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Published: April 16th 2008
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Last weekend I went with 4 of my friends to Portugal. First, we flew into Lisbon, the capital, and spent a night there. We stayed in this adorable little hostel right in the center of town. It had a room with internet, a room you could watch movies in, a room with beanbags and a stereo system that you could hook your own music up to, and a kitchen. We could use all these rooms whenever we wanted and for free. In the morning, they also served you free breakfast, which was amazing because you hardly find that at hostels. A lady made us toast and eggs, and there was also cereal, fruit, coffee, and tea. After breakfast, we went sightseeing around Lisbon for a few hours. We took an elevator up to the top of this building shaft where we got a beautiful view of the city. We also walked down to the bay and did some souvenir shopping in the cute little streets we passed by on our way. Lisbon reminded us a lot of San Francisco. As you can see in the pictures, it is very hilly and the main transportation within the heart of the city is
by cable cars. Also, to get from one side of the bay to the other without having to go all the way around it, there is a bridge that looks exactly like the Golden Gate Bridge. After checking out Lisbon, we took a 30-minute train ride to Sintro (Centro in English). It is this adorable little town surrounded by tons of palaces and castles. There is one in particular that everyone goes to see because it is absolutely amazing! (see pictures) We had read about it and seen pictures in our guide book, and we knew that it was on top of a hill, but we didn’t quite know how to get there. We took some detours through some gardens and tried to get their on our own, but we never quite figured it out. Turns out, we were going the wrong way, haha. We had lunch and this cute little whole in the wall restaurant that served us the most delicious hamburgers! Then we caught a bus back to the bottom of the mountain where the main town was, and from there we jumped on another bus to take us up to the castle. After being in the town
for 3 hours, we finally made it to our destination: the Moorish Palace. It was soooo beautiful and we were able to get some great views of the city from up there. We couldn’t stay long though because we had to make it back to Lisbon in time to catch a train down to Lagos, our next destination.
This is where things really started getting interesting. We knew that we could take either a bus or train to Lagos. We decided to try the train, since it was cheaper, but it was about to leave so we literally had to sprint through the metro and through the train station to make it on time. The doors of the train actually closed on us, but we managed to pry them open and jump on, haha. Then we had to switch trains, which was a disaster because we had no idea which one we had to get on next. Luckily, we ran into this really nice old guy who helped us out a lot and told us exactly where to go. After an uneventful and somewhat long train ride, the arrived in Lagos around midnight. Our hostel here was also a
plaza rossio
where our hostel was lot of fun. About 20 different people that had already been to Lagos recommended it to us, so we had to stay there. It is called “The Rising Cock,” which is kind of a play on words, but has a literal meaning too. The Cock, aka rooster, is basically the mascot of Portugal. It goes back to some ancient story that they told us about, but I don’t remember it, but basically every souvenir in Portugal has this very colorful rooster on it. Anyways, the hostel was begun by this guy of Portuguese heritage, but who lived in Massachusetts for the majority of his life. His mom also works with the hostel as kind of the breakfast chef. Everyone calls here “Mama” and she made us crepes every morning. She made tons of crepes and would just keep throwing them on your plate until you couldn’t physically eat anymore. You could put nutella, fruit, sugar, or jelly on them and they were soooo delicious!!!
Our first day in Lagos we took surfing lessons with these guys from Australia. (By the way Australians are way cuter than Spaniards, I should have gone there to study!) The weather wasn’t the best,
it was really windy, which didn’t help much, but we still had a lot of fun. Surfing is really hard and tiring, and none of us were actually able to stand up and ride a wave, but we tried and still had a blast! Later that night we ate at this restaurant called NahNahBah. It is actually owned by the same guy who owns the hostel, and is right across the street from it. It had a really fun atmosphere and the most delicious food! (Btw, food in Portugal is way better than food in Spain!) They actually use spices and sauces and make the meals interesting. I had chicken with barbeque sauce and it was to die for!
The next day in Lagos was beautiful, sunny, and hot, so we decided to go to the beach! Unfortunately, 2 of our friends had to get on a bus back to Lisbon because they had a flight that night back to Barcelona. But the other 3 of us spent the day at the beach, and then went to this cute sports bar at the harbor and watched with sunset while sipping on some drinks. We hung out that night with
some of the people in the hostel. Everyone was really nice and they all spoke English. They were all either from Canada, England, or Australia, and most people were taking a year off to travel around Europe and whatnot.
Our last day in Lagos was not very sunny, but we still walked along the beach and checked out some new like caves and such that we hadn’t seen before. We did a little souvenir shopping, had some amazing chicken for lunch, and then got on the bus back to Lisbon. (We decided to take the bus this time considering all the problems we had before with the train, haha.) It was raining the whole bus ride up, and it seemed like Lisbon was getting the worst of the storm. Having just come from a beach town, we were all in summer skirts and tank tops. So it was really interesting running around Lagos frantically trying to figure out how to get to the airport while getting poured on and freezing! We finally made it to the airport, and with lots of time to spare because our flight got delayed because of the storm. We got back into Barcelona around
1 am, and I finally got home around 2 and passed out. The trip was amazing and I highly suggest you go to Portugal if you have the chance. It is beautiful and relaxing, and the people are very nice and they all speak English!!!
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