The World is your Oyster...: Lisbon, Portugal...a dream land

The Spanish are champions of four day weekends. They call their holidays "el puente", which means bridge in Spanish. This name exists as the holiday typically is on a Thursday and they "bridge" the holiday over to Saturday and skip Friday for work as well. Just one more thing that makes foreigners shake their heads at this country and their economic crisis. That being said, the second weekend in December is a "puente". I was fortunate enough to spend my holiday traveling to Lisbon, Portugal. Lisbon is the capital of Portugal and is one of the oldest cities in the world and the oldest city in Western Europe. I still believe Portugal is a hidden gem and often overlooked when thinking about where to travel in Europe. You would think that being Spain's neighboring country, Portugal would be effortless to get to. However, the case is quite the opposite. Flying or taking a train is time consuming and expensive, renting a car entails lots of road tolls and its too far to run (hahaha) so the comforts of a bus were the only option.

My friend Abby and I caught the night bus on Wednesday evening. It left at midnight from Sevilla and arrived at the dark and chilly hour of 5:30am in Lisbon. Despite having been oh so comfortable on the bus and having slept for a whopping hour or so, I was surprisingly wired and ready to go. We decided to wait an hour for the metro station to open rather than taking a taxi so we could save a couple of euros for our starbucks treat later that day. :) Well worth the hour wait!

We made it successfully to our metrostop, emerged on the dark/empty street and began our trek for the hostel. We asked a Portuguese lady for help with our directions and continued our ascent up this HILL towards the hostel! Gosh, there are absolutely no hills in Sevilla so it is always a shock to the system when I have to climb a hill. We arrived at the giant door of our hostel and our mouths dropped open once we stepped in. El Independiente Hostel opened about a year ago and is the former home of a ex Swiss ambassador. Let's just say it was beautifully constructed with marble columns, high ceilings and giant rooms. The best part was it was only 8 euros a night including a delicious breakfast and sheets!!! whoa.

With the whole day ahead of us we started it off right with a starbucks where we enjoyed the holiday music and planned out our weekend. Our first stop was to purchase an umbrella which was quite an experience. We went to this little shop where this Indian man was very well versed in his umbrella types. He sold us on the 16-point, double spring, black umbrella for 5euros. He was certain it was much more durable against wind and rain than his 8 point umbrella. Oh, and don't forget that any of his umbrellas make perfect defense mechanisms. I was a little torn at which umbrella and he told me this was an easy decisions as most decisions in life are, it's not my wedding dress right?! Anyway, we were happy about our 16 point, double spring umbrellas throughout the day as they kept us dry from the constant drizzle.

Throughout the day in Lisbon we walked all throughout the city, taste tasted the world renowned vinto porto, explored the mini Christmas shops and eventually hit a delusional state from lack of sleep. I think the pictures below better sum up all the sights we saw. As you can see, Lisbon is an interesting mix of the landscapes of Prague to San Francisco. The characteristics of the buildings are very Eastern European yet Lisbon is right on the water and they have a bridge almost identical to the Golden Gate Bridge of San Fran. On Sunday we went to a flea market, which had an assortment of unique hand made gift to things I swear people pulled out of the trash.

In addition to exploring Lisbon we took a train 40 mins Northwest to the famous town of Cintra. Cintra is home to the stunning Palacio de Pena (Pena Palace). This Palace is really a castle. The exterior is decorated with yellow, purple and red coloring. Their are impressively decorated walls with tiles. The interior was simple and not goddy like some of the European castles I've seen. I had wanted to travel here since studying abroad in Granada two years ago, and I could not have been more thrilled to finally see it.

Our evenings were spent eating and drinking with the Americans that happened to be sharing our hostel room with us. These girls also happened to be teaching assistants like myself but they were stationed in Madrid. It was interesting as they were all about 26 years old and one of the girls was on her FOURTH year. Crazy. Anyway, the first night we went to an ALL YOU CAN EAT sushi bar for 10euros and for 4 more euros you could drink all you want. I wish sushi wasn't so filling cause I could've ate that for days. No sushi isn't authentic Portuguese food, but how could you turn down an all you can eat and drink sushi bar. The second night Abby and I enjoyed a classy salad and pizza meal. Again, clearly authentic Portuguese food. The last night we enjoyed some more local cuisine at the restaurant connected with our hostel. It is well-known in the area and many outsiders come from other parts of town to eat there. We celebrated our last night in Lisbon with a Pub Crawl in the well-known nightlife neighborhood of Barrio Alto. Good times.

As a whole Lisbon is a beautiful city. The Portuguesse people are very friendly and speak excellent English. It is relatively cheap to eat and stay once you pay a bit of money to get there. I would highly recommend visiting this town to anyone.