Sorry its taken me so long to write about portugal, the weekend was so tiring and then coming back to a lot of work left all of very exhausted. I'm finaly caught up on my sleep! And then i wrote all this and our internet went out in our apartment since friday and we still dont have it. I'm using the internet in our studio right now. I decided to post it in three different posts, one per day. So, here we go. We called a taxi for 4:30 in the morning. It met us outside of where we live and took us to the airport. On the way there the driver was listening to that famous song from dirty dancing, and we were jamin along in the back seat. then when we got to the airport he jipped us and said it was 30 euros. ridiculous. The airline we took is one of the cheaper, smaller companies, but the plane was actually very nice. it had tv screens every 5 seats that popped out of the ceiling and we got to watch cartoons...Pink Panther, Tweety, and something else. It was a two hour flight and i was exhausted from
not sleeping much the night before, so once we got going, i tried to fall asleep. Every time I would finally fall asleep, the guy sitting next to me, Preston, would wake me up to tell me something funny about Pink Panther. It was so annoying, but hilarious at the same time because he had no idea he was waking me up...he thought i was watching pink panther with him. The show actually turned out to be really funny, but im thinking that was because of the lack of sleep. When we got to Portugal it was 8 in the morning. In the airport, the first thing we see is this huge ad featuring none other than george clooney. then we turn the corner and there is another one for a different product. they were all over the place...it was so funny. We spent our morning walking around the newer part of the city that was built up for the expo of 1998, when they build all these cool buildings and ppl from all over europe come and showcase the newest stuff. All that to say the architecture was really cool. There was this cool bridge, and a tower, and an amazing train station designed by calatrava. he's insanely good at design. dont worry, i took lots of pictures. the theme of the morning was definitely to find sculptures and water features and take pictures with them. we got some cool pics jumping off this lime green sculpture! We also visited the aquarium...the largest in europe or something like that. personally, aquariums dont really impress me much, but i went because i didnt really have a choice. to me, a fish is a fish and i could have seen any of that in the US, but whatever. there was this huge, ugly fish i t
ook a picture of, and some really cute otters, but nothing too impressive or exciting. We ate lunch at the mall that is attached to the cool train station. We ate at this really good italian place. Right away we learned that lisbon is much much cheaper than barcelona. our cab ride was 4 euro compared to 30, and lunch was about 6 compared to 15 or more. We were all so exhausted that we spent about two hours at lunch and then milled around the mall for another hour. Then we went over and checked out the station. One of the girls with us has a friend that lives in lisbon, so we had left our bags in her apartment that morning, and we had to go back and get them and then get into the old city to try and find a place to stay. being smart college kids we decided not to book a hostel, just to find one when we got there. so, we get back to the girls apartment and go to the second floor, but the doors were to the side of the elevator in her apartment and these doors were straight ahead. problem. so we get back on the elevator and go to floor three, wrong, floor 1 wrong, floor -2 still wrong. we were laughing hysterically by now. then we figured it out. we were in the wrong part of the apar
tment building and had to walk outside and reenter a little further down. very confusing. we got our bags and headed into town (by bus and metro). the metro system there was ridiculously easy compared to here. there it is four lines that all cross once and i figured it out after riding the metro once. here, the metro is so confusing and i have yet to figure it out. im pretty sure people who grew up here still need a map for the metro in barcelona. anyway, we got off the metro and just started walking looking for hostels. we were all very tired and carrying heavy bags all over up these massive hills, similar to san fransico and some people were getting extremely grumpy. here in barcelona, there are literally 5 hostels on every road and they are so easy to find. not the case there. we couldnt find any at all. we had to get help from this guy who spoke spanish and he took us to a place. when you walked in it smelled like cat pee, and it looked like it was in the worst part of town imaginable. we were all very leery and definitely didnt want to stay there. it was kind of a relief when the guy said he only had 4 beds...we needed 7. he gave us a map of some different hostels and we set out walking more. every hostel we went to was booked. n
either. they were all full. as a last resort, we tried the number to a hostel we had been given buy another hostel guy. Surprisingly, the guy said they had exactly 7 beds open. They had a room with four beds and a room with three beds. We hike all the way over to where this hostel is and realize when we turned the corner we were at the same exact place we started. SO funny. we were desperate so we just decided to stay there and see how it was. When we got to our rooms we were pleasantly surprised. each room had their own bathroom, and it was fine. better than we had expected, but definitely no holiday inn. we dropped off our stuff and went to get some dinner. the guy at the front desk, who turned out to be such an amazing help all weekend, toot such a good feeling being in a foreign country where you dont speak the language, about 7 pm and 7 college kids having no place to stay :) it was actually quite funny to me, but not to some people with us. we finally decided to just suck it up and start calling hotels. that didnt workld us a good place to go that was just around the block. Best food of my life. I had cod fish with rice and seriously i wanted to lick the plate. It was so good, and you get so much food compared to here and it was so cheap. Then we went to this famous bar that a lady on the food network channel went to and had some drinks. I just had some cappuccino and it was so good. We
went back around midnight and fell asleep. My bed was definitely hard as a rock and I couldnt sleep that well. Then around 3 in the morning anthony's cell phone went off with some super annoying circus alarm. It was so loud and I couldnt sleep and it just kept going. Finally, i got up and went over to his bed and had to wake him up and tell him to turn it off. He said he did so i went back to bed. Then like 10 minutes later the stupid circus song went off again. This time i got up and was like anthony give me your phone. I turned it off and went back to bed. I will put some more pics later the internet here is really slow and taking way too long to do this.
