the cabs in Portugal are automatic cream colored Mercedes. The one we were in, the speedometer read 20km the entire time, which was obviously broken because we must have been going 120 down side streets. The driver was also playing pac-man eating up all the white dotted lines driving down the center of the road. We finally make it to Baixa, the area where our hostel is, but even then, they dropped us off about a block or two away from the hostel and each of us had different interpretations of what cab drivers directions were to get there. The six of us approached a little old lady at 6:00 in the morning in the middle of a dark street. She spoke some broken Spanish so we finally just broke out the map and showed her where we wanted to be. When we finally found it, it was seriously a miracle because the sign could not have been smaller. We climb up five flights of steep, dark steps to ring a strange door bell. We get ourselves situated and decided to take a nap.







Our lovely little room. This pictures actually does it no justice.












View from our balcony.



After our nap, we were all needed showers and were starving so we decided to get a start on our day. We left the hostel at about 12:00 and wandered around the streets until we found a little pastry shop. The area we stayed in was famous for its pastry shops and shoe stores. Every other store had shoe sales. After our little breakfast in this adorable little pastry shop, we decided to ride a trolley that Margaret had suggested to us. It was very old and cute and cut through all the winding streets of the city. It was actually a little scary because it was so old. It felt like the little engine that could getting up to the tops of the hills and I held my breath everytime we tried to stop on a downhill slope. It finally let us out in some unknown place. we were expecting it to take us in a loop around town, but I definitely did not. We walked around a little bit and found a little bar. We all had some wine and a little bite to eat. It was interesting trying to read the menu because everything we thought something was, we´d look it up in Matt´s translator and it would be something completely different. We continued wandering around until we found a beautiful cathedral and right across the street there was a park. We wandered around the park for a while where we found some interesting looking ducks, very different foliage and some peacocks in a children´s play area. We went to go play with them (and on the seesaw) until some lady came out yelling at us in Portugese. We decided to continue walking until we found this beautiful street that went down a very steep hill. We wanted to take pictures on it, but we suddenly found out that it was far more busy than we had expected. We would quick run to the middle of the street, take a picture and then run back to the side lines again before getting run over. After we had our fill, we walked back through the park where we were harassed by some locals and then made our way back to the cathedral. We were unable to see the inside because there was a funeral going on at the time. We hopped back on the trolley and were abruptly let off in another unknown barrio. It was getting cold and we were all cranky and tired. We ended up walking back to our area of town.


















Matt and Meghan on the Tranvia 28 in Lisboa













Funky gooses in their goosey hut in Parque Estrela.



















Cathedral in Estrela



















Now that's a lot of succulent.












Here goosey, goosey, goosey... (Justine action shot)









Why can´t our playgrounds have peacocks!? Or shall we call them what they really are- pavos reales (royal turkeys)
















Group shot. (Meghan, Claribel, Justine, Kate, Me)













Candid shot from the side lines.




Our hostel was on a strip that was all restraunts, and also a tourist trap...kind of like Little Italy where the waiters stand outside and try to convince passersby to come in and eat at their restraunt. We wandered around the street for awhile and Matt made a little friend, Raoul. We decided to eat at his restraunt. For €9 we each got a bottle of wine, bread, soup, a main dish, dessert and coffee. We took about 2 hours to eat dinner and were most definitely the ¨loud Americans¨that are despised by all of Europe, but we had a great time regardless. We wandered around for a bit outside where Matt and I were mistaken for Spaniards (score!) and some creepy Portugese drug dealer offered us some cocaine and hash and held out some type of something that looked like a chocolate bar. We decided that it was time to get out of the streets after that. After dinner we decided to buy another three bottles of wine and went back to the hostel and played ¨Never Have I Ever...¨ which definitely was an interesting game and lots of laughs. After a very long day with very little sleep, we called it a night.

