Lisboa, Portugal!

As promised in my last blog, I will tell you about the bliss that was my time in Lisbon, Portugal! I went for four days over Halloween weekend with my good friends, Marly, Eli (short for Elizabeth), and Rachel (everyone calls her Raquel Nueva or “New Rachel” because everyone met her after they met me; so that means that they call me Raquel Vieja or “Old Rachel” lol). From the beginning of my time here I knew that I wanted to visit Portugal because it is next to Spain, and I wanted to see the city of Porto (or Oporto in Portuguese). Porto is closer to Salamanca, and I figured it would be easier to get there. But as we started planning the trip, we realized that there is no train to Porto and that the bus ride was quite long as well, so the girls persuaded me to go to the capital, Lisbon, instead.


We departed from Salamanca at 4:30am on Friday morning and took a seven hour train ride to Lisbon (Lisboa in Portuguese). When we arrived in the city, we were welcomed by what looked like a hurricane!!! We had read that it would be raining during our time there, but we literally didn’t even want to walk out of the train station because everything was so crazy outside. We braced ourselves and found a taxi to our hostel, and although we were using our umbrellas, we still got drenched in the process. We could barely see anything out the window, only fog and rain, and after a few minutes, we all noticed that the taxi was literally driving through a flood. The water had risen way too high to be comfortable, and for a moment, I had this horrible feeling that we were in a very unsafe situation. As my friends and I started getting pretty worried, the taxi driver stopped the car. He didn’t speak English or Spanish and we had only just learned a few words of Portuguese, so when he tried to explain something to us, we just assumed that he was dropping us off near our hostel but that we would need to walk further to find it. Unfortunately, we had a general city map, but not one with all the streets on it, so as we walked through a good foot of rapidly flowing water, we tried to find our hostel (which was located in the touristy Baixa neighborhood). It was nearly impossible to walk, and Eli even took off her shoes! We couldn’t see a thing and had no idea where we were going, so we tried to enter a restaurant to wait out the storm, but they told us that they were closed because the water had started to flood the restaurant. A few doors down, a waiter ushered us in to another empty restaurant and sat us at a table, where we sat soaking wet and laughing at our pathetic selves. As we ate a delicious lunch of rice and seafood, the restaurant started to flood and the water just kept rising around us. The waiters even had mops and small pans that they were trying to get the water up with; it was ridiculous, and what was so funny is that everyone always raves about how amazing the weather is in Lisbon! Definitely not so for us!!! But in order to travel well, we have learned to simply take everything in stride, even when it means that the clothes in our bags were soaked too! Finally, the rain stopped, the flood ended, and we were able to leave to find our hostel. Ironically, it was only ten feet away from the restaurant, and we had quite a laugh over how stressed we had been trying to find it.

Although it did rain a lot during the rest of our stay in Portugal, we still managed to have a wonderful time. Even if we were soaked for a good part of the trip, broke a few umbrellas, had to take quite a few coffee breaks, constantly had to put on wet clothing, and my hair was a mess, we didn’t let that stop us from fully enjoying ourselves and the beautiful sights we visited! The city of Lisbon was so much more than I had ever expected, and I thought it was such a lovely city. We toured the Monastery of San Jeronimo and the Torre de Belem (tower), where I was extremely impressed by the stunning, fanciful architecture that literally looked like something out of the game, “Candyland.” We saw the Monument to the Discoveries and several other statues of famous explorers like Vasco da Gama and Magellan; all this brought back what we had learned in grade school of Portugal’s glory days of exploration, discovery, and of course, looting from the New World. The four of us ate the famous pastel de Belem pastries, which were spectacular. My mouth is watering just thinking about them! In the old Alfama neighborhood, we went to the Lisbon Cathedral and the Castel de Sao Jorge, which sits on a hill overlooking Lisbon and the ocean. Although it was raining and misty, the views of the city were still stunning, and I loved seeing the ocean again! Lisbon is a bright and colorful city, and feels so fresh and invigorating with the ocean running right through the port. I also loved all the pretty pastel colors of the city, as well as the adorable little antique shops that I haven’t been able to find in Salamanca! The girls and I had a great time drinking real Portuguese port wine, listening to live Fado music at dinner, meeting some nice Portuguese guys (they even took us out with them!), and going to a few clubs in the Barrio Alto neighborhood for Halloween. A highlight of the trip was taking a daytrip to Sintra, a city with unbelievably beautiful castles and palaces only 45 min. away from Lisbon. We met a very sweet French girl traveling alone, and together, we visited the lovely Palacio Nacional da Pena (circa 1840), the Castelo dos Mouros (circa 8th century!), and the Palacio e Quinta da Regaleira (circa 1900)(the incredible pics are on Facebook, so check them out!). Basically, we decided that we were all Portuguese princesses for the day, what with all the splendor around us, anyone would feel that way! The views from the castles and palaces atop these mountains were the best I have ever seen: truly, ridiculously, mind-blowing!

The girls and I were so sad to leave Lisbon, especially right as the weather started improving. Our last day was totally clear, and we took advantage of it to walk along the boardwalk and admire the lovely scenery. We said goodbye to the city and our new friends and hesitantly got on the train back home. I hoped that I would enjoy Portugal, but my expectations were completely surpassed. It is an exciting place, full of vitality, good wine, and amazing people, and I can’t wait to go back someday : )

I will probably be posting my next blog sometime next week and tell you about my API daytrip to Segovia, as well as about my upcoming trip this weekend to Barcelona, where I will celebrate my 21st birthday with my friends there! It should be awesome, and I hope to have many good things to tell in my next update. But for now, adeus and boa noite (goodbye and goodnight in Portuguese)!