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.
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