Sintra y Belém

About time I wrote this entry, amiright?  I'm sorry I haven't written in so long, but it's been so rainy here that I just don't feel like doing much of anything.  We're going on 3 weeks straight of rain.  Luckily, it starting during Semana Santa, so I've only experienced about 2.5 weeks...but, come on!  This is ridiculous, I need some vitamin D, or it's going to be a really hard month-and-a-bit.  Can you believe it?  In less than a month I will be done with classes and on my to Andalucía!  Crazy how time flies.  I spend a lot of time simply waiting to be home again, but at the same time I really do enjoy being here and seeing new things.  I went to Gijón again yesterday to see it when it wasn't raining, and luckily the rain held off so I got some nice photos of the old city.

Anyways, after we spent the day walking around Lisbon, we went to Sintra, a small town about 45 minutes west of Lisbon.  We had to wait in line at the train station to buy tickets with hundreds of tourists for almost an hour, I'd say, maybe less.  It was a surprise, Rick Steve's didn't mention it, but I guess everyone else also knew that Lisbon doesn't have that much to offer and you have to leave the city to see the cool parts of Portugal.  The train took us through the outskirts of Lisboa and through some smaller suburbs on the way to Sintra, we could see an old aqueduct, but other than that, it was uneventful.

Sintra is a kind-of small town with an old fishing-town feeling, even though it isn't on the ocean.  When we got off the train we started walking up to the castles and palaces.  And we kept walking.  And walking.  It wasn't until we got up a bit of the mountain, did we realize that there were buses.  But it was too late.  We had no choice but to continue climbing.  I'm not sure how far we walked, but we walked up this mountain for an hour and a half.  It wasn't that it was particularly difficult, it was just boring and tedious.  Finally we reached the top and bought tickets for the Pena Palace and the Moorish Castle.  After eating our picnic lunch, we headed up to the Pena Palace.

The Moorish Castle on top of its mountain. That we climbed.

"House" on our way up the mountain.

The Palace was really cool - a bunch of different colors and cool architecture.  Instead of describing, I'll just show you:

After the Palace, we walked back down to the Moorish Castle.  Mary and I went to the castle, which was a bunch of ruins and a terrifying stone wall that looks like a much smaller Great Wall of China.  Grace walked back down to the station to wait for us, since she didn't buy tickets to the Castle.  Mary and I got a little lost walking back from the Castle, but we only wasted about 10-15 minutes getting back on track (luckily - Sintra was a freaking maze).  She and I found the buses and took the bus back down, since we were dead tired.  We met Grace at the station, grabbed a train, and headed back to Lisbon.  By the time we got back, it was 6 or 7pm, so we went to a little sandwich shop to grab dinner, and headed back to the hostel to decompress.

Moorish Castle:

View from somewhere on the wall.

The next day, we grabbed breakfast and headed down to the Plaza and hopped on the trolley to Belém.  Belém is a little neighborhood, I don't think it's its own town, about 3 miles down the river from Lisbon.  The trolley was sooooo packed that we couldn't make it to the ticket machine, so we didn't pay :).  Belém is this little town with a bunch of monuments to Portugal's maritime achievements.  We hung out there until about 2 or 3pm, after seeing most of the sights, though we didn't go inside of the famous clouster of a church (we did go into the church, though).

Some pics from Belém:

Monument to the Discoveries

Belém Tower

Monastery of Jerónimos

Inside the church

Anyways, we all had our flights back to Oviedo the next day, Saturday.  Mary and I were on the same flights back and they were decently uneventful...except for our first flight was delayed and we had to run to make our next flight.  If our second flight had been on time, we would have just barely made it.  "Luckily", the second flight was late, too.  If I learned one thing on this trip, it's that I hate flying.  Especially landing.  Ugh.  We took a total of 5 flights, and let me tell you, that was 5 flights too many.  And I still have 7 flights left before I'm in Massachusetts again.  Yaaaay.

Other than going to Gijón yesterday, I have done nothing exciting since Semana Santa.  It is soooo rainy here, like I said, and I can't be bothered to leave the house most days.  On the next nice day, I'm planning on going to Avilés, another small city on the coast near Oviedo and Gijón.  Next week, though, I'm going on my trip to Dublin!!  I'm actually pretty excited, though I have a feeling that the city is going to be like Lisbon - you go to see the city, but there aren't things to do, necessarily.  Hopefully we'll also get a chance to explore the Irish countryside.  I'm pretty stoked.

Only 39 more days until I'm home!  That is both exciting and sad at the same time...

Hopefully I see the sun again before I go home, there are so many things that I want to do but don't want to do wet...it's unfair.  I have limited time and the weather is being so cruel.

*Besos*