This weekend was my first time venturing out of Spain. On Thursday night my friends Natalie, Mary, Catherine, and I took the midnight bus to the capital of Portugal, Lisbon. Another first for me this weekend was staying in a hostel, I loved it! The hostel was a convenient location, clean, had other fun visitors, and a friendly staff who helped us make an itinerary of must-see sites. We decided to embrace the Lisbon way of life by doing our tourist activities in a relaxed manner in order to enjoy what we were doing versus rush to see a hundred different things. On the first day we took a trolley ride through the central part of the city that passes by some of its key sites like the Sé Catedral. We accidentally rode the trolley until the last stop (way beyond where we intended), but we wanted to walk back...it ended up being a good mistake because we were able to explore more freely and stop to get some coffee. I was shocked at how different Portuguese was from Spanish because there are a ton of words that are practically the same, and a ton that are no where near the same. When we ordered coffee with milk, I'm pretty sure we just got warm milk. Lisbon is not flat terrain...at one point we were feeling the burn of walking up an 8 block long incline. On our walk home we also figured out where we would eat dinner that night, an Indian-Italian restaurant. Strange combination, I know, but we were all very impressed by how delicious our meals were.
After getting a good nights sleep, enjoying a free delicious breakfast at the hostel, and drinking some much needed coffee, we set out to see the Lisbon neighborhood named Belém. On the tram ride there I was amazed by a bridge that looked VERY similar to the Golden Gate Bridge. Even though I've never been to San Franscisco, the scenery - water front, bridge, and rolling green hills - is exactly how I picture San Fran. At the end of the bridge there was a gigantic statue of Jesus with his arms open, almost embracing the city. After arriving in Belém, we walked on a path running alongside the river (the river that meets with the Atlantic ocean at the outskirts of Lisbon) that led us to two important monuments. One was a huge structure of the stern of a ship jutting into the water with famous Portuguese mariners such as Vasco de Gama and Ferdinand Magellan. It was built in 1960 to mark the 500th anniversary of the death of Henry the Navigator (famous for his European exploration and trade routes). A little farther was the tower of Belém. It's purpose was to defend the Lisbon harbor against foreign attack. Going into the city more we saw yet another Unesco World Heritage site here, the Monastery of Jerónimo. I saw a picture of this building on a postcard the day before and really wanted to find it, so I was excited it was also in this neighborhood. Portugal constructed this monument to honor Vasco de Gama's discovery of India in 1498. Now, by this time we had gotten pretty hungry, so we stopped at the famous Pastéis de Belém. This pastry store is praised by the locals and we also were strongly advised to visit it by several people who had been to Lisbon before. I cam in with high expectations for these pastries and was not disappointed. Their specialty is pastéis de nata (custard tarts). According to the guide book, the store turns out about 15,000 tarts on a slow day and their recipe is top-secret, of course. This small pastry had a perfectly flaky crust and was filled with delicious custard. I also ordered the best spinach quiche I have ever tasted. After a satisfying lunch we wandered over to one of the parks to take in some sun. The weather was incredible, so we just sat in the grass and enjoyed the February sun of Portugal...although I tried to avoid getting a farmer's tan, I have some pretty hilarious tan lines right now but am so happy to be getting color in the "winter"! While relaxing, we discussed what to venture to next. The golden gate-ish bridge was so eye-catching that we were dead set on walking across it and see the stature of Jesus. It didn't tak us long after we started walking towards it to realize this was an outrageous idea, so we just trekked back to the hostel and laughed pretty hard about wanting to cross the river. For dinner on Saturday we signed up to eat a home-made meal at the hostel, another great choice. We had a traditional Portuguese dish called Bacalhau (cod fish bake). It was a great way to experience part of the culture and meet people staying in the hostel. We sat by 2 Australians living in London, a German, and other Americans staying in Madrid.
The next day we were walking around the center of town trying to figure out what to do for the day because our bus wasn't leaving until 9pm. We came up with the most brilliant/hilarious idea to tour the center and a neighborhood called Alfama by one of those tourist bus companies. I laughed so hard when we got on the bus because that is by far the most touristy thing I have ever done in my life. It was nice though because all of the stops were places I wanted to see anyways and would have taken us a long time by foot and cost more for public transportation each way. A lot of things we saw on Sunday had historical relevance to the 1755 Lisbon earthquake that was one of the most deadliest earthquakes because it was not only powerful, but was followed by a tsunami and fires that destroyed almost all of the capital city. One monument marks how far the waters reached when the flooded the city (about a 20 minute drive from the shore) and remembers the leader that united that rebuilt Lisbon after such a disaster. Another monument was the Santa Justa elevator that when lit up at night is very pretty. Our last stop that we got out and explored was Alfama. This neighborhood is elevated and has awesome views overlooking the city, water, and castle. Another neat thing about this neighborhood is that a lot of the buildings are covered in beautiful tiles (azulejos), which I really liked.
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