On Thursday night we took a train to Lisbon, which is about
3 hours south of Porto. This city
started out a bit differently than Porto.
We walked into our hostel and the lobby was filled with
screaming teenagers and two adults shouting at them in Portuguese. We waited
for the commotion to die down and once they had gone to their rooms we went to
the desk. The overwhelmed man told us that 90 Portuguese ninth graders would be
staying at the hostel that night. So we were really looking forward to that.
In our 6-person room we met one of our roommates, Barbara,
who was from the Czech Republic and told us she was afraid of the other girls
in our room who apparently spoke Spanish. We never actually met them.
That night the 9th graders decided they would
rather run around the hostel until 6am screaming and singing and laughing
instead of sleep. Even when Barbara got out of bed (wearing no pants, might I
add) to yell at them to go to sleep they were unstoppable.
We woke up the next morning dreary-eyed and ready to kill
some high schoolers but they had (thankfully) checked out. Steph and I had booked a tour for the day
through a company called “We Hate Tourism Tours.” We weren’t sure what to
expect but had heard good things about it!
We were driven around to some amazing sights outside of
Lisbon in a 9-seater van that was painted red and said “We Are Not The Fire
Department” on the side. Our tour guide Miguel was such a character and kept us
laughing the whole day.
We stopped in a number of little towns and did some
wandering through neighborhoods, souvenir shopping and pastry-eating. It was
determined after this trip that we will be opening a bakery and learning how to
make Portuguese pastries. Because they are amazing.
My favorite part of the tour was when we went to Quinta da Regaleria. The gardens were originally built by the Regaleria Family in 1892 as a
summer home. Since then they have been transformed into a tourist site
and the original home is now a museum.
The gardens were so beautiful and felt somewhat magical.
Steph and I spent a lot of time just climbing up the paths and looking for
waterfalls and castle towers.
When we left the gardens we drove to the western-most point
of mainland Europe. I thought that this stop would be cool because of its
location, but it was so incredibly beautiful all on its own. We sat on the edge
of the cliffs and looked out over the Atlantic Ocean. We squinted really hard
but couldn’t quite make out the U.S. on the other side.
Miguel, our driver
After that we had a delicious Portuguese picnic prepared by
our driver. We only had one more stop left, and it was to a little town that
had a statue dedicated to Portuguese explorers (because Portugal found a lot of
places on Earth) and a beautiful church. But that best part about the last stop
was the pastry that our driver bought for us and had waiting when we came out
of the church. YUM.
That ended our tour and Steph and I headed back to take a
little nap. Between the 9th graders the night before and the all-day
tour we were ready for a snooze.
We woke up in time for dinner, which we ate with our two
German roommates (who were so fun and nice) and two men from America who were
in the army stationed in Europe and just traveling for the weekend. We met some
pretty interesting characters in Lisbon but have some great stories now!
The next day we planned on walking around the main city
center and seeing what there was in the “city” part of Lisbon, since we had
left for smaller towns the day before.
An abundance of rain slowed that plan down but we still
walked around to shops and had some delicious Starbucks so I’d say it was a
good day.
We left for the airport early the next morning. Steph
boarded a plane home and I headed to Paris to meet up with my mom.
Getting to spend some time with Steph was so much fun. I got
to show her around my lovely Verona and we had the chance to see a great new
place together!
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