Lisbon Part 3: Day trip to Sintra

I. Love. Sintra.

Saturday
We woke up groggy and ready for free hostel breakfast.  Clearly we needed more sleep after breakfast, so we went back to bed.  But not for long, because today was our day to visit Sintra.  It's a small city west of Lisbon, easily reachable by train.
Sintra is FUCKING AWESOME.

We might be nearing Hogwarts

Fact: it is more magical than Disney World.  I can't even describe it in words, which is extremely unfortunate, because Sintra is just astounding.  It is full of palaces, gardens, and a Moorish castle from the 9th century.  We didn't have enough time or money to visit everything, but we damn well tried.  We started off going to Quinta da Regaleira, which was the summer house of some promenant Portuguese families throughout history.

Is this real life?

The house itself was impressive, but even more so was the labyrinth garden.  It was more like a beautiful adult playgrand.  That was an accidental typo, but I'M KEEPING IT BECAUSE IT IS COMPLETELY TRUE.  Castle-structures, amazing flowers, secret gardens, and ACTUAL UNDERGROUND CAVES.  I just can't describe it well enough to do it justice.  So fucking magical.

Mini castles are all over the place

Unnecessary underground passageway

T-rex stompin a fountain.  Nothing wrong with that.

wat

The guy next to Sarah laughed as she took this picture

We were going to take a bus to our next stop, the Moorish castle, but it was 10 euros.  Fuck that.  So we hiked up the mountain instead.  We weren't planning on going inside, but it looked amazing, so we didn't really have a choice.  It was the exact castle that you visualize when you think of the word "castle."  It was unbelievably gorgeous.

The U.S. doesn't have many of these

This is absolutely Disney World

Honestly, I don't know what impressed me more: the Moorish castle, the Quinta, or the Alhambra.  All were so awesome.
Getting some pastries back in town was an essential next step.  I can't remember what they're called, but they are Sintra's famous pastry and are baller.  Man, we were starving.  Haha, we also saw a couple sets of pigeons having bird sex.
Apparently I was tired, because I slept through the entire train ride back.  For dinner, we were in the mood for a dish we had heard about in Portugal, kind of a mixed seafood stew with a tomato base.  Somewhat expensive, but delicious.  And we finished just in time to catch sunset on top of the central elevator.  It was pretty stupendous.  And there is a crazy mega-moon tonight, so it was a great way to end the trip

We can finally see the sky in Portugal!

Bye Europe!

Lisbon Part 2: Finally feeling healthy

Thursday
Sarah and i woke up fairly hung over, but I'll be damned if I miss that awesome free breakfast.  We slept again after we ate.  Whoopsidaisy.  But then we went for a stroll and are now hanging out in a park.  The weather is still weird, but it's nice for now.  We got some more Pastels de Belem and the best strawberries that have ever existed.

Not a bad looking park

After some relaxing in the park, we bought some salmon, veggies, and rice from the supermarket to try to save some euros for dinner.  FINALLY, we had sufficient amounts of food.  And that salmon and stir fry was damn good.  We met up with some Brazilian guys after dinner whom we had met the previous night on the hostel bar crawl, Bruno and Jao (I'm actually not entirely sure to spell his name).  We went to a really small bar that was recommended to us.  It seemed like we were drinking in someone's house, but there was a great Fado player there.  Fado is the Portuguese style of slow, jazzy guitar playing.  With the Fado, we had some insightful cultural talks (gettin cultured in Europe, yo), beer and wine, so it turned out to be a good night, albeit quieter than the night before.

Friday
This morning, Sarah and I woke up significantly earlier than yesterday.  After a delicious breakfast we hopped a quick tram-ride to nearby Belem.  This is a really beautiful town right next to Lisbon on the river/ocean/whatever the fuck it is.  There were a lot of impressive monuments to see, including the Padrao dos Descobrimentos (a huge monument dedicated to discoveries) and Torre de Belem (a small tower taht was once on an island, but is now up on the bank).

At this point in the trip, we are getting good at looking at stuff

What are you doing, building?  That's water, you don't belong there!

We then visited a Portuguese maritime museum, where we became cultured in the ships and adventures of Portugal's history.
After this, we visited the famous Pasteis de Belem for their famous pastries.  Granted, we've been devouring them every single day already, but they are better here.  So good.  I'm going to miss these the most I think.
After returning to Lisbon, Sarah and I went for a walk around Bairro Alto, which is more in the hills area.  It was actually more of a beer crawl than a walk.  We'd stop at each nice looking park or overlook and grab a beer.  I really enjoy the countries where you can drink outside.

