Lovin Lisbon

Reminds me a little bit of San Francisco!

After our fantastic time in Barcelona it was time to move on to Lisbon, skipping Madrid for now. We took a couple nice long trains for our 14 hour commute, and finally made it.

The first thing we had to do was get coffee, so we did that. The second thing we had to do was meet up with our host. He lived a bit outside of the city so we had to trek a little bit to get to his place, but it was well worth it. Yas was a great host and very welcoming. He provided us with everything we needed and we greatly appreciated his hospitality.

We were exhausted but we arrived in Lisbon pretty early in the morning from our overnight train, so we had to make use of our day and power through it. After getting settled in we decided to meet up with one of my friends I studied with in Italy three and a half years ago, who was also traveling around and happened to be leaving Lisbon later that day. We headed back into the city to meet up with Max and did some sightseeing and just getting lost, coming across some amazing views and some really cool buildings. Lisbon is such a scenic and beautiful city. There's so many viewpoints with so many amazing views, and a bunch of the buildings are covered with painted ceramic tiles to protect them from the salty air near the sea.

After some catching up with Max, we had to part ways. But it was great to see him again and he gave us some good suggestions for things to do in Lisbon before we leave. We spent the remainder of the day mostly walking around, but headed back to Yas' place soon after parting ways with Max. The following day was spent doing most of the touristy things: seeing Belem (and eating a pastel de nata, an amazing Portuguese pastry), the famous area where all of the famous Portuguese explorers set out to sea, doing a LONG walking tour of Lisbon learning all kinds of history and cultural lessons of the Portuguese, and grabbing some dinner and drinks while checking out some traditional Potuguese fado music at the bar. It was a busy and productive day of sightseeing, and we weren't up for much longer after heading back to the apartment at the end of the evening.

The water was a little rough at Boca do Inferno

The following day was actually our last full day in Lisbon. We had originally planned to stay for another day after that but we had trouble finding transportation to our next stop on the day we planned to leave. We spent the last day with Yas, and he drove us to an amazing place about half an hour outside of Lisbon called Sintra; a large, hilly forest area by the coast. We stopped at a really cool cliff viewing area on the coast called Boca do Inferno (Portuguese for Hell's Mouth), and watched waves violently slamming into the side of the cliffs, which was incredible. 

In Sintra, there's an old little town at the base of this massive hill and there's a really cool castle at the top which was amazing. The weather wasn't great that day so we just drove around to see some great scenery and try to find a place to eat. Yas cooked some food we bought in preparation for what would be one of the more memorable "picnics" I've ever had, mostly because it ended up being a really funny situation. Because it was raining most of the day, we couldn't just find an open place outside to eat, and we brought A LOT of food with us. We even brought our own plates and silverware, a pot full of an entire chicken, rice, salad, wine, beer, tea, everything. We tried asking a local restaurant if we could sit there and eat our food, but instead we just got some weird looks and an apology that we couldn't, so we had to improvise.

Nice little picnic in a garden store

Yas knew of a garden nearby. It wasn't really like an actual garden, but it was a large place where you can buy plants. They just had plants set up under a greenhouse-type roof for people to look at and buy, but we thought it looked like a nice place to have a picnic. So we asked the people if we could sit down somewhere to eat our food and sure enough, they were nice enough to let us eat there. We set up our stuff under this little mini gazebo structure in the middle of a garden store and had a picnic. I don't think the people that worked here knew how much stuff we had when they said we could eat here, but we brought everything out and had a full on picnic in the middle of a garden store while people walked around shopping for plants and stared at us. It was hilarious, and I highly recommend garden stores for any future picnics. It's a nice atmosphere.

The remainder of the day consisted of another stop on the way home in the middle of the forest while having a drink of wine and relaxation before heading back to the apartment. The last night was pretty quiet as we had to figure out what we were gonna do the next day, so that was about the end of our time in Lisbon. 

Overall, it was a wonderful place to visit, and we were really lucky to have Yas for a host. Another friend gained and another beautiful city visited. It was time to head back to Spain to continue our adventure and see more of the country.