Portugal - Lisbon

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Hey guys feel free to let me know if you don’t want to receive these updates, they are pretty detailed and probably boring for you all but these are kind of like our dairies while we are away. Already it is hard to remember what we have been doing so have to write it all down so we don’t forget!!

We have just finished 2 days in Lisbon, in some ways it was similar to Porto (heaps of old buildings and history etc) but you can definitely tell that it is the capital and has a much bigger city feel. Cool cause there was heaps to do but also a lot dirtier and dodgier!!

Heaps of beggars and we must either look like dumb gawking tourists or really dodgy because we were asked on just about every street corner if we wanted to buy hashish or basically any other drugs we wanted.

´´Gee, let me think about it scary one eyed dealer man..... no thanks, I don´t feel like having a seizure in a strange country today. Thanks for the offer though!!´´

Heaps of people smoking weed openly so don’t think the cops really care, too busy guarding the flash areas to worry about the kind of area we were staying in, ha ha.

We did a walking tour of Lisbon which was awesome, our guide was really passionate about it all and we definitely learnt heaps about their culture.
On the tour we covered heaps:
* Heaps of churches of course, one was St Dominic’s (I went to school at St Dom’s in Auks) - the church was built in the 16th century - amazing.
* We tried Ginjhar which is a local liquor made from cherries, it is pretty strong but really yummy, kind of like a grappa type liquor. It was 10am so a little hard on the tummy though - apparently the store opens at 7am for the locals, they must be hard nuts, ha ha.
* Lots of monuments and statues, everything there is really really big and elaborate compared to how most of them live. The Portuguese are very proud people and always want the best and biggest with that kind of thing apparently - it shows although a lot of the buildings are in need of restoration!
* We went down into the Alfama area which is a poorer area where all the fishermen etc stay, very different atmosphere there, everyone is rowdy but friendly and funny. They have public clothes washing areas and cut up and sell fish in the streets etc, a bit of an eye opener. They had just had a festival and all the decorations and road side bars were still up, it was 2 weeks ago but they were still celebrating :o)

We also went to a huge castle up on one of the highest hills in Lisbon - Castle St Jorge.
There was heaps of history about the site but the castle as it is dates back to the 11th century.
It was huge with massive turrets and towers.
Adam loved it and ran around the top of the walls for ages (I’m sure he was fantasizing about being some tough as ancient warrior), I have a photo of him doing ONGUARD!!!! on top of the walls, dick head, ha ha.

After that we went out for dinner and got ripped off and then went for a beer on the way home and got ripped off there too. Decided to go home after that since we couldn’t really spend much more - assholes!! Oh well we should have been smarter and checked prices for stuff first etc, we will now be officially wily, suspicious, mean, cheap back packers!!

Ok that is plenty; we must have bored you to death by now!!

Check out our photos and videos on Ringo - finally have managed to add some, it takes ages so have just picked out a few:

http://www.ringo.com/i.html?i=135622591x521528

Luffs

Ellen and Adam
(Yesterday gullible kiwis now back packers extraordinaire!!)

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