The five of us (Jeanna, Maggie, Dani, Emilie, and myself) took a shuttle to the airport. We were flying with Easy Jet, and I don’t think that any of us had flown with them before. We asked some of the workers at the help desk if we needed to wait in line to have our boarding passes stamped since we had no baggage to check. One sais yes and the other no, so we decided it was safest to wait. While in line, Dani realized that she left her cell phone on the bus, and I realized that if they weighed my bag, it was going to be overweight. While rummaging through my bag, I remembered that I had packed beads for each of them. I gave them each a fleur-de-lis bead, which they actually wore through the airport, on the plane, and in Lisbon. So sweet! In the end, it turned out that we didn’t have to wait in that line. While we were going through security, Maggie had trouble getting her baby powder and lotion through. It seemed that we all were having problems that morning.
However, we made it to our gate, and it began boarding not too long after we arrived. We managed to get the emergency exit row for Maggie, so things were beginning to look up for us! Once we landed, however, no one knew where the hostel was or how exactly to get there. We all assumed that the other person had printed it out, but we managed based on what we could all remember.
On the bus to the hostel, we met an American girl named Julie. She had been living in Madrid for the past three months working as an au pair. That was her last weekend in Europe; she was going home that Wednesday. Anyway, as it turns out, she was staying at the same hostel as us. We all walked there together, and we had very few problems considering.
We actually got there too early. Our room wasn’t ready, so we put our bags in the storage room until we could get in our room. Then, they let us eat breakfast for free that day. This is one of the best hostels that I have ever stayed in. While we were getting breakfast, he was telling us about another group of American students staying at the hostel that was also studying in Madrid. He introduced our group to their group, and we all bonded over breakfast talking about people we knew. Funny how small the world is, isn’t it?
After breakfast, we waited around for the free city walking tour to begin. It finally did, and we got to see a lot of Lisbon and learn quite a bit of history too. The tour lasted about two hours, and when it was over, we walked through the flea market stopping at this traditional Portuguese restaurant. The waiter spoke no English, and I assure you that we spoke no Portuguese. Thankfully, we managed to get by speaking in Spanish, which he could understand. We ordered the two dishes he recommended. I can’t recall the names of the dishes, but one was similar to a vegetable soup and the other was a chicken curry. We enjoyed them both. The girls also tried gingia…
After lunch, we headed back to the hostel to check in. We freshened up and went to a free wine tasting. Considering I don’t like wine or really drink, I guess I thought the wines were pretty good. The other girls all really enjoyed it. After the wine tasting, we went back to the hostel to shower and change before dinner. The dinner they prepared for us was quite good. We started with cheese, ham, and bread. Then we had a vegetable soup and bread. The main course was chicken and rice. And the dessert was this cake rolled and dripping in melted chocolate. We were stuffed.
After dinner, I went up to take my shower. Maggie came in and told me that they were all downstairs playing cards. I went down to join them when I finished. We started to play, and soon enough, the hostel had transformed into a mini dance club. It was the 25th birthday of one of the girls that worked there, so everyone was in a particularly festive mood. Needless to say, I think we laughed more than we danced, but we had fun.
The next morning, we were up bright and early again to go on a tour. This tour was going to take us to all the best spots around Lisbon. We were all really excited. The first stop on our tour was Sintra. In this town, we tried pastries called queijadas, went to the flea market, and toured the palace. We also went to this guy’s house that had so much money he didn’t know what to do with it so he just kept building. We climbed towers and walked through underground caves. We walked up an old well that was still dripping with water. We went through his house and found the library; it was recommended to us by our tour guide. Turns out, there are mirrors all along the edge of the floor. It messes with your head and makes you think that there is no floor there. It was very interesting!
Then, we went to the most western point of all of Continental Europe. It was extra-specially windy for us that day. I was taking a picture and a gust of wind blew so hard that I stumbled backwards to keep from falling! The view was absolutely breathtaking though. We then went to the beach. Only Jeanna, myself, and this other girl we met named Amy, went down. The sand was painful as it blew against our skin, but the water was cool and made it all worthwhile. There were surfers and people parasailing. It was nice and made me miss the water back home.
We continued to drive along the coast and stopped to have ice cream, but most of us just sat along the water and enjoyed the view. I watched the sailboats come and go. I really want to go sailing!!! Then, back along the coast we saw the infamous Belem Tower, but we didn’t stop. We did stop at another monument and monastery. From here, we had an excellent view of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge and Rio de Janero’s Christ. We also tried the famous pastries of Belem that our previous tour guide had told us about. She said that the recipe is known by four men. Each knows a different part, so that the recipe can never be found out. However, an Italian managed to figure out the recipe and started to sell the pastries in Italy. But all of a sudden, the pastries stopped being sold in Italy so she thinks that the Belem “Maffia” paid off the Italian man.
Finally, we made it back to Lisbon. We thanked our tour guide Pedru and asked for dinner recommendations. We headed back to the hostel to freshen up and then walked to the restaurant. We were immediately seated and given two things of ham, olives, two different types of fresh cheese, and three baskets of bread. All of which totaled up to about 50 euros! We sent it back because we didn’t want to pay for all of that. We then ordered our meals and white sangria. When the waiter came around with the sangria, he had Emilie try it before serving us all. Mistake! She is from France and knew everything that he did wrong! Then, they kept giving Dani my silverware and her no silverware, but they did mange to give us all the right plates. Of course I was last! We enjoyed our meals enough to try a dessert, which again we all enjoyed. However, they brought us the check and quickly came back looking to be paid because they had another reservation. The waiter, however, was not so nice about how he told us these things. It was a horrible end to the dinner.
We then walked back to the hostel to get some sleep before our early flight and classes the next day. We were discussing which one word we should use to best describe the trip. We came up with two: laughter and original.
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