Lisboa

Lisbon, Portugal is a beautiful city. It has an awful, miserable, depressing bus station, but it is a gorgeous city. It is right on the Atlantic Ocean and this Californian was so happy to see the ocean again. It’s a pretty similar city to those I’ve seen in Spain, with its cobblestone streets and open plazas, but there was something about this city that made it even prettier. It may have been the ocean in the background, the gorgeous 70+° weather, or it may have been that the buildings reminded me of San Francisco. It doesn’t help that their famous bridge, the April 25 Bridge, looks exactly like the Golden Gate Bridge. The same company that built the Bay Bridge built it, and they were inspired by the Golden Gate. It’s uncanny how similar the two bridges are, except on the other side of the Portuguese one is a large statue of Jesus, just like the famous one in Rio de Janiero. Needless to say, there’s a lot of room for déjà vu in Lisbon.

We stayed in a really cool hostel, called the Poet’s Hostel. It considers itself to be a boutique hostel, and I must say, I’m going to try to stay in those from here on out. Their “hang-out/internet room” was by far the best nap room I have ever seen in my entire life. Considering that I arrived in Portugal with a fever and well before my room was suppose to be ready, this room was a Godsend. It had fluffy couches, beanbag chairs, computers with free Internet, and large windows with views of the ocean and the city that let in a wonderful breeze. I spent most of Friday relaxing in here with my travel companions, Sona and Melissa. Overnight buses are apparently very conducive to making people sick.

By Saturday morning we all felt a lot better, but only enough to take sightseeing buses around the city, so that we would not have to walk too far. This was the perfect idea for us because there were two lines. We took the blue line on Saturday and saw the new part of the city and the red line on Sunday to see the old part of the city. The red line took us to Belem, a beautiful part of Lisboa. This is where the imitation Golden Gate Bridge is, the Tower of Belem, the Padrao Descobrimentos, and the Mosteiro (Monestary) Jerórnimos. We had a lot of fun in the Tower of Belem. It was built into the center of the river as a kind of military checkpoint into the city/country. The river has slowly changed shape over time, and now it’s practically on the sand (even though it started out in the center of the river). It had old canons and the prison cell in the bottom for political prisoners. The best part was the fantastic views of the city from the top level. It truly is a beautiful city.

I wish I hadn’t been sick while I was there, so that I could have seen everything. Now I just have an excuse to return to this wonderful city. Especially because I never went through customs, so I didn’t get a stamp on my passport; and isn’t that the whole point of international travel? ;)