Lovely Lisbon

Hello world,

Another flight issue this morning, so i find myself with a bit of time to write to you lovely people. I´m in Madrid now on a computer with like 7 extra keys than im used to hehe. Every leg of this trip has had a different vibe, and its been awesome in different ways. Lisbon was more chill than Lagos, and Margaret and me did mostly touristy stuff, but we enjoyed it. We laughed our asses off! She´s the shit (for the not-so-slang-savvy among you thats a good thing). It´s fun traveling with someone because you have someone to share your perceptions with. Margaret´s really positive too, so everything that went wrong was more of a joke than a problem hehe.

Our first full day in Lisbon we got up early, had the hostel breakfast, and after seeing the rain we decided it was a museum day. Fortunately everything´s free on Sundays, so we hopped on a streetcar and headed to the Belem area. Ok, I´m gonna explain some stuff first. Lisbon has some cool history. They had a horrible earthquake in 1755 that decimated the center of the city. Our hostel was in this area - Baixa-Chiada. It was rebuilt by the king at the time who was really forward-thinking and decided to put it in a grid. This was great for us Chicagoans, or in Margaret´s words: "I could marry the grid."

One area that was relatively untouched was Belem - a town just to the south with a huge monastery and a defensive tower on the coast. The royalty was pretty freaked out by the destruction in the bulk of the town so a lot of people moved to this southern area and it got more built up and incorporated into the city. They have a lot of museums in that area now. We went to the monastery (amazingly beautiful, like a big lacework building), then the archaeological museum, had lunch in the cafeteria of the naval museum, and looked for an ATM in the modern art museum. They had the funniest gift shop there - all these extraordinarily expensive toys for kids. A train-looking spoon for 12 euro, a useless "candle-to-go" in a tin, and a coloring book that wasnt just a coloring book. In Margaret´s words - "My children will have only the best, francois-xavier and marie-antoinette the third shall have the Coloriage Experience!" At 18 euro a pop that coloring book must have been pretty awesome, but I have a hard time affording water these days so it wasn´t happening. It was worth a good laugh though for free! hehe

Then we went to the Monument to the Discoveries. It´s a huge sculpture with king henry the navigator at the prow of a ship/building and a retinue of scholars, adventurers, soldiers, etc. behind him. It´s huge and awesome! They built it for an exposition around the turn of the century, called " The Portuguese World." It´s like Portugal´s version of the Museum of Science and Industry. It was built for the exposition and wasn´t supposed to be permanent, but they redid the outside and kept it, and I think they made a wise choice. We went in and saw a movie, or had "The Lisbon Experience." It was awesome, we got a great overview of the city´s history, and got to laugh at how cheesy the movie was. We had the english version, so Margaret was mocking the movie for hours in a hoity-toity british accent. They made everything sound so epic. Typing wouldnt do it justice, ask margaret to imitate it someday - hilarious!

Then we went to the roof and got to look out over the city, it was beautiful! My camera was unfortunately dead on batteries at that point, so we only got mental images, but you can get your own someday when you go to Lisbon. Next we went for pastries. Pasteis de Belem (pashtayeesh day bell-em) have been made in this area since like the 1100s, so it was a necessity. It was sooo tasty. It looked like a little pie that could fit in your palm, but it wasnt a particular filling of a fruit or anything. Oh i dont know, it was flakey and sweet and amazing.

After that was the Coach museum. They have a whole museum dedicated to this gaudy-ass form of transportation loved by the royalty. It was actually pretty cool though. I never realized how cool a coach could be. They were works of engineering, fabric work, sculptural prowess, and each had a pretty cool historical moment in time when it was used. They had the coach of the last king there too. He was shot and killed which led to the start of the revolution and the period of totalitarian government. You could see bullet-holes in the side of the coach! They had a coffee vending machine that i hit up halfway through, so i carried my chocolatey caffe com leite throughout the rest. They even have amazing coffee from vending machines! I love europe. Well I guess it seemed amazing to me, a silly American :)They had a whole series of royal paintings upstairs too so we went around the circuit and joked about everyone. It was great.

We went back to the Baixa and wandered the shops a bit. February is sale month in Portugal, and they have an amazing multitude of boots everywhere. Awesome boots for 20 euro, awesome dresses and sweaters for 5-10, it was hard to turn away. We went for sushi for dinner. It was interesting. It was like a fast-food sushi place, the hand-roll came in a little box on a tray with a fountain drink and everything. hehe, i dunno why we chose sushi in portugal, but margaret had a mean hankering for some soy sauce. It was cheap and filling so I was down. Margaret was mostly packing at the hostel that night, but we had some cool conversations with the other people in our room. There was this couple from New York who are math geniuses and love to travel, and a couple of friends from Romania who are trying to see every major european city. I got to chatting with these 2 and we explored the hostel a bit. We ended up on the roof of the hostel! Amazing view of Lisbon, and a slightly scary fire escape method of getting there.

The next morning Margaret left early, so I slept in and ate breakfast with the Romanians. I went shopping with them for a bit, but I couldnt buy anything so we parted ways and I went to check out the ruins of a cathedral on the hill. It was pretty cool actually, this cathedral was messed up like almost everything else by the earthquake, but they left it as a reminder to the city of what happened. Its still gorgeous without a roof, you´ll see. They have an archaeology museum in the back of it too. Oh yeah! And the square in front is where they started the revolution. The totalitarian government had their offices and stuff centered around there, but the people gathered in the square and rose up against them. Pretty pimp.

I wandered around a while trying to find a grocery store, and ended up getting some sandwich that was like a gyro but with purple cabbage as a major ingredient as well. Got to the airport in plenty of time (I´m learning) and then had to wait a couple hours for a snow delay. Madrid got like 4cm of snow, but the whole city freaked out. Nothing was going in or coming out for hours, and I finally get to Madrid and there´s like barely anything on the ground hehe it´s no Chicago.

ok, I´ll just leave you with that and explain Madrid more later, I´m gonna hit up a museum. Hopefully the Paris airline workers end their strike by tomorrow, then I´ll be able to use my computer from the dorm yay!

PEACE