Querida Lisboa

Day 1

On Sunday morning, I got up bright and early to make my 6:37 AM train. It unsurprisingly came late, but I had lots of time to kill before the bus to the airport would arrive, so I didn't mind. Getting through security was a breeze. I only have my backpack and I had all of my liquids packed ahead of time. I also made sure to put my clear cross-stitch pouch outside of my backpack because they always check the scissors. They actually took the scissors out this time but deemed them fine, as usual.

I had to wait until my gate was announced, and I saw there was a huge line for border control, so I figured it would be announced by the time I got to the front. It turns out this forward-thinking was all in vain because I didn't need to be in the line at all; My gate was on the OTHER SIDE of the duty-free shop! There was no border control, so I assume I was in line for travel outside of the Schengen zone. I opened my laptop and got some work done before my flight. I was getting hungry and paid 5 Euro for a yogurt cup, which I tried eating in line, but every time I decided to open it up, the line moved to transport passengers to the plane.

Me and my yogurt cup

The Lisbon airport was huge and just gorgeous. I was going to take the bus to the city, but then I got worried there were sights to see nearby and I should do those while I was there. I even waited for the bus and watched a crazy ordeal. There was a car blocking the taxi and bus lane, so people were honking for ages. When it finally moved, everyone started clapping! It was a pretty wholesome moment once the conflict was resolved.

While waiting for the next bus, I got my travel card. I was really confused when a paper ticket came out because I assumed it would be a plastic card. I kept double-checking my receipt and Googling how to use public transport in Lisbon because something felt off. My receipt definitely had the 50-cent charge for the "reloadable" ticket. It turned out that this was in fact the right ticket--phew! I had never seen a contactless paper ticket until the Navegante card, and I sure was glad that everything worked out.

The bus ride was just 30 minutes and took me right across the street from my hostel. When I got off the bus, it started raining despite the sky being totally clear. It was crazy to see drizzling simultaneously with a bright blue sky. The location was unbeatable and the hostel itself had the best vibes. I immediately made friends upon arrival, who I had lunch with.

The chef had prepared hummus toast with ricotta, arugula, and a lovely vinaigrette.

After lunch, I decided to take a walk around and I went down to the coast. There were tons of shops and cool street vendors.

I ended up at the beautiful square past the arch and checked out the artisan market as well. Then, I just sat and people-watched while facing the water. I couldn't believe how sunny and gorgeous it was outside. Once I soaked it all in, I knew it was time to head back to the hostel and rest a bit before dinner at 8. God, I couldn't believe I was going to eat so late, but it makes sense when lunch is at 2.

The beginning of my way back home wasn't as smooth as I would have liked it to be. As I crossed the street and went back under the arch, I picked up on someone following me. If you want to read the full story, click here.

Once I lost him for good, I entered a gorgeous church that was holding an Easter mass. This is the second Easter mass I have ever observed, and I loved it! The sense of community and shared joy was especially heartwarming. The music was great too and everyone looked genuinely happy to be there.

All good things must come to an end, and I couldn't stay at the back of that church forever. I headed back to the hostel--for real this time--and came across an Easter market and checked it out!

There were mostly food stalls, but I ended up getting some really pretty earrings I had never seen before. I looked at them on my first pass of the market, then decided to go back after I saw everything because I had a gut feeling about them. When I looked at them more closely, they had a small defect, but they fortunately had another pair. I was so happy and I wore them the rest of the trip!

I stopped by another unexpected thing on the way back, which seemed to be an LGBTQIA+ protest of some sort. Even though I couldn't understand a word being said, it was still really neat and empowering to watch and be surrounded by people advocating for their rights. It was very shocking for me to see how small the group was. There couldn't have been more than 100 people there. In Philly or Chicago, this number surely would have reached the thousands.

I started to get hungry and needed to get back in time for dinner, so I continued back north to the little souvenir shop where the hostel entrance was hidden. Our dinner that night was "BBQ chicken." I don't know what sauce that was, but I'm assuming BBQ in this case just means grilled. It was still delicious nonetheless and I ate my portion ridiculously fast. It's going to be very difficult getting used to eating lunch at 2 PM and dinner at 8 PM.

After dinner, there was a fun Easter egg hunt! The winners got chocolate bunnies and everyone else who found eggs got a shot of Gingja, a cherry liquer that's very well-known in Portugal. I have to say, it was delicious! Since I got the all-inclusive package, I was allowed to have unlimited drinks until 11 PM, so I had 2 or 3 cups of their amazing sangria and a beer. Both drinks were on tap and they were really good! The beer was surprisingly sweet and very light too.

