This past weekend I traveled to Lisbon, or as it is called in Portuguese (and Spanish as well), Lisboa. I had an amazing time and it was great experience to witness another culture other than the Spanish while I'm studying abroad. However, I did not have such an amazing time traveling there and back. Renfe (the Spanish equivalent to Amtrack, but better in my opinion) only offers one trip to Lisbon everyday, or I should say, everynight since they only offer a 10 hour overnight train; therefore, in order to arrive in Lisbon on Friday, I had to leave Thursday. Also, I first had to take a train to Madrid, since there are no direct trains from Alicante to Lisbon. I waited too long to buy my tickets so I was unable to procure a bed on the "trenhotel," or train hotel and I'm the kind of person who cannot just sleep anywhere. That being said, I only got about 3 hours of sleep there and about 4 on the way back to Madrid. Moral of the story, don't procrastinate and buy your tickets early.
However, the long and sleepless nights were worth it; Lisbon is a very gorgeous city. I arrived at 7:30 am, local time, so a lot of things (including the tourism office) were still closed so I just walked around a little. Luckily my guide book,
Let's Go Spain & Portugal,
has a map of every city it has within it's pages; I strongly recommend it for any students who plan on traveling abroad since it's written by students for students; they also have other countries/regions around the world. So with my book with a map of Lisbon I found my way from the train station to the center of the city. I first stumbled upon the Praça do Comercio (Plaza of Commerce), a giant plaza right along the Rio Tejo (Tejo River), which flows through Spain as well, but called Río Tajo, which I saw in Toledo. On the other side of the Praça do Comercio, opposite the river, was the Arco da Rua Agusta (Arch of Agusta Street) acts as a gateway to the heart of Lisbon.
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| Praça do Comercio |
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| Rio Tejo |
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| Arco da Rua Agusta |
The very center of Lisbon is unlike many other European cities because rather than having streets that twist and turn, its streets are straight and on the map it looks more like an American city. That's because that section of the city was destroyed in an earthquake in 1755 so Lisbon had the opportunity to give itself a makeover and made the streets more organized and grander. However, once you leave that part of town, the streets get a little more difficult to navigate, like true European fashion, but I had no difficulties finding my way around.
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| This reminded me of the Explanada de España in Alicante |
After the tourism office opened and I had a proper map (the one in my book was good, but it's way easier to carry around a foldable map than a book), I decided to go to the Castelo de São Jorge (Castle of Saint George) which sits atop a mountain overlooking the city and the river. However, on the way up, I passed by the Igreja Santa Maria Maior de Lisboa, or simply just called the Lisbon Cathedral. The tour of the main church was free, which in my travels thus far I've found is very rare, but I did pay 2.50€ to view the Cloister. I'm glad I did too because they have been doing an archaeological dig and found the ancient foundations of the cathedral, so that was very cool to see.
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| Igreja Santa Maria Maior de Lisboa |
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| One of Lisbon's famous street cars |
Finally I arrived at the Castelo de São Jorge. For only 2€ (thank you once again European Youth Card!) I was able to enter the castle and walk along its walls, which offers some great views of the city and the Rio Tejo. And, as an added bonus, there were peacocks roaming around the grounds!
Since I was extremely tired from not only the traveling, but also from walking up to the castle, I decided to go to Sintra, a town just north-west of Lisbon and the real reason I made the trip because that's where my bosses from my job as a gas station clerk were staying. They won a trip from the food/grocery distributor they use. We had a bit of a miscommunication, they thought I was coming straight to the hotel and I thought they had something planned with their group (which they did, but it was in the evening not the morning). But we still ended up finding each other and everything was fine.
It was so great to see them! It made me a little homesick, but not for long because they brought me a jar of Jif peanut butter, which made me very happy since it's about the only thing I've been missing from the States. They showed me around their hotel, the Penha-Longa Resort, which used to be monastery; the place was so amazing and elegant, I felt like I needed dress clothes just to walk around the halls. Later, after a bit of catching up, they went to dinner with their group and I crashed because I was so tired. I was so tired I fell asleep with the lights on and those of you who know me know that I practically need it to be pitch black to sleep.
Saturday morning, after getting ready, we had breakfast which was a giant buffet with pretty much every breakfast food imaginable. Over breakfast we talked about what we wanted to do since Saturday was the only full day we had together. We ended up deciding to explore Sintra since they had already been around Lisbon and I still had Sunday to do more. My host mom told me about a palace in Sintra that she really likes called the Palácio Nacional da Pena, or just Palácio da Pena (Pena [the name of the national park it's in] Palace) so I told my bosses about it and we decided that we would go there first.
