Today involved a lot of travelling and sleeping. We met downstairs at 8.50am to go grab a quick five minute train that never came… oh well, taxi to the main train station instead! The train from here took around three hours and I slept for most of it, as is the general trend of me travelling long distances.
At around 1pm we arrived in Lisbon, the capital of Portugal. We were told we would have a city orientation at 3pm, giving us two hours to relax. For Andy and I this involved some blogging, reading and grabbing lunch next door. Our waiter was rather rude and unhelpful and kept bringing us things that differed from the menu (i.e. no mushrooms with my turkey and a whole bottle of red wine instead of rose!). Despite this it was yummy and we expectantly trundled back to the hotel to meet the others for the walk.
After waiting for a bit we noticed a sign saying the meeting had been postponed an hour – ok, this meant a chance to have an afternoon siesta. At 4pm we arose again, ready for the walk, only to receive a phone call – oh look, the meeting had been postponed again. More sleep ensued. At 5pm we were finally downstairs again doing some more waiting. It turned out that one of the girls needed a doctor, causing the delays. At 5.30pm we finally headed out the door.
Our orientation walk involved just strolling around the hilly streets – we walked down the main shopping mall, down to the waterfront (to see the bridge copied from San Francisco and the statue copied from Rio) and then up the hill to the castle. Lisbon really is just a stroll around city, I’m not aware of too many must see landmarks. It is funny to compare it to Madrid – Lisbon is so relaxed, the streets just kind of amble along and have a rather run down quality about them. We enjoyed the view from the castle – the cloudy sky and setting sun gave us lots of sun-bursting-out-on-to-buildings moments, perfect for photos.
Once we we were back at the hotel we met up with the others for dinner… this involved heading to a rather touristy streets with a large number of waiters trying to spruik us into their restaurants. This was actually quite confronting (a warm up for Morocco) and we eventually chose a place with one of the least pushy staff members. I ordered ‘grilled pork feather’ which seemed to be a mix of pork chop and bacon, with the huge side of chips and salad that seems obligatory here. We enjoyed sitting here for quite a while, listening to a busker play an annoying mix of Western songs including ‘Land Down Under’ and ‘Tears in Heaven’. As it was rather cold, we all headed back to the hotel for a relatively early night of 11pm – a more interesting blog tomorrow!!
Finally all caught up, I got a few days behind :P Must be fun to be travelling with Andy now :) Got your postcard from Paris the other day too, have you had time to do anything but write postcards? Looks like you're having a great time anyway. Hope you have fun with the rest of the travel.
ReplyDelete