Lisbon, Portugal

just buying some strawberries in lisbon

So I've fallen behind on my blogging a little bit- I have't written about my trip to Portugal, which was the weekend before Barcelona, oops! I shouldn't wait so long to write in my blog hopefully its not too hard to remember everything!

welcome to lisboa

We took a bus to get to Lisbon, which took about 5 hours. It was strange that they didn't even check our passports when we got into Portugal! On the bus, our directors gave us a packet with Portuguese terms on it-thank you is obligada-but they told us to speak to them in English rather than Spanish, because even though they know Spanish, it is kind of an insult to them because they know our native tongue is English, and we weren't in Spain anymore.


We went to our hotel that had veryveryvery comfy beds and took a little siesta before heading out! We toured the city, got to see Castillo de San Jorge de Lisboa, and walked around Plaza del Comercio.  We may or may not have taken a jubilee of pictures on this trip. 

plaza del comercio

At the castle!

At night, we decided to stay in our hotels and have a movie/pizza night because we were all tired from the traveling and exploring. The next day, we saw the Monastery of Los Jeronimos and the Belem Tower, which had one little tiny staircase that wound up the whole tower which was kind of inconvenient because people were trying to walk down while we were walking up and I almost fell/stepped on people's feet about 50 times but it was a good site to see! We took a whisper tour of the Monastery with a guide and earphones, and then got to frolic around the outside of it and again took some crazy pictures with our friends.

trying to be rapunzel at the monastery

at the top of the tower

We went to a famous place in Lisbon called "The brazilian girl" and had coffee and pastries, and let me tell  you...it was worth it!! I got a quiche and coffee and we enjoyed the atmosphere of the cute little cafe. Afterwards, we had some free time and explored the city, went to some shops, found some funny shirts, and took more pics! Lisbon was definitely a lot bigger than Sevilla -definitely had more of a city feel! 

Brazilian girl cafe

For dinner, we walked a little bit past our hotel and found a relatively cheap place to eat. I forgot to mention how good the food was in Portugal! They have really good fish, and coffee-they are famous for it! Emily and I split a dish with salmon and ......something else and it was oh so delicious!Yum! Afterward, we headed out to Barrio Alto, which is a popular place with cafes/bars/clubs etc, and we ended up meeting our friends at the end and even somebody that was from Sevilla, and we actually met up with him again yesterday for Semana Santa. It was SO crowded-it reminded me of Cadiz!  

craziness of barrio alto

Overall, I really enjoyed Portugal, and was happy that we got to see such beautiful places, but I was of course homesick for Sevilla and excited to get back! I still think Sevilla is my favorite place that I've visited so far, and I like the feel of Sevilla much better than the larger cities like Lisbon and Barcelona. We made it back just in time for church at home at 8pm on Sunday! Definitely a good trip:)