Thankfully we took the bus to the palace because it would have been a very long and difficult walk up the mountain, but it would have been worth it if we would have walked because the Palácio da Pena was amazing. Unlike a lot of other castles/palaces, this one was very colorful; it had been painted red and yellow and it was also decorated inside and out with Portugal's famous hand-painted porcelain. The inside was extremely ornate, there were even entire rooms with walls completely decorated with hand-painted porcelain. And since Sintra is really close to the Atlantic Ocean and the palace is on top of a mountain it gets pretty windy and the wind blows fog and clouds through the mountains; at one point the palace was enshrouded in fog, it was so beautiful. On Sunday when I took a taxi from the hotel to the train station in Sintra, the taxi driver told me that they have a legend that a King once came out of the Sintra fog in order to save the people of Portugal, I think that's a pretty awesome legend.
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| Me, Anita & Dennis, my bosses |
After we finished touring the palace, we headed back down to the center of Sintra and had lunch at a little restaurant just off the beaten path and then we went to another palace in Sintra (and we still didn't end up going to all the palaces/castles in Sintra - they have, I think 4, or at least 3). The Palácio Nacional de Sintra (National Palace of Sintra) is right in the center of the city and it doesn't appear to be as spectacular as its counterpart, the Palácio da Pena, in fact the only thing that seems to catch your eye from the outside is the two giant chimneys, but once you go inside, you'll see that it's just as ornate as the Palácio da Pena. It too had rooms with hand-painted porcelain, but if you looked up, you'd see the extremely detailed paintings on the ceilings, in fact most of the rooms are named after what is on the ceiling.
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| Me with another Sintra castle behind me |
After we were done touring the Palácio Nacional de Sintra we took a taxi back to the hotel and it was a very interesting ride because the driver spoke very English, but since Portuguese and Spanish have a lot of similarities Anita, one of my bosses who also speaks Spanish, and I spoke to him in Spanish and he stoke to us in Portuguese; more or less we understood each other. Dennis, my other boss, said something along the lines of just being along for the ride since he only speaks English. Anita asked the driver to take us the long/scenic way back to the hotel so that we could go by the Atlantic. He told us that it would be a shame if we were in Sintra, but didn't go to Cabo da Roca (or at least this is what I think he said) so he took us there. Cabo da Roca is the western most point of Continental Europe, and therefore was once considered the "end of the world" for the Europeans, so now I can say that I've been to the end of the world!
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| The end of the world was very windy |
We returned to our hotel and had a nice dinner at it's Italian restaurant. Sunday morning Dennis and Anita had to leave early, so we had breakfast together, said our good-byes and then I stayed in the hotel for about an hour or so after they left getting my things around a semi-planning out my day in Lisbon.
Once I returned to Lisbon, I walked through the Barrio Alto and then made my way to the Padrão dos Descobrimentos (Monument to the Discoveries) which is a statue dedicated to Prince Henrique the Navigator who was very important in the history of Portugal because he basically started Portugal's age of exploration. Next, I went to the Torre de Belém (Belém Tower) a guard tower that sits along the Rio Tejo that used to be used to protect Lisbon from would-be invaders coming from the Ocean.
Afterwads, I went to the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos (Hieronymites Monastery). It contains a church (which I was not able to visit because of an ongoing mass), a museum of archaeology and a cloister. Then I headed back to the center of Lisbon where I bought some pastéis de nata (custard tarts) for which Lisbon is famous; they were extremely delicious.
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| Pastéis de nata |
It was getting late and a lot of the tourist places were closing, so I decided to just go and sit in the train station for a couple of hours to wait for my train. After another very long and tiring journey, I was extremely happy to be back in Alicante.
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| Santa Apolólina train station in Lisbon |
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The Ave (bird) high-speed train from Madrid
to Alicante |
As of today (I wrote this on the 14th although I have exactly one month left here and I'm torn about it. On one hand I miss my friends, family and especially my pets (sorry friends and family, but I really miss Hunter and Smokey because I can't really talk with them via Skype like I do with you guys), but on the other hand I love here and I don't want to leave; however, all good things must come to an end. But I figure I better just stop thinking about that and get through my last week of classes, final projects and exams.
