When I return to the States and tell people how amazing my trip was, today is not one of the days I will bring up. I spent the vast majority of my day either on a train or in a train station. Getting from Lisbon to Granada took me three trains and door to door it took about 22 hours. I know this sounds dumb but it will make the rest of my travel through Spain much easier. The next few trips should only take about 2 hours or so each which isn't bad in a country that is pretty large in scale. I actually slept pretty well on the night train from Lisbon to Madrid but the next two trains from Madrid to Sevilla and then to Granada were a little boring. I need to ... read more

So I have decided that the best way to enjoy a city, at least on a trip like this, is in about 4 days or so. Its long enough where you begin to feel like home where you are staying and know the area pretty well, but not long enough where you feel you have overstayed your welcome or feel like you are stagnating. In four days you can see a decent bit of a city and still have time to make some sort of day trip to a beach or nearby town or whatever. That was my plan for today, to take the train about 30 miles northwest to Sintra. As lonelyplanet.com describes it "With richly hued palaces, mist-covered forests and the ruins of a craggy Moorish castle overlooking a sleepy village, Sintra is like ... read more

Quite an interesting day in Lisbon, albeit a good one. Got a little bit of the history of the country and city and then followed that up with a little taste of the current politics. I went on a walking tour of the old district of Lisbon in the morning. It was just a small group of us which was nice, pretty personal. We had our tour guide, Bernardo, a local around our age, myself, Adam the Australian from last night and two cool people from Brazil. It was pretty informal but we did get some good historical info to back up what we saw. Hit most of the main points in the city including a couple churches, some plazas, the castle on top of the hill and more. Certainly a good way to see the ... read more

Today is my last day here, quite sad. Definitely going to miss everyone a lot. Got up late on account of being up till this morning. After finally getting going Catia drove us out to Gaia for a lunch typical in Alentejo. Once again I loved it and once again they did not believe me ha. Played a little geocache in the afternoon. For everyone who doesn't know what that is it is a game organized online where people post caches and instruction on how to find them by leaving simply their GPS coordinates. Then you use some sort of GPS tracker to find it and then using the clues they give you to find the final spot. Its a real cool way to explore parts of your city that you have never been to before. ... read more

So today is my day to explore Porto. Maria's friend that I met last night, Alberto, came to pick me up around 10am and from there we took a bus and a train south about 30 miles or so to Porto. The city is much larger and more beautiful than I thought. It sits on the ocean with the River Duoro (Golden River) running through it. The river used to be used to transport wine from the vineyards outside the city down to the centre area to be sold but now it simply divides Porto from V.N. Gaia, the city right across the river from Porto. I would get a bunch more historical tidbits from my tourguide Alberto the rest of the day (thanks Alberto!!!) The downtown area of Porto is fantastic, particularly along the river. ... read more