Bom Dia

That means hello in Portuguese. Well for those of you following me along out there, I have spent an amazing last 3 days in the capital of Portugal, Lisboa. I am absolutely loving this country and not sure why more people from the states do not come here.

I arrived after a very long overnight train ride from Madrid. At the station, I met 2 guys who were staying at the same hostel I was and another guy and girl who did not have a hostel so they decided to come with us and see if there was any room available. It was nice to be lost and confused with people in a group. We found our hostel ,which is probably the nicest one that any of us have stayed in. It has only been open for about a month and a half so everything is new, and it is small so that is always nice. There are noly 22 beds there and only 4-5 people per room.

My first day there, the group I came with headed down to the beach while I decided to check out the town after we all had lunch together. I walked around town all day and saw what it looks like and browsed in and out of some shops. I then wandered up to the old gothic quarter that has cobblestone streets that are very hilly and winding with yellow cable cars like the ones you see in San Francisco. I went up to the Castle of San Jorge set way above the city and saw some amazing views of the city. You could see everything from up there, including city, sea, and this huge bridge.

That night I got back and met some girls at my hostel who were going to a bull fight, so I went with them. Luckily in Portuguese bull fights, they do not kill the bull, but it was definately an experience to see. It was quite differnt than I expected and we could see the whole thing great!

The following day, I went to this little town about 45 minutes away called Sintra with one of the guys I had met at my hostel. We took the train there and checked out the town. It was gorgeous, set among a ton of lush green trees and the town only has about 20,000 people who live there. There is an old Moorish Castle set way up above the town that used to be for protection, so we hiked up there (an hour all uphill!). The view was totally worth it though! Coming down, we figured out that there was a much shorter way to get up, but of course we didn´t know that until after. We grabbed dinner before we headed back to our hostel in Sintra. It is was this little tiny hole in the wall place where we met a man who started talking to us and telling us about how olives were very good for our stomachs and digestion (we had a plate of olives sitting on the table) and a ton of other things that we couldn´t hear all of. He was quite a character! Diner, was very cheap, but proabably one of the best meals I have had here of fresh fish. So good!

Today, I walked around town a bit more with 2 guys from my hostel. We went and checked out a tower here in town, a huge bridge that looks like Golden Gate Bridge, and this smaller distrit called Belem. Before we headed back tonight and just finished making a dinner of "toasties" (apparently that´s what you call a grilled chesse sandwich in Australia), fruit and soup.

This country has been amazing and is so full of culture and beautiful tile work all over the city in buildings and floors. There are also many tiles on the street which I have almost fallen on more than once cause they are insanely slippery. The town also has lots of personality and old buildings that you can tell have been here for a while.

My next stop in Portugal is going down to Algarve in the southern part to hangout on the nice sandy beach for a few days. I´ll let everyone know how that goes.