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Published: March 26th 2008
Hi Friends and Family,
As promised, I said that I would be travelling to Portugal and indeed, here I am!
Yesterday was Easter Saturday and also the birthday of "The Small Young Gentleman". He had had his birthday party on Good Friday and Saturday was thus spent relaxing and doing something with my hair! By 7. p.m. I hadn't started packing not to talk of finishing it! By 10 p.m. I was done with everything including no longer wanting to go out for a few Easter drinks with my friends...
I set my mobile to 4.a.m and woke up with a jolt when the alarm screamed into my ear. A quick bath, pate and cheese sandwiches, the final squashing of my suitcase and then I practically leapt out of the house as the bus was about to go by, any moment. The plan was to get to the underground station and then take the Airport Express Bus from Friedrichstrasse Station, which I did. Forty minutes later I was at the airport to meet a girlfriend of mine. Ingrid herewith referred to as "The Berliner-in".
Our flight was for 07:30 and the last check-in was 06:50. We had
arrived a little after 6 0' clock. Oh glory be! A cup of tea and coffee later and then we checked-in our stuff. 13kg for me. 10 kg for "The Berliner-in" . I desperately wanted an English paper and it was Sunday therefore, the Sunday Times would be on sale I supposed. It wasn't, just the Saturday papers. Maybe upstairs then. Nope! Even worse. The International Herald. Only!!
We were flying with EasyJet to Lisbon. A 3 hour flight. Of course, security being what it was, I went Beep. Beep. The belt came off. Beep! Check jeans with buckles on my hips. Beep! Check Hello Kitty socks with glittery things on them. Beep! Check trainers with the Adidas symbol made out of silver. Beeeep!! Oh, I almost forgot, my emergency toilet bag was in my hand luggage.
No can do Madam.
Thick moistouriser. Too big. Hand cream. Too long. Let's not even mention my Rimmel blue and red nail varnish (my nails are blue at the moment).
Re-pack Madam.
Oh alright!
So I threw away my moistouriser and handcream and bought plastic bags for my nail varnish and toothpaste. I didn't even seal it.
Pass Through Madam.
Hmm!!
With all that galavanting and going to the bathroom once again and being dragged down by duty free cosmetics, the last and final call for Lisbon came through. Schonefeld airport is really small so we ran down the stairs and through the corridor, snatched the (actually the EasyJet Ground Staff did that for me!) "Der welt am Sonntag" (a Sunday paper) and we were on the plane. Panting, but on the plane.
Embarrassingly, we thought we were the last passengers, luckily we weren't, as one person was still not to be found and had probably got lost in the confines of the airport! OK now off we go. Oh no, we can't go, as the radio signal thingy wasn't working so the pilot couldn't communicate to ground control and so we settled down for 1 hour of engineers coming on to fix it.
At times like this, one becomes a little anxious but I reckon that fixing things NOW is a good sign and I've never heard of an EasyJet disaster. Before lift off there was this horrible screeching sound coming from the underbelly or wheels of the plane.
Breathe
in. Breathe Out. We're still on the ground. In Berlin. In Germany!! Its all good. Repeat. I'VE never heard of an EasyJet disaster.
Cups of water were given to us all and I concentrated on reading a high brow( Sud Deutschland ) newspaper. "The Berliner-in" and I had brought sandwiches with us but I still bought us some non-alcoholic drinks ( plenty of time for that! ) and shortbread biscuits, on the plane. One hour later we took of and the flight went smoothly whilst I nodded off slightly. We arrived in Portugal 25 minutes behind schedule but my 1st sight of Portugal was the feel of the sun through the window and a sight of the beach.
Hurrah. We're here!
Check-out was quick and easy. I still wanted an English paper so we looked for a newspaper kiosk. I found the "Sunday Times" ( high brow), "The Mail on Sunday" (middle of the road) and "News of the World" (gossip), the sales attendant wouldn't accept a credit card or an EC card so I paid cash €10,50.
We knew that we wanted to take a bus from the airport. Bus 745 and €1,30 later we
were on our way.
There were no indicators of the stops and the driver really didn't know which stop we wanted and so with our Lisbon map, we craned our necks to read the names of the stops through the bus window! "The Berliner-in" had been to Lisbon in '94 and recognised some of the spots.
At last, we got to our stop "Praca do Camercio" right on the coast!
Our hostel "Travellers House" was very nearby. I had booked our hostel way back in October 2007, after my Vietnam adventure. I had even made a down payment of 10% because I had heard wonderful things about it on other peoples' blogs and on the Net in general. and those people weren't lying!
The hostel was about 50 m away and was right on the high street (I guess), lots of nice shops on both sides of the road. I'll give you the link and full address later. We pressed the bell and were buzzed in. The front door is a huge old wooden thing keeping to the the tone of the old architecture outside. You would never even dream that it was a hostel from
the outside!
