Lisbon...

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I took a 10 hour night train to Lisbon with Tom, Thure, Mary Kate, Rachel, Ian and Sarah. Sarah got to sit in first class, while the rest of us sat in coach. Everyone besides me got put right next to each other, which was dumb, but it was ok because I got a window seat and I fell asleep most of the time. I slept on top of my purse so that no one could steal my stuff in the middle of the night while I was sleeping! When we got there, we headed straight to our hostel (Lisbon Easy Hostel). HOwever, the weather didn't want us to get there because it started pouring down rain, one of the biggest downfalls I've ever seen! Our clothes, including our coats and backpacks got SOAKED, and it was a very uncomfortable walk! When we got checked in, it stopped raining (of course) but we decided to stay in for a while and dry off. We hung our clothes up in our 6 person room to dry, but with everyone's wet stuff, nothing got dry! We hung out in the common room and played cards and read, then later headed out for lunch. We found a cafe where we got burgers and stuff, then found a pasteleria where we got some pastries!

We then headed off to the military defense tower walking along the river. We got tickets to go inside the tower, and we saw all the cannons they used to use. The water outside was really rough from the rain, and water kept splashing inside the tower! It was crazy, but the stormy weather made for a really cool view from the top of the tower! Then we headed back to the hostel for naptime. We woke up just in time to get ready to go out to dinner. We walked around for a while to find a good place, and Sarah almost bought cocaine because she didn't understand what the guy was saying and just responded with "si, si". Haha, after I steered her clear of that, we found a really nice place where we could celebrate Tom's birthday! They brought us out a million appetizers, which apparently you have to pay for if you touch them. So we carefully only touched a plate of olives, and ordered a really good dinner! Then we walked around a bit before going back to our hostel, and I got Ben and Jerry's!

We fell fast asleep and woke up to a nice complimentary breakfast of toast, cereal, and coffee. Then we headed out for Sintra, a mountain with 2 castles, which is one of the 1000 places to go before you die, according to Thure's book. We took a train to get there, and then started hiking up the mountain towards the moorish castle. We didn't really see any other people, so I wasn't sure if we were going the right way, but we finally made it to the castle. When we got there, they told us we had to buy tickets at the bottom somewhere, so we just decided to hike on over to the other castle, the painted castle. We bought tickets and a little snack in this hut on the mountain and scurried on up to the castle. It was amazing! It really was every color, and it had a great view of the Atlantic Ocean from which we yelled to the United States, hoping our families could hear us!

We stopped at Pizza Hut (yeah!) for lunch and got Portuguese pizza before taking a bus to Cabo de Roca, the western most point in all of Europe! It was basically a big cliff over the ocean which was really scary but awesome because we got to stay and watch the sunset. Then we had to take the bus back to Lisbon (which almost made everyone sick from all the mountain curves) to catch our overnight train back home. But, of course we didn't get on the train before stopping to buy junk food for dinner on the ride back!

All in all, it was a great weekend, Sintra being my favorite part! The rain didn't stop us at all!

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