LISBON, PORTUGAL

this trip was probably the best decision i have made while i've been here. it cost $150 to fly here and probably another $50 for the hotel and public transportation/food costs but it was SO worth it... who knows if i will ever make it back here, and this is someplace i definitely would not have wanted to miss. it was incredible! we spent almost exactly 24 hours in portugal, which i know is not a very long time... but i would not have changed it at all. if i could give somebody advice, i would give them the exact same itinerary. definitely.

we got off the plane and hopped onto a bus to head out into lisbon. it was a really weird feeling to get out into an airport and.. not have anybody there waiting for us. i mean, if you think about it, you pretty much ALWAYS have somebody there waiting for you when you get off a plane. it was fun though.. one of the best adventures i've had to go to a foreign country where i don't speak the language (basically everybody there speaks english though) and navigate my way around. the first thing we did when we got off the bus was stare out at the water. this was actually the bay, not the ocean, but it was still cool. we appreciated it.

we headed out to the tower of belém, which was pretty far away from the center, and climbed all the way up it. it was built in the 15th century as a part of the defense mechanisms for the city, and stands on the river to protect them. it was decorated with all of these balloon things, which actually made it look cooler, i think. the view was INCREDIBLE... you can get some really really good pictures from all of the different levels, of the ships going by and the city behind it.

afterwards, we went to the jerónimos monastery right down the road (profe would be proud of us for visiting a religious monument). it is another one of those actually beautiful buildings. and it was incredibly large, one of those impossible to capture in one photograph buildings? so i bought a postcard with it on it and called it good.

we stopped by the plaza do comercial on our bus ride back into the city, where this cool, city-wide art project was being displayed (actually, i don't know why i'm describing it like that.. we really have no idea what it was for). they looked like mushrooms but then we discovered they were trees, painted in cool ways. very cool.

this little girl was relaxing under this tree.. it was really cute and i snapped a picture.

so then we started to make our way up to the castelo de sao jorge, and i was accosted by this man. he put a bracelet on my wrist and said it was free because i was a very nice lady, and i, not being a complete stranger to stories about con artists like this, tried to not take it and say thank you and walk away.. but he insisted i take it as a gift and then continued to insist that i give him money so that he could drink some beer. i escaped after giving him 2.50. story made short, i was robbed by this man. if you go to lisbon, these men are EVERYWHERE... watch out for them! i managed to capture him doing the same thing to this woman... i wish i could have warned her, but it was too late... but the view once we got to the castelo was worth it.

after walking around and eating dinner (at this amazing, delicious, hole-in-the-wall himalayan food restaurant), we made it the trek out to our hotel... on the beach. the town our hotel was in reminded me so much of balboa, i loved it: a total, normal little beach town. it was nighttime when we got there, so we had a midnight picnic on the beach and ate some ice cream and then woke up way early and got out there before we headed back into the city to take some pictures of us at the ATLANTIC OCEAN FROM THE OTHER SIDE! helllloooooo, north carolina!

we caught a bus up back to the center of lisbon and made it to the grand central station of lisbon: gare do oriente (whatever that means in portugues). it's this really cool architecture of a building that i really wanted to see at night (look it up on wikipedia, it's great at night) but it was still gorgeous in the day.

then we walked through the equally cool mall across the street (i don't know if you can see, but there was water going across the roof all the time... it was cooooool) to get to the...

PARK OF THE NATIONS! site of the world expo in 1998, it's this ginormous ginormous park area that has a lot of modern art sculpture and is right on the bay. we walked around here until our flight a few hours later. it was absolutely incredible. and huge.

all in all, it was a successful "vacation from our vacation", as we called it. we explored, navigated, got lost several times, but thanks to the wonderful pop-up map kristine purchased beforehand and dane's resourceful abilities to ask people for directions in spanish and understand their portugese, we managed to survive and 100% enjoy ourselves. i'm so glad we went... who knows if i will ever have the chance to country-hop like this again? when will i ever get to come back to portugal? who knows? thank goodness!