Friday, December 19, 2008

Today we started driving toward Spain. We crossed the Tagus River, the super wide river. The bridge was eight miles long. It took an incredibly long time to cross the river, and we were traveling at highway speeds. So crazy. But of course, it was foggy again, so we couldn’t see much. The fog in Lisbon is insane, the way in comes in so fast and so thick.

On the way, we stopped at a tiny place for coffee and a bathroom break, and none of the eight or so toilets in the women’s restroom had seats. This is the second place we’ve been to where the toilets didn’t have seats. What’s up with that?

But we drove on. I love all the orange trees in this part of the country. So beautiful. We saw Iberian pigs, which are grayish black in color. We also saw lots of cork trees, with the bark all stripped away. There were also tons of sheep, lots of cows, and a few horses.

We stopped for lunch in a small town just a couple miles from the Portugal/Spain border. We sat outside in the warm sun, and it was just gorgeous. Plus, it felt good to be off the bus. We’ve been driving through a lot of curvy, hilly roads, and I’ve been feeling pretty motion sick. I had to move up to the front of the bus so I could see out the front windows.

We arrived in Seville around 5:00. Dinner was included in our tour, but wasn’t going to be served until 7:30 so we had time to wander around. We saw a nice shopping area, with lots of restaurants. All very cozy little places. There were a surprising number of flamenco costumes for sale. We saw the cathedral that we’ll be seeing tomorrow on the tour. We had some trouble finding our way back to the hotel—the streets were very winding and narrow and many of them weren’t on our map. But we made it back in time.

We even had time for a beer with Mark and Natalie before dinner. I don’t know what kind of beer it was, but it was pretty good. The buffet dinner at the hotel was strange. There was a salad, and one of the dressing options was just sour cream. I’m not even really sure it was meant to be salad dressing, but I don’t know what else it was for.

After dinner, at 9:20, we left for the optional excursion to the flamenco show. It was spectacularly awful. There were only ten of us from our tour that went, and maybe 20 other tourists. The room felt completely empty, since it could easily hold a couple hundred people. It felt so awkward to me, these dancers putting on this show where the audience is meant to shout and get involved, but everyone was just so silent. The performers kept talking and commenting to each other. The dancers were talented, I’ll give them that. It must be so hard to perform for an empty room. It was late when we got back to the hotel, so straight to bed.

Thursday, December 18, 2008

We started the day with a bus tour of the downtown Lisbon area. Parts of this tour were sort of lame, we thought, since we saw them in last night’s driving tour. We drove by the presidential palace (at least five times), saw a bridge that was built by the same guy who designed the Golden Gate Bridge (a guy who was not very creative, I imagine, for this bridge looked startlingly like the GG).

Our first stop in Lisbon (or Lisboa, as it is spelled in Portuguese) was at Torre de Belem, a fort that was once used to fight off pirates coming up the Tagus River.

The Tagus, by the way, is a really, really, really wide river. Can’t see across to the other side.

Our second stop was a two-minute drive down the road to Padrao dos Descrobimentos, a sailing monument. Incidentally, in the two-minute drive, the fog came in and we could hardly see a thing. Seriously, in less than three minutes, it went from being a perfectly clear sunny day to misty, foggy, murder-mystery weather. Crazy. So the sailing monument wasn’t very interesting, you know, since we could hardly see it.

The third stop on the tour was at the Monastery of Jeronimos. We heard a lot in Lisbon about the great earthquake of 1755 that pretty much wiped out the city, but this monastery was one of the things that survived. It was pretty neat—sort of nautical themed, and it had some unique elements, like these elephant statues that were supporting tombs. But you don't get to see them because none of my pictures from in there really turned out. Too dark.