We were met by a jovial young man (Joao) who took us in hand. We dropped our stuff into the chill-out living room. I was loving it already!! He gave us a tour of the place while our reservation was being dealt with. He showed us the TV room with a huge flat screen and the computer room (new LCD screens and laptops). All absolutely free, baby. No shoes though. The dinning room with plushy sofas and nice low style tables. You could even cross your feet and eat. Everywhere was fitted out with soft carpeting and rugs. The kitchen was supplied with tea, coffee and cocoa plus the benefit of self cooking if you wanted. A free breakfast would be supplied and then because I had booked a private double room, we were shown to our quarters, a fully equipped 3 bed roomed apartment. Carpets, bean bags, DVD player with flat-screen, dining section, fitted kitchen, separate bathroom and WC. Wow! All this for just €25 each per night. The rooms were comfortable and probably better furnished than my bedroom at home!
We were on the 4th floor (the roof) and so we had a balcony.
You could even sit on the roof window (with care) if you were so inclined. You could see the long street and turn your head to the right, and see the straight path to the water.
Fabulous darling! Absolutely Fabulous!!
Oh I forgot, there's a tab system with the drinks. A list is placed on the drinks cabinet. You write your name, what you took and how many. Beers, soft drinks and water. €1 a pop. Help yourself. Pay when you check out. What a lovely idea and I do believe it works.
Entertainment is also provided. Some free. Some not. Tonight, a movie with free popcorn all round.
The hostel is a winner!!
'By this time, we were absolutely starving. We asked Joao for a local eatery that wasn't too expensive, he recommended a restaurant called "Ninho Dourado" about 50 m away and on the high street. The Manager was a funny fellow and kept playfully juggling our meals. The restaurant had outdoor seating €9 and indoor seating €6. We ordered chips, steak and a fried egg, and stayed indoors. I also had a 2.5 cl bottle of red local Portuguese wine €2,80. Thirty
Local Quarters
Isn't our tram driver a sexy bloke!minutes later we felt satisfied and I had a warm fuzzy feeing (the wine) but a dessert was definately missing.
I had heard about the famous Portuguese custard tarts and opposite to us was a cake shop and bakery "Casa Brasileira Pastetaio". I bought a box of 6 for €4,90. They were hot and straight from the oven and melted in my mouth. I had custard all down my fingers! I'm a very moderate person when it comes to choccies and sweeties. I buy them. I store them and much later, I eat 'em however, I had TWO custard tarts all in one go and although I couldn't really eat another one I managed to do so!
Our plan today was just to stroll around and get to know the area and our immediate surroundings. We walked down the High Street under the arch and straight to the beach. Water always beckons to me that is why I live near the river at home in Berlin. It was quite windy but the sun shone nicely on our faces. We walked down the beach, took in the sun and chatted away. It was nice to look at water, relax
The lovely people of Portugal
Aaah!!! Don't they look cute. My friends. The models. and chat.
After 1 hour or two, we moved on and walked around the old buildings and saw an old style cable car tram (Nr 28) approaching up the hill. It was crowded. Mostly tourists as it WAS a tourist attraction. The cable car track is very twisty and turny and is placed very close to the kerb. A couple of times it got quite hairy as people had to move their cars, their buggies and themselves! We ended up at the last station "Martin Monic" which probably led somewhere but we didn't know where. Our plan was to walk down the hilly mountain but as we walked along, we noticed that in the fountain square and park there were nothing but men. That was strange. We looked again, that's right, just men. In groups. Huddled together. We didn't like the look of things. It was only 5 p.m. and we weren't IN the square itself but is sort of looked weird and dodgy. No women. No children running about. Nobody approached us or talked to us thank goodness but we supposed that these might have been dealers or suppliers or something.
We back tracked to the tram
stop and decided NOT to walk around in that area. We took the tram back down and halfway through, we stopped at "Miradouro de Sao Pedro de Alcantana" which is a wide public verandah / roof top where we saw a view of the ships, the waters, a castle and lots of old buildings. We also made friends with 4 young attractive Portuguese.
After this, we caught a tram down the hill again and proceeded to go back to the hostel. We stopped off at the Portuguese version of "Subway" and bought an olive-filled tuna baguette which we shared for supper, along with 3 custard tarts from earlier in the day.
"The Berliner-in" was pretty worn out so she went to bed whilst I tried to get onto this blog but for some reason I had forgotten my password which was a bit of a bugger!!
After an hour, I asked the admin. to send me my forgotten password and then downloaded pictures and videos which took ages, just ages. The rest of the crowd in the hostel were watching "Zoolander" and eating free popcorn whilst I was messing about on Facebook!
Alrighty. I've finished anyway!
See ya!
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