lisbon

 Ruins under Lisbon in H&M.

My heaven

Umm...Hermione? Is that you? 

 Cable car city!

 

For your appetizer, canned fish. Main, canned fish. And for dessert? Canned fish.

 A fado bar (Fado is a type of Portuguese music "usually with a malancholy theme and accompanied by mandolins or guitars," in case you needed Google's definition)

 Death served in a fancy glass.

Street art 

My roommate and sweet friend!

The days I spent in Lisbon flew by the fastest. When we were leaving with our suitcases on Friday March 22 to head to the airport, I could feel the sun shining warmly on my face and was longing to take one of the ferries to a nearby island. But alas, all good things come to an end and I found myself writing this at 4 am in a cold, smelly, Milan train station. My Portuguese adventure:

Thursday March 21

Marissa and I woke up and went shopping. We got lunch at a little Portuguese cafe that had a special for a sandwich, soup, and freshly-squeezed juice for 4 euro. I have NEVER tasted OJ like that in my life...it tasted like I was drinking straight from an orange. We went back to the hostel afterwards, which i thoroughly enjoyed hanging out at. Our hostels over spring break went from terrible, to good, to mistakable-for-a-five-star-hotel-good. This one was sparkling clean, had good music playing 24/7, lots of light and windows...more on hostels later, though. At 2 pm, Marissa and I went on a free walking tour that the hostel offered, which I found really enjoyable in both Madrid and Lisbon. It's a great way to meet new people, see a city for more than what meets the eye, etc. This tour, called “Mysteries of Lisbon”, was led by Australian Henry, who told us strange things about spots all around. In 1755, an earthquake hit Lisbon and was estimated to be a 10 on the richter scale. Soon after, a tsunami (or otherwise flood) hit the city and left everything in total ruins. People debated moving the capital, but they chose to just rebuild everything. Because of that, Lisbon is basically built on top of another town. When you go into the H&M store, there is a section with glass-bottom where you can see the ruins.

Next, we tried ginjinha liqueur. The first one we had at the hostel was “the worst kind ever made”, and Henry told us we had to taste the bad to enjoy the good (debatable). So this next one we had on the tour was at a little hole-in-the-wall bar, and it was good! The ginger berry is actually not a great-tasting berry itself, but Portugal is famous for taking not-tasty things and making them good. They do this with the ginger berries, and also codfish. It used to be thought down upon to eat cod, but now it's one of Portugal's most consumed foods.

We went around the town and saw some Fado bars, a place that used to be an orphanage with blue and white tile covering it, a palace where people from a different part of portugal come and meet, and more. Of course there was more ginjinha to be had, along with mini beers which seemed to be the drink of choice there (Marissa and I never gave those a try). One of the “Mysteries of Lisbon”, I decided, was how our tour guide could sling back so much alcohol and still be standing. To be Portuguese, or just to live there, you have to be able to drink all day and all night long...a lifestyle I could never personally enjoy.

We climbed a hill and admired the street art, and then got a great lookout view of the ocean. There was a guy playing his guitar and singing, which I've found to be extremely common in Europe. Next we visited a canned fish shop. Like I said earlier, fish used to be thought of as nothing special or important, but they found a way to make it appealing. This store had walls chockfull of canned fish with different spices and flavors. The one I got was delicious and only costed one euro: a perfect lunch the next day!

Our last stop on the tour was in a cafe where a famous Portuguese writer used to frequent. He was a drunk, and off of none other than infamous Absinthe. This cafe has some kind of loophole that makes it one of the only legal places in Portugal to sell Absinthe, so needless to say, we all took a shot of it. This drink is NOT for babies like me: the bartenders grunted and clapped as each of us were taking them. My mouth went numb, my eyes watered and my throat got scratchy. Not my cup of tea. We headed back home and ate dinner at the hostel—cilantro/lettuce salad, creamy potato soup and the casserole entree of cod fish, spinach and a crumbly corn bread topping. Yum.

Friday March 22

The next morning I got myself up before 10:30 again because that's what time breakfast is served until. Cheese, bread with homemade apricot jam, crepes with jam, coffee, and cornflakes with chocolate power. For our last day in Lisbon, Marissa and I sat next to the coast and took in the scenery. My right foot was KILLING me by this point—bringing nothing but Steve Madden combat boots on a backpacking trip was a serious mistake. If I could go back and tell myself something in advance, it would have been to suck it up and just wear tennis shoes. Our flight to Milan that evening went without a hitch—it was once we got there that the trouble began. When the bus dropped us off at the train station from the airport, it was midnight, and the next bus wouldn't come until 6 am. A hotel receptionist had enough of a heart to let us stay/sleep in the 4-star hotel's lobby lounge until 5 am, and we arrived in Florence later that morning.

Random:

-As seen in a picture above, college students in Portugal look like they're dressed based off a Harry Potter book. Interestingly enough, Harry Potter is actually slightly based off Portugal--J.K Rowling lived there for a while. Aside from the uniforms, another uncanny similarity from the books to Portugal is that they used to have a leader that nobody would ever mention. The Portuguese literally feared dropping his name in conversation. Now you tell ME who that sounds like!

-I'm so thankful for the wonderful weather I got in Barcelona, Madrid and Lisbon. I wouldn't have minded it being 10 degrees warmer, but there was hardly any rain the entire week. And in Europe, that's hard to come by.

XO