Friday night, Courtney (my roommate) and I took an overnight bus from Sevilla to the capital of Portugal…LISBON! We arrived very early in the morning because our bus driver drove insanely fast, plus we did not realize that Portugal was one hour behind Spain! Oh the fun of traveling! When the sun did finally come up and we had coffee in our systems it was time to explore! The metro dropped us off in the center of town and the first thing I noticed were all the beautifully colored houses. It was like Rainbow Road in Myrtle Beach or the battery in Charleston times a million! Nothing in the city opened until 9pm, so we had a few hours to ourselves, wondering down the small alleyways and climbing the barrios altos and looking out over the city. We went to the ocean, but there was no real beach where we were. However, I discovered that there is a Golden Gate Bridge in Lisbon! I don’t know which came first, but the red suspension bridge that we saw there looks identical to the one in California! It was a nice reminder of home! After walking up and down hills (I think the city is made up of seven main hills making it feel like San Fran.) we decided to tour the castle. This was the first medieval, typical fairytale castle that I’ve seen on this Europe trip; most of the ones we visited in Southern Spain are alcazars. There wasn’t much to the interior, but we spent hours walking all the ramparts along the exterior and had a great view of the city and the sea! The sun was shining and it was actually quite warm despite the gloomy weather report that said it would be cool and raining the entire time! ¡Que suerte!
After the castle, we did some souvenir shopping the stopped at in the center of town for a sandwich, then bussed out to a monastery on the outskirts of the city. The monastery looked more like an elaborate palace and it was right by the sea. There was a beautiful park in front of it and Courtney and I got the traditional Lisbon pastry: pastel de nata (a hand-sized pie looking thing filled with some sort of semi-sweet cream that you top with cinnamon and sugar…it tasted like oatmeal to me, but it was warm and delicious). Afterword we walked to the lookout tower that was in the sea and just enjoyed the nice ocean breeze for a while. At this point it was getting late, so we headed back into the center of town, walked around some more barrios (neighborhoods), sat in a park for a little while, then grabbed a quick dinner (at an American time of around 7pm) and headed back to the bus stop. Although we only had a short time there, our day in Lisbon was great! We got back to Sevilla at 3am Sunday morning (2 hours ahead of schedule thanks to crazy bus drivers) and slept in all day Sunday.
Monday night…Feria began! And thus we started spring break part 2!
Cats in a castle with purple houses all around - I think you told me this story when you were 3 or 4 ...
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