Saturday began with a late start. We had decided to go to the park where the 1998 World Exhibit was held because they had Europe´s second largest aquarium there. We got a little lost along the way and there was a lot of tension in the group. We finally made it there after about an hour of walking. The park was right on the water and had it been a little warmer and a little less windy, it would have been absolutely stunning. We walked along the board walk and finally made it to the Aquarium. We saw lots of fishies and a sea otter and some penguins and cuttlefish (which was very interesting looking). Very fun. Then on the way out, we decided that we were all starving and needed to get some food. It was also at this point when Matt realized that his ATM card officially did not work in Portugal. This added to the tension in the group as now there was a money restraint and some of us wanted certain things to eat as others of us didn´t. Matt and I decided to eat elsewhere from the rest of the girls and the tension continued to rise. After our meal, I decided that I wanted to break off and go back and see some things that I had wanted to see but didn´t get to. Although we had done a lot those two days, there was a lot of wasted time. As we were leaving, I decided to stop at the ATM myself, because I was running low on money. Turns out my debit card didn´t work either. So we pull ourselves together and head back to the hostel to drop off our stuff so we could walk around our area. (We also realized at this time that the mall we had gotten lunch at was attached to the Metro station- we had walked an hour out of the way to get to the park that was attached to the Metro!) When we get back to our town, I decided to cash in some traveler´s checks so I would at least have some money to pay for the hostel. We go to Western Union and Matt changed the last of his $ to €´s and I asked to cash my checks. Well apparently I signed in the wrong place and she wouldn´t let me cash them because of the risk of identity fraud. So now Matt and I are stuck for the next two days with about €20 combined. Discouraged, we head back to our room to drop off our stuff. When we got back to the hostel, we found the girls´door wide open, and the man who ran the hostel had a huge group of his cronies drinking, smoking and shouting at a futebol game, so we panic and call them to make sure they knew. When they came back, we all decided that it was time for a nap. We rested for about an hour or two and decided that we were going to hit the town and see what the Lisboa night life had to offer. As soon as we started getting ready, it started to pour rain. We decided to go out and get some wine again and bring it back and see what the weather had in store for us later to determine whether we´d party in or out. Matt and Meghan made a wine run and we came back and played some King´s. The tension from earlier that day had finally cleared and it was another night filled with laughs. The wine ran out and Justine and Claribel offered to go get more. Apparently the restraunts on our block were all closed, so they got a little lost trying to find somewhere that was open. By the time they got back, we were all exhausted. We decided just one more bottle and then we´d call it a night. When they were coming back up the stairs, they made a lot of noise and had to ring the doorbell to get back in and the guy was laughing them that they had wine. They came back into the room and after we were sitting there for a few minutes, we heard a knock on the door. We hid all the bottles thinking the guy was going to come in and yell at us for partying in the room, but it wound up being some lady looking to bum and glass of wine off of us. She came in with her glass asking for white wine. Her English was very broken and her Spanish even worse. We finally figured out what she had wanted and so we opened up the bottle and poured her a glass. Apparently she was from Africa and she was staying in the area for a bit. The entire situation was very awkward and some of the girls that were with us didn´t really understand the concept of European hospitality. After we had pour her glass, she stayed at the doorway just looking at us. We didn´t really understand what she wanted more, but we eventually realized she was waiting to toast with us. As soon as she left we had a good laugh of confusion, finished our glasses and called it a night. We had decided that we had wasted too much time on Friday and Saturday and that Sunday was going to be lived to the fullest. This meant an early start.












Park where the 1998 World Exhibition was held.










Casinos that look like the tin man...or Hershey´s Kisses

















On the boardwalk in front of the aquarium.




And by early I mean getting out by 11:00. The day before I had been waiting for a shower to open up, so I wandered around the hostel for a little bit. The sun was shining (shocking, seeing the weather was pretty crappy all weekend) and I decided to step out onto the balcony in the main room (this balcony also connected to the one in our room too--yes, €10 a night and we had a balcony!) So I look out at the town below and I noticed a huge structure at the end of the block. It was the bronze elevator that Margaret had told us to go see. So, Sunday morning we made this at the top of our list. We walked down to see it, and as we decided to go up, the sky opened up and it began to pour. We bought our tickets and by the time we got to the top, the sky was nearly blue again (it was only about 2 minute ride to the top...wait included...that´s how crazy the weather was) and we could see the entire surrounding area. It was absolutely gorgeous. Before we headed back down, Matt decided to ask for some directions to Sintra, another suggestion on Margaret´s list. There was a little cafe at the top and the man that worked there gave Matt a map of Lisboa. We headed out and took the train up to Sintra. About an hour later we stepped off the train into a quaint little town with beautiful old buildings. We looked up to see a giant castle on top of a giant hill. We looked at it and said, ¨That´s where we are going,¨and we started the climb. We walked through the town and up into the hills. Most of the streets were cobblestone and very slippery because of the off and on rain showers. I was tearing up the hills, thanking God that I had my father´s ¨mountain goat¨genes. We started finding short cuts through the woods that connected the zig zagging streets and after about two hours of walking we made it to a rest stop. At the rest stop we got some water and asked the information center how much longer to the top. We only had another five minutes to walk up; however we also found out that 1) there was a bus for about €1 that we could have rode to the top of the hill and 2) there is a trail that goes from town to the top that takes about 25 minutes. We just laughed. I bet with either of those options my butt and legs wouldn´t have had nearly as good of a work out.








