We took the tram to Belém, it's not meant to be a long ride, but some reason, still unknown, the tram stopped. An announcement was made, in Portuguese of course, so the eight or nine actual Portuguese hopped off the tram whilst the 30 or so of us tourists stayed on board looking confused.
After waiting in the cold for about 15 minutes we did manage to hop on the next tram to Belém. We visited the monastery first, which was an impressive building, with many detailed carvings. After the monastery we had lunch at a crowded little restaurant, where I had the most amazing pita sandwich. Once we had food in our belly, we headed off to the Tower.
In short, the Tower of Belém is beautiful. Sadly we had to do a running visit. It wasn't just cold, rainy and windy, oh no! There was a proper storm happening when we were on the tower. We raced up the steep, steep steps and rushed outside for roughly 30 seconds, just enough time to snap 100 photographs before running back inside the tower. What was amazing though, was listening to the waves crash against the tower. After a quick queue up at the famous pastry shop we got our pastries and headed back Home on the tram. After devouring those pastries we sat in our heater-less room and listen to acoustic guitar music coming from the next room.
Day three in Lisbon was spent at the oceanarium, of course there was the detour to the supermarket where a policeman came and chatted with us, telling us that Lisbon was a "democratic pirate port". Now that I know a bit more about the settings on Baby Nico I was excited to try it out at the oceanarium. Although there were no dolphins nor whales it was still a pretty amazing place! How does it compare with the aquarium in Berlin? Well... They are different. The aquarium in Berlin seemed more man-made whereas the oceanarium in Lisbon did a pretty decent job at keeping the place looking like their natural habitat. What I thought was cool was that, it seemed some of the birds and penguins could fly out of their area. There were no bars, no nets, and at one point one of the penguins did jump onto rocks right in front of us!
On our final full day in Lisbon we went on a little hike to the basilica. There were a lot of up hill climbing, and my worst fears were confirmed, that I am just not fit enough! I did my best to hide my breathlessness from the girls, but I'm sure they all knew! Thankfully after the basilica, the walk back to city was all down hill. Meredith took us to a cute little cafe called Fábulas, and fabulous it sure was! I had a top-notch hot chocolate to go with my divine cheesecake, which really erased all the efforts I've made trying to lose weight with the bloody hike to the basilica!
After watching In Bruges at the hostel we stayed in the common room for the party afterwards. It really wasn't much of a party, we played cards with the Germans, the Brazilians, the Australians and the one French guy, whilst the non-Russian Russians stuck with their wii and glared at us whenever we tried to make eye contact. After our complimentary shot of I-can't-even-remember-what, we held off the drinks until the lady in charge went bed and we were left with the cute Polish night guy, who wasn't keeping an eye on the drinks and we could help ourselves to them. Allie was once again being taught how to roll a cigarette, I think she may have improved since Baarn! The party was fun despite the inappropriate groping, or should I say, the "forced" inappropriate groping...
I love Lisbon, I really do, and I am positive I will return to Portugal again soon! Next stop, Madrid!!!!!
0 comments:
Post a Comment