Many of us had never stayed in a hostel and let’s just say we probably have a skewed version of hostels because this one was really cool. It was called the Lisbon Lounge and was ranked in the top 5 hostels in the world a couple of years ago. (For those of you unfamiliar with what a hostel is…many people who are traveling around or backpacking and only staying in a place for a couple of days will stay in hostel. It is much cheaper than a hotel and pretty much has rooms with about 5 bunk beds in them and community bathrooms. Honestly it is kind of like camp but it is interesting because the other people in your room could be from all over the world). In one of the rooms it was filled with all people from my Cadiz group, however, in my room there were
4 of us and then 2 people from Ireland and 2 girls from New
York. I will talk more about the people we met a little later on. Anyways we
arrived at our hostel around 6 in the morning and the people working there were
so friendly. They let us all nap in the lounge since our beds were not ready
and they gave us some breakfast too (crepes with nutella and jam, eggs, and
fresh baked bread). Around 8 we decided to start exploring and we found an
awesome 3 hour bike tour that we decided to go on. It was just all of us and a
tour guide named Anna who spoke perfect English and then she taught us a few
Portuguese words along the way…We went on a nice bike path all along a river
that goes through Lisbon and then we saw a few famous monuments and buildings
as well. She took us to the original bakery of where the famous Portugal tart
pastries are made and we all got to try them. We got to see where the President
of Portugal lives and a big bridge in Lisbon that was designed after the Golden
Gate Bridge. I really did not know a lot about Portugal and our tour guide
taught us so much. We all then grabbed some lunch and explored around the city
the rest of the day. That night at our hostel we had a Portuguese dinner and
all sat at a big dinner table and met a lot of people who were also staying at
the hostel. It was fun to talk to the Australian people and a couple of Irish
people as well. We all had a fun time getting to know each other.
The next
morning, we ate a nice breakfast at the hostel and then we hit the metro in
order to make it over to this aquarium that we had heard about. We were successful using the metro and we
made it to our stop. We then all went into the Oceonario de Lisboa (the
aquarium that was right on the river in Lisbon). I cannot remember the last
time I was in an aquarium and many of my friends here felt the same way and let
me say we had an awesome time haha we were very amazed by everything and were
loving all of the animals! We saw some sharks, penguins, stingrays, and our
favorite was the sea otters. We spent a lot of time
in the aquarium and really got to see some neat things. Afterwards we went to a mall type place near the aquarium where we got some lunch and hung out for a little while. After taking the metro back towards our hostel, a group of us went on a walk towards the Lisbon castle. We saw some great views of the city on our way and took a lot of good pictures. We made it to the castle that is now only used for touring and it was definitely worth seeing! That night we had dinner at our hostel again and it felt like we were all a big family sitting at the dinner table. We had a great salad, some bread, spinach soup, potatoes, meat, and a chocolate dessert. We met some more fun people from different places around the world that night as well and it was fun to hear why everyone was traveling and what their plans were. The next day we took our time waking up and getting showered and then after a nice lunch we headed to the bus station. We got on the bus in Lisbon and headed about 7 or 8 hours to Seville. Well here is where things got interesting… so we thought that our bus from Seville back to Cadiz was leaving at 11 and we were arriving into Cadiz a little after 10 so we all thought we had plenty of time. We were all talking about where we wanted to grab food in Seville and we were talking about how proud of ourselves we were for planning this whole trip, ect. Wellll…we get to Seville and are about to head to a restaurant for food because we thought we had 45 minutes and then one of our friends Taylor goes “guys… our bus left at 10, it is now 1020 and it was the last bus to Cadiz tonight” we had forgotten to consider there was a one hour time difference from Lisbon to Seville and we had missed our bus. It was a little bit funny.. .we had no idea what to do, we had nowhere to stay and we all had to make it back for class the next morning. After considering all of the options of trying to get a hostel and then a bus or train ticket in the morning or somehow renting a car, we decided to ask a couple of cabs if they would drive us an hour and a half to Cadiz.. after negotiating with them we got it to a pretty cheap price and decided it was our best bet. We finally made it back home to Cadiz around 2 in the morning and we were very happy to have had a great weekend (minus the last bus incident). I think going into the weekend I really did not know what to think because Lisbon, Portugal was a very random place for me and it ended up being such a cool place and definitely one of my favorite weekends!
After class
on Monday, a bunch of us played soccer again which is always so much fun!
Tuesday we went to the beach after class and then had a review session that
night for our midterms, which were today (Thursday). Wednesday we pretty much
spent the day studying in the plaza and then Natalie and me had a great dinner
with our host family that night. We talked with them for a while about a lot of
random things and I think they finally realized that we know a lot more Spanish
than it may have originally appeared we knew.. They were helping us with our
Spanish and we all hung out in the kitchen for a while. Today we all had our
midterms, which were not too bad at all, and then a bunch of us walked about 20
minutes to the farther away beach called Santa Maria. Santa Maria is a bigger beach
and it was a lot of fun to spend the day there. Tomorrow we are heading to
Grenada in the afternoon after our classes and it should be a great weekend! I
will post again soooon J
No comments:
Post a Comment