Portugal!

Alright so here we go! It was really exciting as we embarked on our Portugal trip because it was our first European “Out of Spain” experience so far on the trip. Katie and I left Segovia at 6:50 and took a train to Madrid. We were all packed up and ready to go with our bocadillo (bag lunches) that our Moms made us for dinner. In Madrid, we hung out at the train station for an hour or so and then we got on the night train that would take us to Lisbon. A few of the other guys in our group had also decided to go to Portugal that week so they were also on the train with us. The ride was slightly awful though because it got SO warm inside! It was stuffy as it was with all of the people there, but then they had the heat on full blast! I thought my shoes or purse was going to melt! The people that were sitting by us were very friendly, and talked with us for a while. One of the guys there was from Germany and was taking a couple weeks off of work to travel. He had some interesting travel stories! After a while, I finally got some sleep, and then we arrived in Lisbon at 7:45 AM. Katie and I went to go find a tourist station to get a map of the city so we could find out where we were going and where our hostel was etc. then we realized that we had forgotten the address and the name of the place we were going to stay at! So, we got a couple suggestions of good places and we were on our way with no idea of where exactly we were going or where we were going to stay that night, but it so totally didn’t matter at all. We were in no hurry and there were a million hostels in Lisbon. So we started to walk around on a road beside the shore, and then I randomly suggested that we should go in a street, and then we ran into the place we were going to stay at- It was so lucky! So we went to see if they still had room and they did and they let us check in early and put our luggage in the lockers so we could walk around the city without worrying about all of our stuff!
So Katie and I set out into the great world of Lisbon. The city itself is very unique. Part of it appears to be very old and has buildings that remind me of the little ones by the ocean in Greece and a trolley system-like San Francisco! There is also a more modern section to the city as well, and there are gardens and palm trees everywhere! The city is VERY hilly, so the entire time we were walking we were either going uphill or downhill. Lisbon is on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean so it has a port, board walks and beaches.
Oh and another exciting thing-they speak Portuguese-which is not nearly as Spanishly influenced as I had thought or had hoped 
These are the highlights of the things we saw

-The castle of St. George
-The Lisbon Plaza
-The Botanical Gardens
-The Se Cathedral
-The Basilica De las Estrellas
-Belem and the tower of Belem
-The port and boardwalks
-It is the weekend of Carnival and it is like a glorified 5 day Halloween, so as we were walking around we saw a bunch of little kids in their costumes. It was so cute!
*And lots of other amazing places that as I am looking at my map, I can’t remember the name in English and I can’t read Portuguese :)


My favorite part of the day was when Katie and just sat on the shore of the ocean and just took in the beauty and sunny weather. Beside us were some Men fishing with some huge fishing poles. It reminded me of something Grandpa Weber would be interested in doing!

Katie and I returned to the Hostel at around 7 (we had walked around straight for like 11 hours!!) and we made some pasta in the kitchen at our hostel.
Hostels are also super fun, because everyone is really friendly so we got to meet some other people our age from all over the world who were traveling too! So we just pretty much took it easy and prepared for our next excursion the next day!