Our First Day in Portugal

Thursday April 3, 2008/ Friday April 4, 2008

Today we sent out for Lisbon, Portugal at 11:59pm. The bus ride to Lisbon is about 6-6.5 hours and I was not very excited for it. It turned out that there weren’t very many people going to Lisbon at 11:59pm on a Thursday so we ended up getting a row of seats (2) to ourselves so we could spread out a little bit. This was amazing because A. I didn’t get stuck next to a creeper, B. I didn’t get stuck next to someone who has really bad B.O., C. I actually got a little bit of sleeping in. Our bus arrived in Lisbon at 6am Seville time, which we later figured out was 5am Lisbon time. We kind of forgot about that whole time change thing, and I’m pretty sure that we were the only people awake in the city at 5am…until we found our food vender. Imagine this: Emily eating out of a neon yellow food vending truck, which we found under the bridge, near the zoo at 5am. I never would have done it if it hadn’t been the only option, but I survived and I’m alive to tell the story. After our gourmet dining experience I headed to the metro station and waited until it opened at 6:15am. I feel a lot like a bum hanging out in the station…without the garbage bags and wretched smell. I purchased an “all day” metro pass for 4 euros, which ended up being the best 4 euros that I have ever spent. Turns out that the public transportation system in Europe is amazing and this one green metro pass got us on any bus, electric tram or metro that we wanted for the day. We took the metro to the stop close to our hotel and stopped a couple of policemen for directions…because we didn’t have a map. Apparently everything is closed at 5-6am, who knew! Luckily our hostel owner is amazing and he let us check in at 7:30am. We were all a little tired so we took naps until 10am and woke up to get pastries and fresh squeezed orange juice. Portugal is apparently known for their pastries, so we took it upon ourselves to try several different kinds…you know, as a cultural experience…Our hostel owner gave us a map and pointed out a few of the “must do/see’s” in the city and headed to the center of the city. We headed to an old church and then toured a castle. It looked more like a fortress to me but it gave a sweet view of the city from the top. We asked an older couple, who ended up being from Canada, to take our picture and we talked to them for a while. Afterwards we went through the center of town again, got ice cream, and bought artwork. I now have an international collection started. In the afternoon we headed to a free wine tasting and did that for a while, which was recommended to us by the Canadians. To end the night we took went for a walk around town, stopped for Cokes, ate dessert (chocolate mousse), got postcards and rode the trolley around town. Keep in mind that we don’t exactly speak Portuguese, but it is so similar to Spanish that we were able to communicate (while playing Charades every once and a while).