Lisbon Portugal is BEAUTIFUL!

The bus ride from Sevilla to Lisbon was BRUTAL! It was 110 degrees, had leather seats and I was sitting next to a chatty McPatty. Chatty Mc Patty is actually Meg from Australia, my first friend in Lisbon and we haven't even arrived yet. The bus ride was about 6-7 hours and I was truly happy to arrive! Once we arrived I thought I would take a taxi with Meg since we seemed to be in the same area but it turns out that a old man and his much younger son needed a place to stay and went with Meg. I got her contact info and tried to explain to my driver where I needed to go. Same story... he didn't speak English and I was just getting a grasp of Spanish let alone Portuguese. He seemed really upset that I didn't know anything in Portuguese and ripped my directions from my hands and starting driving like a crazy man. If anything I've developed some thicker skin on this trip and wasn't bothered by this guy at all. I actually thought it was funny that he was being such a jerk. He dropped me off, I paid him and was immediately approached my 2 separate men asking me for cigarettes. I said, "no fuma" and then they asked if I wanted to buy hash or cocaine. Ha! I was still laughing and found my way to the hostel and stumbled into the kitchen to warm up a cup of rice that I had in my bag. 

 The great thing about the hostel I'm staying at is a 4 course dinner is served every night for only 8 euro. I made good friends with the chef Pedro and didn't even pay for dinner that night, maybe he felt bad that I was having nadty, wheat rice with nothing else! Since his dinner was so good and I discovered that actually the only money he receives is what guests pay him I paid every night after that.

I enjoy the food here much more so than Spain. Portuguese eat a lot of fish and potatoes and their recipes seem to be quite simple. Hooray! Sorry Spain but I don't love cured ham and bread all of the time!

 Eating dinner at the hostel was a cheaper option than going out to dinner and a great way to meet people. I met so many nice people I decided to extend my stay 4 days later. I had to move to Meg's hostel because mine was full and this is when I met Angel [an hell], he was taking over my bed and since I had made such great friends with the people in my room I definitely gave him a hard time about it. 

   I continued hanging out with the people at my old hostel, including Angel and Maria and saw the sites with them. We kept in touch throughout the week and met for lunches and some walks around too. I ended up staying in Lisbon almost a week. I really enjoyed the people, bit the locals and my new friends and the nightly pub crawls thrown by Pedro, the chef. We went to an area called Barrio Alto a lot. Their were cheap drinks, good company and beautiful buildings. Also I couldn't really get lost because I just followed the trolley track (think San Fran red trollies... they look the same... so cute and cheap.)

My camera is sort of working sometimes so that's great! I took a walking tour with the hostel today.... it included a tile shop, a castle, wine tasting, lunch and many, many small cool streets. The view from the castle was great. There were tons of cats at the castle and it was a real bad idea to pat one. These cats aren't the friendly house cats you know and love in the states. Before I could even move my hand kung ku kitty had destroyed it! Seriously, I had lots of bleeding scratches but that wasn't the worse part. Apparently it was really stupid to pat them- this fact I didn't know but multiple people were laughing at me, ouch my poor ego. 

  It is so beautiful here and the people are nice. The locals seem to speak much more english than in Spain and they have really cool flea markets. I picked up a beautiful ring for my momma- it's made from an old Portuguese coin. They had a lot of beautiful wooden carved sculptures of rhinos and monkeys and such. They wouldn't fit in my bag, so I refrained. 

  On the last day 2 dutch girls, Maria, Angel, Simon and I walked to Jesus [a LARGE statue of Jesus]. I did the same in San Sebastian and it was anticlimactic but I wanted to stay with the group and have them go with me to Sintra after Jesus. Sintra is a nearby town with an amazing palace. We ended up hanging out on the grass at Jesus's feet for hours just talking and throwing grass, simple fun. Maria and I split up from the group and went to the zoo and then got train tickets for the two of us and Angel to go to Lagos the next day.

The beach was a relaxing, good time!