not sleeping much the night before, so once we got going, i tried to fall asleep. Every time I would finally fall asleep, the guy sitting next to me, Preston, would wake me up to tell me something funny about Pink Panther. It was so annoying, but hilarious at the same time because he had no idea he was waking me up...he thought i was watching pink panther with him. The show actually turned out to be really funny, but im thinking that was because of the lack of sleep. When we got to Portugal it was 8 in the morning. In the airport, the first thing we see is this huge ad featuring none other than george clooney. then we turn the corner and there is another one for a different product. they were all over the place...it was so funny. We spent our morning walking around the newer part of the city that was built up for the expo of 1998, when they build all these cool buildings and ppl from all over europe come and showcase the newest stuff. All that to say the architecture was really cool. There was this cool bridge, and a tower, and an amazing train station designed by calatrava. he's insanely good at design. dont worry, i took lots of pictures. the theme of the morning was definitely to find sculptures and water features and take pictures with them. we got some cool pics jumping off this lime green sculpture! We also visited the aquarium...the largest in europe or something like that. personally, aquariums dont really impress me much, but i went because i didnt really have a choice. to me, a fish is a fish and i could have seen any of that in the US, but whatever. there was this huge, ugly fish i t
ook a picture of, and some really cute otters, but nothing too impressive or exciting. We ate lunch at the mall that is attached to the cool train station. We ate at this really good italian place. Right away we learned that lisbon is much much cheaper than barcelona. our cab ride was 4 euro compared to 30, and lunch was about 6 compared to 15 or more. We were all so exhausted that we spent about two hours at lunch and then milled around the mall for another hour. Then we went over and checked out the station. One of the girls with us has a friend that lives in lisbon, so we had left our bags in her apartment that morning, and we had to go back and get them and then get into the old city to try and find a place to stay. being smart college kids we decided not to book a hostel, just to find one when we got there. so, we get back to the girls apartment and go to the second floor, but the doors were to the side of the elevator in her apartment and these doors were straight ahead. problem. so we get back on the elevator and go to floor three, wrong, floor 1 wrong, floor -2 still wrong. we were laughing hysterically by now. then we figured it out. we were in the wrong part of the apar
tment building and had to walk outside and reenter a little further down. very confusing. we got our bags and headed into town (by bus and metro). the metro system there was ridiculously easy compared to here. there it is four lines that all cross once and i figured it out after riding the metro once. here, the metro is so confusing and i have yet to figure it out. im pretty sure people who grew up here still need a map for the metro in barcelona. anyway, we got off the metro and just started walking looking for hostels. we were all very tired and carrying heavy bags all over up these massive hills, similar to san fransico and some people were getting extremely grumpy. here in barcelona, there are literally 5 hostels on every road and they are so easy to find. not the case there. we couldnt find any at all. we had to get help from this guy who spoke spanish and he took us to a place. when you walked in it smelled like cat pee, and it looked like it was in the worst part of town imaginable. we were all very leery and definitely didnt want to stay there. it was kind of a relief when the guy said he only had 4 beds...we needed 7. he gave us a map of some different hostels and we set out walking more. every hostel we went to was booked. n
either. they were all full. as a last resort, we tried the number to a hostel we had been given buy another hostel guy. Surprisingly, the guy said they had exactly 7 beds open. They had a room with four beds and a room with three beds. We hike all the way over to where this hostel is and realize when we turned the corner we were at the same exact place we started. SO funny. we were desperate so we just decided to stay there and see how it was. When we got to our rooms we were pleasantly surprised. each room had their own bathroom, and it was fine. better than we had expected, but definitely no holiday inn. we dropped off our stuff and went to get some dinner. the guy at the front desk, who turned out to be such an amazing help all weekend, toot such a good feeling being in a foreign country where you dont speak the language, about 7 pm and 7 college kids having no place to stay :) it was actually quite funny to me, but not to some people with us. we finally decided to just suck it up and start calling hotels. that didnt workld us a good place to go that was just around the block. Best food of my life. I had cod fish with rice and seriously i wanted to lick the plate. It was so good, and you get so much food compared to here and it was so cheap. Then we went to this famous bar that a lady on the food network channel went to and had some drinks. I just had some cappuccino and it was so good. We
went back around midnight and fell asleep. My bed was definitely hard as a rock and I couldnt sleep that well. Then around 3 in the morning anthony's cell phone went off with some super annoying circus alarm. It was so loud and I couldnt sleep and it just kept going. Finally, i got up and went over to his bed and had to wake him up and tell him to turn it off. He said he did so i went back to bed. Then like 10 minutes later the stupid circus song went off again. This time i got up and was like anthony give me your phone. I turned it off and went back to bed. I will put some more pics later the internet here is really slow and taking way too long to do this.
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