lisbon alive

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Our side trip to Portugal which was unplanned until we got into Barcelona, turned out to be a really great time. We found out about a music festival in Lisbon on the 10th,11th and 12th. Optimus Alive 08 with main attractions Rage Against the Machine, Bob Dylan, Neil Young and Ben Harper, Amoung many others. I know those of you reading this who happen to be huge fans of RATM have to feel a little jealous of Micah and myself. This show was amazing. I heard that there were 50,000 people at the show that night. And it was better than you could imagine, the whole crowd would pulse and sway as if one, one giant mosh pit. They would bus us in from a campsite about 5 miles away and back every night, so where at first we thought that the whole event was under prepared for such a massive influx of people they really did a good job. Bob Dylan put on a very disappointing show and left me wondering why he still tours, but Neil Young and Ben Harper finished the fest with outstanding performances.
From our brief time here we´ve found the Portugese people to be extremely friendly and surprisingly many who we talked to at the show spoke excellent english, which helps because spanish and Portugese are not transferable enough to get by. I now wish that I could spend some more time here camping on a beach near Lagos, which from what I hear is wonderful surf beach and relaxing little town, unfortunately we have a plane booked in a few days to wisk us off to Greece. Despite the added expenses of catching a flight to Lisbon from Madrid, train strike, the show and camping more than made up for it. Had I known how great European music fests were I´d of planned this trip to incorporate several others. I´m still not in a position to load pictures onto the blogs but I promise to fill these entries in later with pics. Onto our next adventure and I hope it proves just as entertaining.

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