Hi all... not much time to write at the moment... need to catch a taxi and then a bus! I'm heading to Portugal for a week in the big cities before beginning work. I'll be in Lisboa (lisbon) for 4 night and then Lagos for 4 nights also! This vacation part of the trip is nearly over and in 2 days I'll have been here a month! Crazy! Write soon! P.S. I dropped my camera at Maria's and broke it!!! :( This picture is of me, Maria's dad "Paco", her mom "Pudi" and her Aunt.

Heading back to the beach! 8/12-8/16

I'm so excited to get out of Madrid and back to the beach! I'll be with Maria and her family until 8/16 and then I'm going to stay in hostels in Portugal alone. I want to see the bigger cities before I start work there on the 23rd!! These 5 weeks have FLOWN by! My spirits are lifted after getting an email from Erin, a facebook message from nick, skyping with my family and Christian and finding soy milk at the grocery store!! I was a bit bummed for a few days there... but now my tummy is full of fruit (and soy milk... no more cured meat for me...bleck!) and I'm ready to hit the road once again! :) Thanks for lifting me back up guys! :)

Back in Madrid

I'm a little bummed... Maria's hot water doesn't work or her gas stove and everything seems closed here!! I'm definitely in the wrong area.... I need a beach so I'm looking for options!

San Sebastian Days Three and four!

8/6/09 It wasn't sunny out today so 8 of us from the hostel decided to rent bikes for 4 hours and ride around San Sebastian. I'm so glad we did this! It was a perfect and cheap (12 euro) way to see a lot of the area. We visited some sculptures and couldn't believe how big the waves were!

We got some kebobs for lunch (they're sort of like pita pockets) and headed back to the hostel to rest a bit before hitting the town at night. The people who didn't go biking played volleyball.. so it was a pretty active day for all... when night fell people decided to stay in but I wasn't tired so I went to the beach  for a walk and to draw and write until about 1am. It was relaxing... a very, very chill day at San Sebastian.

8/7/09 Another not pretty day out... so we slept late and made some sandwiches from groceries we bought. I hung out with a girl that works at the hostel and a guy named Christian. He's from England and drove all the way to San Sebastian. He's traveling alone, perhaps we'll meet again. It's nice to have friends. Jodi and I decided to walk to Jesus and around Old Town. Jesus (a large statue) on top of a big hill was about a 30 minute hike. We're not incredibly religious so we also took silly pics and enjoyed the hike in itself. At night time we had a pretty crazy night out. Somehow I became the tour guide (bad idea) and went into some not awesome bars before finding some good ones. I tried to keep the 30 or so of us together but it didn't work out. Jodi and I got split up but we both had a great time. I got a bloody lip... a fight happened right in front of me and I got elbowed (nice, just my luck). Luckily, having boxed... I'm not fazed so the night went on. My group went to the beach afterwards and hung out... we got in at 6am! Jodi and I left for our bus to Madrid at 10am.... I slept on the bus! San Sebastian was great!

Hugh, from Australia

San Sebastian Day Two!

I woke up and tried to sort through my stuff... I've been in Spain now for 2 1/2 weeks and I seriously need to do some laundry. Normally I wouldn't mind wearing things over and over but it's hot here, enough said! Today Jodi and I went to get some groceries for the beach. We got some delicious fresh fruit for breakfast and croissants. We also bought french bread, ham and cheese for lunch time. We spent from 11am-530pm at the beach and guess who sat about 5 feet from us?!?! Let's see.... it's a he.... he's a singer... he sings "Glory Days" and "Born in the U.S.A... That's right BRUCE "THE BOSS" SPRINGSTEEN!! Spanish people pretty much left him alone but I got to take a few pics and a video before his body guard caught me!! I'll post soon!

Oh, and tonight the hostel is taking us out for free paella (a local spanish favorite made from rice and sometimes seafood) and sangria (red wine mixed with other alcohol and fruit.) We're excited!!

I LOVE SAN SEBASTIAN

Jodi and I took the bus from Barcelona to San Sebastian today. It was 7 hours long and I'm glad that its over. San Sebastian is on the Northern coast of Spain and almost at the border of France! It is a beautiful and relaxed beach town with the best tapas in the world (I hear). Actually we did have dinner out tonight and it was delicious. I had been weary about all of the cured meat and bread all of the time but this place was different. In the North they eat tapas differently. They have many, many, many dishes out for you to choice from. You just take what you want and take a toothpick for every piece you take. At the end of the meal you simply give them your tray of toothpicks and they add up the cost. Our meal was 20 Euros with 2 glasses of wine and 2 beers, so not bad at all! Plus the owner thought we were cute trying to speak Spanish so he gave us free things! 

