Laidback Lisbon

We got into Lisbon, and took a bus to our hostel. The website said 20 minutes, but the bus ride was an hour. We’ve learnt that the Portuguese have no perception of time at all, as this was the trend of Lisbon. You’ll see! Our hostel is SUPER cute, like all from Ikea, all black, white, and red, REALLY cute and new. It feels like we’re at somebody’s cute house staying over. Fun. We got up on our first full day and did a walking tour. Our guide was full of knowledge, but didn’t have all of his English words right, and really wasn’t a very good speaker. It was only us and a couple from Squamish who showed up, so it was like a semi-private tour. It was almost 4 hours long, but we learnt a ton about Lisbon. We also got to taste a cherry liquor, and our guide took us into a few cool buildings, as well as through the streets of Lisbon.

He also took us up to this old elevator with good views of the city, and of the castle. And we got to take a tram, something Lisbon is famous for, that was packed full of people and pickpockets. While we were stopped a policia guy came on and walked through to get a well-known pickpocket off the tram. And once we got off at our stop, we looked back at these 2 regular looking guys, and our tour guide told us they were also well-known pickpockets! Crazy. We still have all our stuff though!

After the tour, our guide dropped us off in the Amalfa district where there was the weekly flea market going on. Once we got into the market though, I think my first words were, “This is crap. This is literally crap.” Everything was random. There were a few venders who actually had a set up going on with new items, but most of it was just old guys sitting on the sidewalk with their random crap layed out on a blanket. It actually all looked stolen! We got to a table that had tons of little espresso cups and saucers from different cafes, clearly stolen! We wandered around for a bit, and then got scared that we would be caught by the police if we even looked at all of that stuff! One funny thing though, there was an underwear vender, with some pretty happy mannequins I just couldn’t resist taking a picture of!

After the market we had some really good Indian food, then settled in for the night. I’ve introduced mom to Project Free TV, so we’ve been having little movie nights and catching up on Grey’s and Gossip Girl before we come home. It feels great to be watching real TV again!!

The next day we ventured off to a little beach town just outside of Lisbon called Caiscais. It was really cute, but not very nice out. The train ride there was nice too, but our hostel guy said it would take 10 minutes, when it took 40. Cheap though. The town was cute, and we did a little shopping before the sun sort of came out. We sat on the beach for a bit, then made our way home.

Yesterday we went across the river to another beach town. We had to take a ferry, the shortest ferry of all time, across and then take a “5 to 10 minute bus ride” to the town, which ended up being an hour long bus ride! Pffff…

Once we got there, the town was deserted, and ugly, and run down. It looked so wrong, but the locals kept pointing the same way to the beach so we went and found it. It was a huge beach, apparently one of the longest in Europe, and it was nice out, so we had lunch and then tanned/slept on the beach. Mom watched some surfers and she watched the locals put their boats into the water. It was so weird they pull them through the sand on a chain with a massive tractor, and then the people push them out in the water. Like picture a boat pulling a tube in the water, but the tractor is pulling the boat through the sand. No trailer, just boat on sand. Crazy! We made our way back and were exhausted!


Today we did a little shopping, as we’ve pretty much seen Lisbon now. And tonight, wait for it, we’re going to the BACKSTREET BOYS!! For those of you who don’t know me that well, my guilty pleasure is BSB, and this will be my 3rd concert of theirs! We’re going for scalper tickets, so we’ll see how much they cost and if we even get it, but we’re gong to try our hardest. We fly to Madrid tomorrow, and so do they, so if tonight fails we can try again tomorrow!! So excited! Like I said, tomorrow we fly into Madrid, then Sunday is All Saint’s Day and their huge El Rastro market day, and Monday we fly home!! I can’t wait. I’m hoping the end of this trip goes out with a bang!