“Olá” Portugual

We arrived in Lisboa tired and haggard from an overnight 12 hour train ride from San Sebastián and therefore took a little longer than usual in finding our accommodations.

We had arrived in the Rossio Metro station, and attempted to follow directions from the hostel’s website, which simply said ‘2nd floor of Rossio Train station’.

Little did we know, one block from the Metro station was another train station which was the real Rossio Station, which actually has a second floor. We were greeted with a brand new hostel, only 3 weeks in its infancy, with an open concept space. Since we were completely bagged we barely managed to get into our dorm room before crashing, sleeping easily through the sounds of cheers, horns and sirens outside our window from a cycle race.

The next two days were much more fruitful as we explored Lisboa by foot, starting with the Hard Rock cafe to score another souvenier t-shirt for Tito Greg. We explored the downtown Baixa neighbourhood by walking down Rua Augusta from our place up to the Praça do Comércio.

Lisboa is a hilly city with red rooftops making up much of its landscape. Its buildings are covered with beautifully crafted tiles and we happened to find a really great tile and ceramic shop (Loja Dos Descorbrimentosthat immediately inspired me to decorate our kitchen in a similar fashion when we return home.

We both really liked the 15th and 17th century-style pieces and this might be something that I will have to order when we return home (and we have income). It was extremely tough to step out of the store empty-handed. We hiked up to the Castelo that overlooked the city but refrained from entering (as is our usual behaviour).

We did, however, find a great spot that was completely run by a Portuguese family, from the waiters, to the entertainment – which was our first taste of real Portuguese fare and the infamous, melancholic, Fado music.

In the evenings, we spent our time in the hostel to economize by cooking pasta dinners and taking advantage of the hostel’s cheap bar and friendly guests. We made friends with Oscar, our Indian/Czech/Australian roomate for our first two nights as well as Ermanno and his Italian family of five, who first broke the ice by offering us some fantastic salad during dinner. I had told the group that our mothers would appreciate the healthy food in addition to our cheap pasta and canned sauce. We later spent the rest of the evening hanging out, socializing and drinking and by the time we were ready for bed, we had new friends. In fact, Ermanno has invited us over to his place once we hit up the Milan area and we are now friends on couchsurfing.org.

On another day we decided to take a train up to a nearby town, Sintra, from the train station which was also conveniently our Lisboan home. Our door-to-door service took us to the quaint (but very touristy) spot of Sintra, which was completely charming.

We explored the even smaller cobble alleys and somehow found ourselves in a 2 hour roundtrip hike up to the Moorish Castle, for which we were ill-prepared, since we both were wearing flip flops.

But the walk through the forest was peaceful, the remants of the outer curtain of the fortress and the huge rocks on which the castle sat upon were a sight to see and the unexplainable need to ‘make it to the top’ that comes with any hike kept us going.

Dan wanted to continue exploring Parque e Palacio da Pena, but we couldn’t seem to find the entrance and it looked like we had to pay a fee to get in anyways. We ended off the afternoon with the best grilled chicken I’ve ever had and quick purchase of stamps for our Lisboa postcards to the folks and grandparents. One funny story that I should mention at this point. Upon leaving the Corrreio buliding, I was a little flummoxed as to why Dan dodged across the street and left me behind. When I caught up, he was leaning into the space of another lady and speaking to her quite familiarly. Then he started to follow her into the store. When I called his name, he looked back at me, then back at her, then back at me – and I burst out laughing. My own husband mistook the girl for me and she had probably tried to escape him by ducking into the store!

For our last evening, we had planned on eating in for dinner, as we had for the past two evenings and chilling out in the main lounge area. But, just as we were about to start making dinner, an organizer was collecting people from different hostels to join in on an evening of Fado music. Not wanting to pass it up, we put away our 1.50 Euro dinner and joined him and the others. Our group of 20+ folks trooped up the stairways of the Bairro Alto neighborhood, famous for its restaurants and late nights, and joined a dozen exchange students at a restaurant, where our combined numbers accounted for half of the patrons. We drank jugs of Sangrias and ate portuguese appetizers while listening (and watching) the Fado musicians. Each one sang with such passion, it seemed like one performer was on the verge of tears. This same performer seemed to have taken to Dan and during their break, he gave a bit of a one-on-one performance. The evening was a fantastic way to end our Lisboa visit, and we were able to meet and socialize with some new folks, Denise from Ireland, Harry from Australia, Alessandra from Italy and a guy who came from ‘the Italian part of Switzerland, who all sat at our table. Our evening took us until the early hours as we chatted up with our new roomates, Esther and Nadine who had just arrived from the UK along with their Canadian friend from Winnipeg. Lisboa was a nice city, but our best memories will probably be from the people we met and the place we called home for 3 days.