08/01/09- 8/4/09 Barcelona is crazy good and crazy bad

Our plane from Seville to Barcelona was so cool! It was an MTV plane! They played great music the whole time. It’s easy to get lost in Barcelona! We did from the start! Once we found our hostel we checked in and entered our room- it was the tiniest room ever but it was a private room so we didn’t complain. We walked down to the Rambla district and saw some crazy sites!! Mom, you would LOVE it! I was intrigued. There were people dressed up as fat ladies, gargoyles, clowns, mimes and also people making cool things out of coke cans and other materials. were also people asking you if you wanted to buy drugs, beers, fans, rabbits, birds, paintings- everything! As day turned to night, Jodi and I were walking through this crazy district and got invited to a pub crawl. We debated about it because we were tired but wanted to see some sites. We decided to go and once again got lost and were 30 minutes late. We almost didn’t go but were glad when we got to the first location, an Irish Pub, because we saw some Irish guys whom we had met in Seville about 5 days prior! Small world!! They went on the pub crawl with us and made it a great time. We got tons of free drinks... which I didn’t keep up with but some were good. We didn’t get home til very, very, very late because we went to a dance club and the music keeps you motivated. It was a lot of fun! 

We tried to take a bus tour the next day but the English headphones were not working very well and it was blazing hot. Also the bus stopped so often for 10 minutes at a time- we were dying! I actually fell asleep - that must have looked awesome from the street. Haha So, we spent a lot of time at the beach! The beach was very unique. There were fire breathing sand dragons (real fire) and sand palaces built with working water fountains. Another interesting feature, women are topless of course but also there are people walking around constantly selling beer, soda, fresh coconut, indian food, etc. Also there are women who walk around giving massages for 5 euros and others braiding hair. This beach was insane. Looking back I should have gotten a massage. It would have been interesting to say the least. 

We also visited the Gaudi Museum. Gaudi actually lived there! It had beautiful architecture. He had a fantastic attention to detail- every door knob and railing formed to your hand. Every chimneystack was made into a sculpture. Another cool thing we ran into though was a farmer' market and it was beautiful. Super fresh fruit was being sold as well as colorful candies, meats, eggs and cheeses. We had to hold on to our purses as these are the markets that man thefts occur.  Overall, Barcelona was cool but not somewhere I would like to stay for long. It was very expensive and it took forever to get to the beach on the metro. It was full of people and had a great night life, but other than that we didn’t find a lot to do (but because of the heat we didn’t have a lot of energy either!) 

 The tipping point was when we were leaving. Our bus left at 700am so we were walking through the Rambla District around 530am. A lot of people were still out drinking and in the span of our 5 minute walk we saw drug dealers, prostitutes and a fight. I actually heard a lady offer her sexual services for 30 euros! AHH!! We were ready to leave Barcelona... maybe I'll try again some other time!

7/31/2009 My Secret Garden: Granada

We started the day early with a bus ride to the Alhambra. The Alhambra was originally built in the 14^th century. It was once the palace of the Muslim rulers of Granada. It is built atop winding, narrow roads high on the mountainside overlooking Granada. The Alhambra has definitely been my favorite experience thus far on my trip. The architecture was beautifully grandiose with intricate designs on the walls and ceilings. I felt tiny amongst the high marble structures, but also comforted because they were so cool compared to the temperature outside. My favorite part were the gardens at General Life. The water fountains were stunning against a backdrop of colorful flowers and tall marble columns. Water was a main element in the garden. It flowed everywhere and almost showed you where to go. One main stair well had water flowing down its handrails… it was truly magical. I was at the Alhambra for about 5.5 hours but could have stayed there for 12 if it weren’t for the sunburn and empty stomach! 

For more pics: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2222381&id=5807079&l=2d1bf234c6