PORTUGAL :)

This past weekend, I was in Lisbon, Portugal with my interest group in CIEE. During the first week here, everyone got to sign up for an interest group that they wanted to join. At the end of the semester, everyone would be going on a trip. Some groups went to Morrocco (it was already filled by the time I got there) while others went to Barcelona, Madrid, Bilbao, ooorrr Portugal like us! There were two interest groups that went to Portugal and basically the only reason I chose mine was because I wanted to visit Portugal. Our interest group was called Sevilla y las Americas and we basically did nothing but go out to bars and have fun together. The only thing that we did pertaining to our topic was visit the Expo of 92, as I described earlier in my post titled "The Situation in Sevilla".

Portugal is actually a lot further drive than I had thought. Of course, it took longer than would have if we were not with our Spanish guides. Who had to stop at like 11 for a half hour coffee break (?). It actually wasn't too bad of a trip. I think I'm getting used to driving 6-7 hours every trip since we take a 6-7 bus drive to Madrid to fly out to our cities for every single trip we go on. Also, it helps that I just downloaded a new book on the kindle my parents got my for Christmas. The book is called Unbroken and is about Louis Zamperini who was an olympic runner and then castaway at see for 40 days and a prisoner of war in Japan concentration camps during WWII. Its soo good! I recommend it if you like WWII stuff :)

We got to Lisboa, the capital of Portugal around 3pm, had lunch then were taken on a tour of the city. It was so nice for once not having to worry about using a map or a metro and constantly being in charge of where we were going. It was a great not having to deal with that! We were toured around the main centro of the city. Its pretty cool because the city is a lot like San Fransisco. It's very hilly and has trollies, right on the water, have the exact same red bridge and is more like a city then any of the other places I've visited here. Although the centro is true to the "old city" belief, the centro is pretty small, which leaves the rest of the city to have big wide streets and tall, steel looking buildings. It was nice to have the feeling of being in America for a second.

Although we didn't really get to go sight seeing in Lisbon (because we went to do stuff based on our group interest topic), we still learned a lot about the city through our guide. One thing that was really cool was when the guide told us about the horrific earthquake/tsunami/fire that occurred in the city in the late 1700's. This is the reason the outskirts of the city look newer is because they had to be designed to be newer. They compared the events in the late 1700's to worse then what just happened in Japan.

Here are some pictures from our tour of the centro :)

Just like Home Alone 2, there is a bird man feeding birds!

I loved the red rooftops

the Lisboa bridge. looks just like San Fran (I know my San Fran bridge from Full House!)

ummm well, this hill was really steep and I may or may not have totally ate it while coming down. Don't worry mother! I survived!

By the time we were finished with the tour, we were free for the rest of the night, which we chose to go have some drinks on the roof of our 5 star hotel. Pretty nice! (I must say that the 5 star hotels here aren't as nice as the 5 star hotels you think of in America. For every CIEE trip, we get put up in 5 star hotels, which is awesome, but the beds were not comfy and no one's air conditioning worked! It was soo hot!)

Saturday morning we were treated to a great great breakfast! Everyday in Spain, everyone eats a piece of toast and some kind of jelly and either coffee or water. There is never ever juice, just water to drink. It was so awesome to have eggs and bacon and fruit and apple and orange juice! I ate SO much! Our bus then took us to a small town 30 minutes outside of Lisbon called Sintra. Sintra is a town kind of build on a mountain. On top of the mountain is the most extravagantly and storybook-looking castle I have ever seen in my life!

This was the royal families "summer COTTAGE"

Literally up in the clouds. The bus ride was horrific! The mountain used to be all rocks and boulders until the king planted millions of trees hundreds of years ago

For lunch we ate in Sintra and I learned a little bit about the Portuguese language. Upon first hearing it on Friday, I automatically thought it sounded like French although its writing looks a lot like Spanish. Like I could understand reading most of Portuguese but not hearing it. For example, we had dessert and I chose chocolate icecream, which is spelled the same as it is in Spanish and English, but sounds totally different. I think it's so crazy how one word can be spelled the same in 3 different languages but sound so different (I guess this is my phonetics and phonology background coming out, I want to transcribe it all!). Por ejemplo: SPANISH= cho-ko-la-te (O's sounding like the o in hoe and E's sounding like the e in hey) ENGLISH= chawk-let PORTUGUESE= shook-let. .... Just some things I find interesting as a Speech Pathology major.

