Lisbon, Portugal

Me and my travel buddies: Anna, Lexi, Liz, Kenzie, me, and Stephanie on the coast!

Last weekend I went to Lisbon, Portugal!  I was extremely excited to go on this trip because Liz and Anna had gone in February and have been raving about it ever since.  I had a great weekend, but not without a few minor problems.  First of all, I accidentally booked a different hostel from my friends.  Don't ask me how this happened, but it was kind of a problem.  Fortunately, my hostel wasn't too far from theirs, and at night I was able to sneak in their hostel so I didn't ever have to be alone.  Secondly, we booked a really cool tour that Anna and Liz had gone on when they were in Portugal, but the company sent us the wrong information about the meet time, so we missed it!

Okay, now for the great things about my weekend!  On Friday Liz, Kenzie, and I walked around Lisbon and enjoyed the sun.  We walked to a really high point above the city and snapped some great pictures and bought a kilo of fresh strawberries on the street.  Afterwards, I had quite an adventure trying to find my hostel, but I got there eventually and it was really nice.  Friday night we hung out in the hostel and met a lot of fun people from Canada, Texas (I feel like I have met more Texans in Europe than Europeans), and Germany. 

Praca do Comercio--only a minute from our hostel and a minute from the ocean.

Me and Kenzie with our delicious strawberries.

On Saturday, after the whole missing the tour fiasco, we decided it was a good day for the beach.  So we jumped on a train and went to Caiscais, which is a beach only a half-hour from Lisbon.  We stayed there all day and got some serious sun!  (I really need to get some sun screen before I go to the Canary Islands).  I'm still finding sand everywhere.  

Caiscais

Then we went back to the hostel and went to the dinner that we signed up for through the hostel.  They offer a traditional Portuguese dinner every night!  It was called chicken piri-piri and I loved every bite of it.  At dinner, we made friends with a Cambridge field hockey team that was playing in a tournament in Lisbon.  They took us to an area in central Lisbon called Bairro Alto, the heart of Lisbon nightlife.  The streets were literally stuffed with people.  All of the bars were very small because everyone congregates in the streets.

Why do have have chocolate on my forehead you wonder?  The hockey team introduced us to the After Eight challenge.  You have to try to eat the piece of chocolate and eat it by basically wiggling your face.  I was really bad.  This provided about 15 minutes of entertainment.

When Sunday came along, the beach sounded like a good idea again.  We took a ferry to another part of Lisbon and then a bus to a beach called Costa de Caparica.  Since I was nice and sunburnt, I tried to stay covered up, but we did lay on the beach for quite some time.  I also got a delicious ice cream treat and looked at shells with Stephanie.  This turned out to be my most relaxing weekend yet!  

 On the ferry.  Notice the Golden Gate Bridge look-alike in the background.

Saturday night Stephanie and I stayed up and chatted with some Belgian people.  I even spoke some French!  Then Sunday we flew back to Madrid and I made it home just in time to sign up for my classes for next semester.  

I learned in linguistics today that English has the highest number of second-language speakers.  This came in handy in Portugal.  I know one word in Portuguese: obrigado means thank you.  Obrigado for reading my blog!