To end the night, I went on the daily pub crawl and it was below average. I'm sure it's usually great, but I should have kept in mind that it was Easter Sunday, and not many people would be out. We went to a place called Ache Latina that had only Spanish music. This would usually be a great vibe, but there were only 4 people total when we arrived. We got free shots that looked like some kind of sunrise, and they were great! As soon as it hit 1 AM, the hostel volunteer went back home and the entrance looked sooooo weird now that the souvenir shop was closed. I felt bad rustling through my things to get ready for bed, but I felt like I was pretty fast. I had some amaaaazing sleep because the beds were super comfy and no one was even snoring.

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Day 2

I was excited to try the breakfast in the morning, and it definitely did not disappoint! There were sandwiches, waffles, cereal, eggs, sliced meats and cheese, and a wide array of drinks. When I asked for ketchup to go with my eggs, I was met with a weird face from the AMERICAN volunteer behind the stovetop lol. Upon opening the fridge, I was greeted with this monstrosity of a ketchup bottle!

Today's lunch!

I slept in a bit since I was out last night, and man, that felt great. After breakfast, I chatted with people for a while and then went back to my room and took a nap. When I woke up, I had about an hour until lunch, so I walked around the area and came across one on the funiculars. It was a whopping 5 Euro and not that long of a trip, so I just walked along the path and watched them go by. Lunch was a traditional Portuguese dish with Bacalhau, a type of codfish, and fried potato sticks. I chatted with people some more. Being in a social hostel is sooooo dangerous because I have been starved of being social in Luxembourg and I could have stayed to talk to people all day.

(Taken with my digital camera)

Eventually, I got going and headed to the Palace. Getting there took some walking off the beaten path, but it was a nice walk and it didn’t feel that unsafe. It was right along a big road without much to protect me if something went wrong, but there weren’t that many cars at the time.

I arrived in time for the 4 PM English tour as planned and waited about 15 minutes for the guide to arrive. There were only 2 other gentlemen on the tour, who came together. We had to put sleeves on our shoes before walking around the home, and we weren’t allowed to take any pictures.

That’s alright though because the outside was plenty enough to take pictures of alone. When we got outside, I tried to set up my phone to take a picture, and one of the gentlemen offered to take some for me. He got tons of different angles and was really nice and fun about it.

Here are some more pictures I got with my digital camera:

There was also a lovely resident cat that absolutely stole my heart. I forget her name sadly, but she was so friendly and lovely. Just look how gorgeous her coat is!

I spent a whole hour or so in the gardens afterward because it was so breathtaking. It rained for about 15 minutes out of nowhere, and then stopped as if someone had flipped a switch. A gorgeous rainbow appeared and I felt so lucky to be there.

When I was finally ready to go, it was about closing time anyway. I was there from 3:45 all the way until 6 PM! There was a cool building nearby that I decided to check out, but there wasn’t that much. I took some cool pictures of it from the outside since you couldn’t go in and then I made the trek back to the metro station.

I got back to the hostel just in time for some sangria before dinner. I was going to get some work done on my LGBTQIA+ presentation, but I ended up chatting with this guy Chris who is Franco-American. He was studying in Metz in the fall and is now backpacking all over! He also has a travel blog and works in AI. Very cool stuff. There was also a Swedish person who told us that public bathrooms cost TWO EUROS! That should be illegal!

After dinner, I chatted some more and then decided I should really do some more work. Chris was also working on stuff, which motivated me to be productive. Once my laptop died, I took that as a sign to finish up, but then he offered me his charger and the workaholic in me couldn’t say no.

Day 3

The day started out rougher than I could have ever imagined. At around 2 AM, people came home from the bar crawl and woke me up. Some dude kept trying "Hey Siri" and it was getting on my last freaking nerve. Fast forward an hour and a half, and I'm woken up by the horrendous sound of what I believe is someone throwing up. If you know me, then you know I am an EXTREME emetephobe and this is literally my worst nightmare.

I finally managed to sleep and woke up in time to get breakfast before I headed out to the large flea market. When I was getting ready to leave, someone else turned out to be going in the same direction, so we went together! He was really chill and also from Chicago!

We went inside a huge church that was absolutely stunning. There were tons of tombs there and we got tired of entering rooms and just seeing the marble casks (?) The incredible view from the top was a great highlight even though it was incredibly windy.

I didn’t bring a jacket because I thought it wouldn’t rain, but I turned out to be very wrong. When we got to the flea market afterward, it really started drizzling. Thankfully, I had my umbrella, which helped a fair bit. There were so many gorgeous pieces of jewelry being sold, but none of them really caught my eye. I wanted something with a little sparkle, but they didn’t have much like that. If it was shiny, the shine would usually go away when taken out from under the lamp.