At the end of the bus tour, we were dropped off at Rossio Square and left to wander on our own the rest of the day. First we walked around the shops downtown. Since yesterday was so warm, I didn’t wear my coat today, just my fleece. Big mistake, obviously. With all the fog, it was quite cold. We stopped for pastries and coffee (so we could warm up and use their bathroom) before deciding to head to the Castle of Saint George. The castle was way up on a hill (apparently Lisbon is built on seven hills, just like Rome). We climbed and climbed, steep streets and lots of steps to get there. Climbing up steep things is sort of becoming a theme on this trip. Just ask my quads, they’ll tell you.

All these buildings are covered in tile.

The castle was awesome. There were stray cats everywhere, so many of them that I started taking pictures of them just to show how many there were.

Travel hint: don’t take pictures of strange cats. It is lame.

Anyway. It was still super foggy, so the view from the big hill wasn’t spectacular. We walked down a bunch of steps to this little outpost thing, I think originally it was just designed to get a better view of approaching intruders. There were so many steps that we counted them on the way back up. Andrew and I counted different numbers of steps, but it was somewhere around 140. We spent about an hour at the castle, and by the end, the fog had started to lift, so we got a few better pics.

After we left the castle, we walked back downtown and ate lunch at a little café that had outdoor seating in the sun. Our food was delicious; I had a turkey sandwich on the best bread and Andrew had garlic sausage with a fried egg on top. And if you know Andrew, you know that anything with garlic is going to be a hit. It was warming up, around 50 degrees, but by the time lunch was over, it was cold again and I considered going back to the hotel for my coat. But we decided not to, because Andrew is nice and he gave me his coat (awwwww).

We took the subway to the part of town where the 1998 world expo was. We’d heard it was very modern, very different from the old part of Lisbon. And it was. We saw lots of shops and restaurants, a big mall, a long, skinny park—where three teenage couples were making out—along the river. It was foggy again, though, so we could barely see the river. We took a gondola ride along/above the river. Fun, and a nice rest from all the walking, but because of the fog, still no view.

We stopped for coffee in a little place called Extraordinarily Good Cappuccino. It was not, in fact, extraordinarily good. I’d even call it Sort Of Bad. It was connected to the aquarium gift shop, so maybe we should have known. And they put whipped cream from a can on my coffee. Who does that? After the coffee disaster, we walked back to the mall and window shopped for awhile. We were exhausted, but it was too early to quit sightseeing. To give ourselves a rest, we decided to go see a movie. There were several American movies in English playing there, but what kind of travel experience would that be? We decided to see Bolt, the Disney kids’ animated movie in 3D. Since kids aren’t so good at reading subtitles, this was dubbed in Portuguese. The tickets were 7€ each, comparable to U.S. prices. The man taking the tickets could tell we were American from a mile away (everyone could, actually) and he said to us, “You’re making a big mistake.” We said, “Huh?” and he said, “You know this movie is in Portuguese.” We said, “Yep.” He asked, “Do you understand Portuguese?” We said, “No.” He stared at us, trying to determine just how crazy we were. But we went in and enjoyed the movie. And I’m fairly certain we understood at least 80 percent of the major plot points, and at least 15 percent of the jokes.

After the movie, it was time for dinner. In lieu of going out, we shopped at a grocery store for bread, fruit, and cheese and we decided to picnic in our room. At the grocery store, we had to put our fruit in bags just like at home, but then we had to take it to a special counter in the produce section where an employee weighed it, put a sticker on it, and ran it through this machine that taped the bags closed. I thought this was strange, that they found it more economical to pay someone to do this rather than have the checkers weigh produce. Buying cheese was hard, since we couldn’t read any of the labels. After picking up package after package, we ended up randomly picking a cheap one that was already sliced (since we didn’t have any utensils). It turned out to be pretty good, a mild Swiss-like cheese. We also bought Pink Lady apples (still called Pink Lady in Portuguese) and gigantic grapes with seeds. The bread we got was fantastic, too. All this for only 4,19€. Very economical dinner. Plus, we had the wine from the winery. It wasn’t as cold as we would have preferred, because there was no mini-fridge in this hotel room (the first one, I think, that didn’t have a fridge) so we just out it out on the balcony. Oh well. It was still good.