What an excellent beer-venture

When I create a country, that's definitely going to be legal.  We then came back to the hostel for last night's leftovers.
Whelp, our night was certainly eventful.  Sarah and I went out with some guys from the hostel, turns out it was the hostel manager and his friends.  We went to the Bairro Alto area, which is completely insane at night.  Everyone is just drinking out in the streets and everything is insane.  What a crazy atmosphere.  Cheap drinks, guys walking around trying to sell sunglasses (at night? come on bro), and cars trying to drive down the tiny, crowded streets.  We had a healthy mix of beverages and finally met up with Ed, who is also in Lisbon with some HBS friends.

The classiest Ed has looked in a long, loooooong time

We traveled around to a bunch of bars, continuing to drink in the streets until everything closed at 3am.  Some guy tried to get Sarah to touch his "banana," because oddly enough he had a banana with him.  Really strange.  Finishing with a nightcap at Ed's bachelor digs (he and his buddies rented an apartment, which is normal for HBS), we watched some youtube videos before passing out on his couch.

Lisbon Part 1: Why is everyone speaking Russian?

I can tell that I'm getting a little tired of journal writing at this point.  Unlike Iceland, where each entry was about 3 pages long, they are like 1 page long now.

Wednesday
We woke up at fuck o'clock in the morning for our flight to Lisbon.  The airport looked like it was completely abandoned.  Nothing was open and the screen showed the wrong flights.  Needless to say, it was a bit terrifying.  But the flights to Lisbon went fine, mostly because I fell into a deep coma for both of them.  And the bus from the airport stopped right at the Rossio plaza, which, incidentally, is where our hostel is.  Lucky us!  We went out to go exploring immediately, despite the shitty weather.  The weather here is really wacky; it has sudden bursts of pouring rain, then Sun, then overcast, then rain, etc.  We got caught in a big rain burst when we went up the central tower/elevator.  The elevator had great views of the city, but got a bit annoying when the rain started up.  There are actually quite a few hills in Lisbon, so lots of areas to have great views.

This elevator just goes... to nothing.

Rossio plaza, right next to our hostel

Right next to the elevator was an archeological museum set in the remains of an old, semi-destroyed cathedral.  It was really amazing.  It had a lot of archeological items from monasteries and convents from around the world.  Part of the cathedral, the main room, had no ceiling, so everything was outside in the open air, surrounded by pillars and arches that once held the roof up.  Other rooms were still intact, so they held items that wouldn't survive the elements.  Like several tombs and actual mummies from Egypt.  I have never seen anything like it in the U.S.  Fully preserved and mummified children.  The closest thing I've ever come to is seeing part of a mummy in a museum after waiting in a really long line.  Retrospectively, that was probably the coolest museum I've ever been in.

We're in a museum

YOU NEED A NEW POSE

After awesome-museum-fest-2k12 (and another good rain) we had a really strange lunch and went down to the waterfront.  I guess it's not technically the ocean, but it smells ocean enough for me.  We kind of derped around, visiting a cathedral and some other stuff, making our way to the Castelo de S. Jorge.  Built by the moors in the 11th century, it was later converted and improved for the first King of Portugal.  We toured the castle, saw some stuff... it was fun.

Almost the Golden Gate Bridge

That looks pretty castley to me

I feel like making proclamations right now

It's amazing how there are fewer restrictions in Europe.  In the U.S., every ledge would be roped off for safety, you can't touch anything, but here you can climb up onto castle ramparts, touch ancient tombs, walk right up to buildings hundreds of years old; it's so different.
We walked around a bit more and had some of Lisbon's famous Pastel de Belem, a delicious egg white pastry that tastes like a mixture of creme brule and rainbows.  We had them with tea back at our hostel, which is an amazing place.  Right in the middle of everything in the city, and the breakfast that comes included puts "toast and cereal" in the other hostels to shame.  Eggs and chocolate pancakes.  Fuck.  So good.
On our search for dinner, we happened upon a pretty popular place that happened to be the first brewery in Portugal.

A brewery you say?  Lead me to it, my good man.

We like beer

They had great beers, but we started noticing that "starters" in restaurants are a little weird.  They bring a bunch of different shit to your table before your meal, but none of it is free.  The fucked up thing is that we had to pay for each individual butter pack that we used.  It was so creepy.
Our hostel put on a "beer happy hour" where we have as many beeres as we can drink in an hour, before a bigger pub crawl.  It was a good way to meet a couple people and learn some Portuguese.  We had a really cool drink too, which I'll have to make back home.  But we maybe went a little overboard and I definitely don't remember anything after the second bar.  I checked my jacket the next morning and in the pocket was a map of Lisbon crumpled into a ball.