We got some food at the indoor market at the tail end of the flea market because we were going to miss lunch at the hostel. I got a lovely pulled pork arepa—the jackfruit ones were sold on ):-- at one stand and Sohil got the toast dish I had for lunch my first day at the hostel. It was a huuuge piece and looked really good, but the line was ridiculously long. I went to look around because I figured it would take a while, but when I came back, I couldn’t find him. I started to panic because I didn’t have service all day (rain, maybe?) but then I eventually found him outside at the other entrance.

Next, we headed to the monastery, which is where we ended up parting because he wanted to see more at Alfama. I got his number so we could text once I got service and meet up again later on. He invited me to see live Fado music, which I hadn’t heard of, but was apparently a very famous traditional music and dinner in Portugal.

I am so happy that I didn’t miss out on the monastery because it was truly incredible. The rain made it difficult to enjoy as much as I would have liked to, but everything was still really cool. The church inside was huge and there was a room completely covered in coloured marble. It was just stunning. It’s hard to get any pictures because it’s too dark for cameras to pick up well, but I did my best!

I wanted to try and make it to one more place, but my dying phone and shivering, damp body suggested otherwise. I made my way to the nearest metro station, looked out at a gorgeous viewpoint, and then saw a restaurant that said free wifi. I got a vegetable cream soup, which is apparently another classic Portuguese dish, used the wifi to find a bus instead, and then set out to get back and rest. After all that, I ended up NOT taking the bus and walked all the way back to the hostel. It was only 20 minutes away, but it was painstaking up until I recognized where I was. When I was back in the area I explored on my first day, I knew exactly how to get back and time seemed to fly as I made my beeline straight to the hostel.

I was extremely tired when I got back, and I only had about 20 minutes until Sohil and I were supposed to leave for the Fado show. At this point, I really just wanted to take a nap, but I had another gut feeling I would regret it if I didn’t go. Again, this gut feeling was correct because I had an amazing time. I will say, it went on way longer than I expected. I was hoping we would be done by 8 or 9, but we left at 10 PM and waked about 15 minutes home. We got there at around 6:45 and there were only 5 people ahead of us. We made friends with Nat, the persona in front of us, who was solo traveling around Spain and Portugal! She was really nice, and we even sat with her during the show. When we got inside, we had to wait a while for everyone to get seated and have their orders taken. There was a 10 euro minimum, so I got some tapas and shared a ½ pitcher of green wine with Dahi (spelled the Irish way). He got the flaming sausage, which was set on fire prior to serving, but we didn’t get to see it lit up at the table.

There were 2 singers: an older man and a younger woman. We were all in awe of how beautiful she was. The only instruments were a Portuguese guitar, a regular acoustic guitar, and the singer’s voice. The singers would turn their bodies every so often so they would face different sides of the room. This was very thoughtful and I liked that they thought of that. Pictures of the owner and guests were posted on every open space of each wall. I was so tempted to get a picture with him myself, but he only came in and out 2 times.

When we finally returned to the hostel, I couldn’t wait to have my dinner. It was Thai green curry! I popped it into the microwave instantly and ate in the work room because the common space was filledd with people socializing and getting ready for the pub crawl. I finished my food and then Johanna came in, which is when Chris mentioned ice cream. We then went on an ice cream adventure, which turned out to be Amorino gelato. I have to say though, the Stracciatella was fantastic, and I also had a lime basil flavour. Weird combo, but great tastes. We ended up hanging out until around 2:30 and I was getting super tired. I couldn’t wait for sleep but my FOMO was keeping me up. I still had to take my shower too, which turned out to be lukewarm and mildly unpleasant. Still, it was nice to feel somewhat cleaner.

Day 4

My final day in Lisbon had a pretty rough first half. It took every ounce of effort to get out of bed with time to travel to Belem. I wanted to see the tower and the monastery, and still only got around to one of those. It turned out that the monastery jeronimos had a huuuge line that would have taken hours to get through. I went to the free church next to it with a shorter line and then got some food at the maritime museum. I spent about an hour there trying to recover. The pumpkin ravioli wasn’t my favourite thing in the world, but it came with a side salad, which I really needed since it was ridiculously hot that day. I decided to try the pastel de nata at the place it was supposedly founded, then went down to see the tower of belem. For some reason, there aren’t that many bridges across the train tracks and apple maps thinks that you can just walk across them. There’s a large monument closer to the monastery that I tried to get to but there was no bridge in sight. Instead, you take the tram and then walk towards the coast and over a bridge. Then, you can walk down to the monument, but I assume you have to walk all the way back to the tower just to go over the bridge and to the street where a tram will take you back to where you already were.

When I got back to the hostel, I was in desperate need of a nap. I went on my phone and relaxed my brain for a while, then had a quick snooze before dinner. People started playing games and I even showed people how to play James Bond, one of my favourite speed card games! It seemed like people had a lot of fun :D