Erin Goes to Spain: Always down, always in front

Portugal was a blast! I went last weekend with Anne and 3 other girls from my program (Kenzie, Polly, and Annie). This was the first trip I had done with a new group of people and it turned out really great! All of us ended up being really compatible travelers, and the trip was filled with hilarity and awesomeness.

On Thursday morning we got up early to get to the car rental place that we thought opened at 8. But really, who were we kidding? Nothing at Spain is open at 8, save some coffee shops. So we camped out in Anne and my new favorite cafetería, which is literally next door to our building and waited until 9. Once we got the car situation all figured out, we were rearing to go! Unfortunately, the CDs that the other girls had made didn’t work in our CD player. That was not a huge blow to the trips momentum. We found a radio station that wasn’t awful (as most Spanish ones are) and dealt with that for a while. The car ride into Lisboa (Lisbon in English) was adventurous. For some reason, we decided to try the CDs again about an hour into the trip and they actually worked that time! By the end of the trip we still weren’t sure what made the CD player function and what made it reject out CDs (5^th gear? a warm engine? we will never know).

Our car. We named her Bruno (yes, Bruno is a she)

Somehow we managed to get ourselves lost on the way into Lisboa but after looking at our semi-worthless map for a while we got back on track. Once we got to Lisboa, (after driving over a smaller version of the Golden Gate Bridge) directions were a whole other story. We had map-quest directions to our apartment, but once again managed to get lost. We drove around the city for at least an hour before we finally got where we needed to be. At one point, we got out to ask directions and the lady told us general directions, emphasizing that we were to go “always down, always in front.” Hmmm…. But we made it! Our apartment was super cute, and so worth the aimless driving in a foreign city.

Portugal has a thing for roosters

That night we pretty much just hung out in our apartment, cooked dinner and crashed. Our dinner was delicous and we saved SO much money by not eating out!

All this food for 36 euro. Not bad.

The next morning we went up to the castle and explored the old-town area called the Alfama. The castle offered great views of the city, which actually reminds me a bit of an older, more run-down SF. It’s got the hills, the fog (at least when we were there), the bridge and the trolley cars.

Polly, Annie, Anne, Me and Kenzie

Hanging out at the Castle in Lisboa

Trolly cars!

Down by the bay

More bridge pictures

Exploring the old town was really interesting. I don’t know if this is a Portuguese thing or just a Lisboa thing, but most of the building were tiled on the outside rather than painted. I thought it was a really interesting and unique touch to the city. We found our way to the Cathedral Sé, which was one of my favorite European cathedrals. The altar and stained glass were gorgeous but probably my favorite aspect was the size. This was definitely one of the smallest cathedrals I’ve been in, and I though this characteristic made it feel much more intimate and friendly.

Tiled buildings

Sé Cathedral

That night we discovered that the Portuguese know how to party. There is one area, called Bairro Alto, where everyone goes to hang out. The coolest part, though, was that everyone was just hanging out in the streets! It was like one big outdoor party. We had a great night that night meeting Portuguese people and talking in a mix of Spanish-English-Portuguese.

We didn't plan the matching outfits

The next morning we got up and made out way to a near by town called Sintra. We walked around the old Castelo dos Mouros (Moors’ Castle), which was absolutely beautiful. It was really more of the ruins of the castle so the walls were pretty much all that was left standing, but it was by far my favorite castle. We had beautiful views of the Portuguese countryside (much greener than Andalucia), despite the bad weather.

I didn't jump!

View of the castle from the palace

Afterwards, we headed up to the Palace, which looks like it’s built of colorful Leggos. It was only built in the late 19^th century and it was set up to look like it did when the King and Queen lived there. Also a very cool site to visit.

View of the palace from the castle

These buildings need a good scrub down

We headed over to another neighboring town called Cascais, which is famous for it’s beaches. Unfortunately, it was pouring rain so we didn’t get a whole lot of quality beach time. We did see this really cool natural phenomenon called Boca de Inferno, which is kind of like a cave with no top. It was a really great spot to watch the waves crash against the cliffs so we hung out there for a bit before calling the beach town quits.

Boca do Inferno

That night we took it pretty easy and went to go see a type of music called Fado. It’s kind of like Flamenco, only a little less harsh and is accompanied by a Portuguese guitar and a regular guitar. Highly recommended!

Sunday morning was our last in Lisboa. We woke up pretty early and got everything in order before heading out. We wanted to stop by Lagos, a town in the south of Portugal so we got on the road and headed south. We ended up getting lost, of course, but made it there eventually. I’m going to blame it on the fact that map makes everything look a lot father apart than it really is (the map of Portugal looks somewhat like that of CA, only downsize it by A LOT! I kept thinking everything was going to take so much longer than it actually did). We drove through a few small towns that literally had a “thanks for visiting” sign about 1 minute after the “welcome” sign.

We hung out at the beach in Lagos for a total of about 45 minutes before we had to be on our way. The beach was gorgeous, with lots of fun shells, super soft sand and perfectly clear water. Of course, Sunday was the only sunny day so it was hard to tear ourselves away. We were on a deadline though, because the car rental place closed at 8pm.