The bronze elevator.











View of Baixa from the top of the elevator.




























It was raining on the other side of the river.













Group shot. (Matt, Justine, Claribel, Meghan, Kate and myself)



















It began to pour. Actually, I think there was a bit of hail involved too.













View from a look out on the hike up.









Doesn´t this look like the entrance to the Secret Garden?












Almost there...







So we press on to the entrance of the gardens of the palace after the rain cleared a bit. The entire thing is cobblestone and the gardens are all sculpted and beautiful. We make it into full view of the palace and we knew immediately that the entire trip was worth it. It looks like a little play castle, all the architecture is very geometric and has a ton of Arabic influence. It was like a play ground for big kids with tons of little hiding spots and walkways. We didn´t really understand the extent of our climb until we made it to the watch towers of the palace. We could see for miles in every direction. I have never seen a view like that in all of my life. After we had taken our share of pictures, we took a brief self-guided tour of the interior. Once again, I have never before seen anything like it. The decoration was unbelievable- as soon as I walked in and started heading up the first flight of stairs, my hands ran over a perfectly sculpted handrail that looked like vines and I said to Matt, ¨my father would absolutely love this.¨ I have never seen the types of details like garlands made of marble, chairs made of intricately designed bronze, rooms painted with illusions that made it look like it was sculpted. I was so upset that we only had about half an hour to explore the inside of the palace. We met up with the rest of the group and head back down the trail. Again, it begins to pour.








The reward of our travels was everything we could have dreamed.















Justine and Kate taking in the sights.












The view from the top.









































Hiding out in a little look out.












I love this little guy.


We wandered around the town for a little bit and found ourselves fondling hand painted Portugese tiles, wishing that we could spend €60 on a tea cup (or at least I did.) Each tile was more beautiful than the next. Jo, they had an entire collection of platters and bowls and cups with perfect little doodles on them...I wanted to buy you the entire thing. (Don´t worry, I got you something anyway...I´ll send it home with mom) We then headed back to the train station and then back to the hostel. At this point we were exhausted and soaking wet.

Our bus from Lisboa was to depart at 20:30 and we got back to our area at about 18:00. We decided to go back for a quick meal with our friend Raoul. We don´t know if it was because we were absolutely famished, or that the food really was that amazingly delicious. I wound up putting the bill on my credit card and had everyone pay me for their meals so that I could get some money to pay for the room) We relaxed for a little bit and at about 19:20 enjoying bottles of wine, delicious entres and amazing desserts. We then ran back up to our rooms, packed everything up and payed for our stay. The man was trying to explain that because we came back so late he was going to have to charge us for another night´s stay. Because of this, he was trying to convince us to actually stay for the rest of the night. We were trying to explain that our bus was leaving in less than an hour, and if we didn´t haul ass now, we weren´t getting out at all. This was all in Portugese (which none of us knew anything more than Päo- bread and Obrigado - thank you) and broken Spanish. So we finally just throw our money at him and run out the door to the metro stop. We make it to the bus station and we change into sweat pants and dry clothes and find our seats. Didn´t get too much sleep on the bus. We got back to Madrid at about 5:00 this morning and the metros weren´t running yet, so we had to take a cab. The cab driver took advantage of us as Americans and charged us €10 for the ride home. At this point, we didn´t even care anymore. We were home. We took a two hour nap and got ready to come to school.

First day of classes today. So far I´ve had Español Colliqual and España: Historia Presente. Not too bad, but right now the classes are very crowded because people are still deciding if they want to stay in them. I have a break now from 1 until 6, so this is why I have indulged you with every detail of my weekend. However, I forgot the cord to my camera, so I will have to add pictures in later (hopefully my internet will be working tonight...that is if I am not sleeping as soon as I get home)

We are trying to come up with something to do for this weekend. It is the weekend of Carnaval and it is widely celebrated in Cadiz and a huge group of people are going. It´s also the weekend before my birthday... hmmmmmm.