After lunch we headed back into Lisboa to visit the site of the World Expo of 98. As I mentioned in the one that I talked about Sevilla, Sevilla's expo was neat but completely run down. No one goes out to that area anymore and now adays the buildings aren't used for anything. Some are businesses, but that's it. The expo of 98 in Lisbon is completely different. They have a huge mall there, museums, aquariums, and little rides for kids. Its a gorgeous place right on the ocean front and there were so many people there.

We were given a pass to get us into everything then were shoo-ed on our merry little ways. We first went to the Museo de Conocimiento which was a children's museum. When we first stepped through the doors, I was like, ok lame, why did we chose to go here, but boy was I wrong! Since we only had a limited amount of time, we had to limit our time in every place we went. Well, we stayed in the first room of the museum the entire time we were there because of its subject. It was literally a learning station about sex. It was really the weirdest thing I have ever seen. It was supposed to be for preteens who are about to hit puberty but some of the pictures and drawings would NEVER make it in American CHILDREN's museums. Its just crazy the different culture. Here are some pictures. Be warned, a little intense.

I'm not sure how i feel about kids seeing this lol

there is a kid across from me playing with these in the case. So weird

After that we got to take one of those rides to the other side of the expo but go over the ocean on our way. I was scared we were going to fall to our deaths in the ocean, but luckily we survived :)

The ride that we took in the right hand corner

 Next we made our way to the Aquarium. I hadn't been in an aquarium since a high school 2 year anniversary date 4 years ago. I had forgotten how much fun they are! Everyone was so amazed how close we could get to the otters and penguins and stayed to watch them play and perform for quite awhile. I took a really long video, because I was obsessed and am thinking about buying one and somehow letting it live in a pool in my backyard...Yeah, I think that'll work..

we were able to get SO close to the cute little penguins!

I was OBSESSED with the otters. baby schnabe torture

cool pic of my friends and I. I love how the shark is perfectly in the background.

That night for dinner, we wanted to go watch Fado, which is famous in Portugal like Flamenco is famous in Sevilla. Fado is a kind of singing/interactive story telling with Portuguese guitars and stuff that you watch during dinner. Well the shows were free but you had to pay for dinner, which the cheapest way like 25 euro. We ended up finding a place with appetizers so decided to be Sevillianos and just eat the appetizers to save money. Well we sat down and ordered drinks, in which they got extremely mad and even called the manager to come talk to us since we all ordered water. (By the way, there is no such thing as free water here. You literally cannot get tap water. You always have to pay for it because it comes in a bottle. Weird). Ok, finnee, so we ordered wine and tinto because he also said no to coke products and said "deees is a restaraunt, you should be ashamed." There was like 5 of us, but we were in a touristy part of town that had tourists eating. Obviously, we didn't know what to do and what we HAD to order. Anyways, we all started feeling uneasy and then finally came a breaking point when he flat out told us we could not order that appetizers on the menu because we had to order the expensive entrees. We just decided to get up and leave. All of us were appalled at the way we had been treated and I was very proud that we had the guts to stand up and leave during the Fado show. Most of the time when you feel like you have already agreed to something or taken a stand on something it's hard to stand up and walk away. I'm glad that we did because we ended up finding an amazing restaraunt on this hill that over looked the city for half the price!

That about sums up my trip to Portugal. I had a great time and loved loved loved the Palacio de Pena! I leave for Prague and Berlin Friday and will be gone a whole week! The trip I have been looking forward to since January is already here. How time flies!

Hasta Luego,

Lauren