Unos Días en Lisboa

¡Hola todos!  I decided, as I probably mentioned, to split up my Semana Santa experience into a few entries.  Though, I don't really know if anyone cares anymore, since my readership has significantly dropped since January/February....I guess as long as my family continues to read the blog, it doesn't really matter if no one else does.

Anyways.  Lisbon (Lisboa).  We got in on Tuesday night and took a bus into the center of the "old" part of the city.  Of course, we got off on the wrong stop, but this time it was because we didn't know we had to push a button to stop the bus... So this time, we had to back-track to the hostel, but it was a lot shorter walk and just from the price of the bus ticket we knew that Portugal was going to be a much less expensive experience.  The hostel was relatively decent.  We had a dispute about giving our passport number to the hostel people since Mary wasn't comfortable doing it, and I kinda had to bail her out and give mine, otherwise we would have quite the challenge of finding somewhere else to sleep.  It's unfortunate that our ID has to be our passport while we're abroad, Europeans have an international ID card thingy.

On Wednesday we woke up relatively early to find a café or somewhere to eat breakfast.  We found a café that we ended up going back to every day, except one day when it was closed.  After eating, we met up with Grace, who had gone to Sevilla earlier that week and then flown to Portugal on Tuesday, but because all of our flights were changed, we didn't see each other until Wednesday.  We walked around the city, following my guide book's suggestions.  We saw a bunch of different neighborhoods and things.  Lisbon is pretty hilly and small.

Graffiti (Mural) on the way up to Bairro Alto

Statue in the center of the Plaza Mayor in Lisbon

Cathedral in Lisbon

Lisbon is hilly - there is a castle up by those trees that we walked up to earlier

Instead of fountains, like Oviedo, in every round-about in Lisbon they have obelisks (or statues)

Gorgeous train station

Walking straight down the tile streets to the Plaza Mayor and the river

It wasn't really what I was expecting - not really a let-down, but after seeing Paris...it definitely wasn't like Paris.  I guess I was expecting old and historic, but since they had an earthquake in the 1750's, the old part of the city isn't exactly old.  Lisbon isn't a city where there are a lot of things to DO or SEE, it's more like you see the CITY.  And it was definitely cool, to me at least.  It had a much more laid-back atmosphere compared to Paris.

Statue in Plaza Mayor at night

Por la noche

River/Ocean

In a separate entry I will talk about Sintra and Belém, two places outside (sort-of outside) of Lisbon in Portugal that we went to while we were there.  Other than walking around and souvenir shopping, we didn't do too much IN Lisbon.  On the other hand, I don't feel like I ever need to go back to Lisbon to tend to any unfinished business (aka, see things I haven't seen), whereas I definitely need to go back to Paris.  And I'm really glad that I went to Lisbon, since Portugal isn't that popular of a tourist destination and I wouldn't want to make a whole trip to Europe just to go there.  Paris, on the other hand, merits its own week.

¡Hasta Luego!