Only one other story from today—we had a slight problem getting home on the subway. Or really, I had a problem. They have a time-zone system, so you pay for the distance you’re traveling, which means you have to run your card through the machine on your way out as well as on your way in. And on our way out, Andrew left, but then the machine wouldn’t let me go. Said my ticket didn’t have enough money on it. But Andrew and I paid the same amount for our tickets. I was getting sort of panicked, trying different machines and such. Then a nice woman said a bunch of things to me in a language I couldn’t understand, then handed me her card from the other side and gestured for me to swipe it. So thanks to the kindness of a stranger, I was able to leave the Lisbon subway station.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

We started the day with a big buffet breakfast in Coimbra, and after our first night of really good sleep, it was perfect. After breakfast, we drove to town to explore and see the university.
Coimbra was built on this huge, steep hill. Instead of regular old sidewalks, there were steps everywhere. Lots and lots of steepness and lots of steps.
Also in Portugal, all their sidewalks are done in this fantastic tile. All hand-laid, with tons of different patterns. It was everywhere we went, just incredible. On a somewhat related note, a lot of building facades are also covered in tile. So cool.

Andrew loved all the graffiti we saw.

Coimbra is known for its university, but Andrew and I decided to just walk around town instead of visiting it. We loved all the great views of the rooftops. So beautiful. We bought a traditional (or so we hear) Portuguese tile for Sarah. It’s lovely, with lots of blue and white with spots of color in the design. I hope she likes it. The weather was fantastic, too. Warm enough that we could enjoy walking around. Before getting back on the bus, we got some delicious pastries and sat out in the sun.

Next, we drove about 30 minutes to Batalha. Frankly, there wasn’t much there. We saw a big, gothic-style cathedral with lovely stained glass making gorgeous reflections on the stone. But other than the stained glass, we weren’t impressed with Batalha. We didn’t really see anything besides this cathedral and the two or three shops that surrounded it. We did stop at a little bread and cookie kiosk thing, and the nice lady there gave us samples of cakes and cookies. We bought some small coconut cakes from her.

After Batalha, we drove another 30 minutes to Fatima. Nice views along the way, very green. Lots of orange trees and vineyards. We went to a wine-tasting at this little place with barrel tables and stools. We got to try red table wine, two kinds of port, almond liqueur, and coffee liqueur. It was a nice little wine-tasting, but very quick. We were only there maybe 20 minutes, including the eight-minute video we watched. Andrew and I bought a bottle of sparkling wine for only 4€. We haven’t had it yet; I’m sure we’ll drink it sometime soon. Maybe when we can’t find a good place to go out to.

We started our outing in Fatima with lunch with Mark and Natalie at this circular restaurant on the second floor of a building, overlooking a shopping square and gardens. Had very tasty food—mushroom pizza and roast chicken, good bread.

Fatima’s claim to fame is that sometime in 1917, there were all kinds of religious visions there, and people said they saw an apparition of the Virgin Mary. Our tour director, Paul, told us it was in the news and everything. The town sells these body-part-shaped candles, and they say that you light them for spiritual help. Like they had candles shaped like feet, or arms, or kidneys, or intestines, and if you had stomach cancer, say, you might light a stomach-shaped candle and pray for healing. We even saw boob candles.

So we were there because of all the religious history and to see these two gigantic cathedrals. One old and more classic-looking, one newer and very modern looking. In front of the modern cathedral, there’s a cool steel crucifix with a stylistic Jesus. It looked amazing in the sunlight. Hope my pics of this turn out well.
There’s a long marble path that leads to the candle-burning area where people crawl on their knees to get there. We peeked in the cathedrals, but because our lunch was long, we didn’t have a lot of time before we had to be back on the bus.

If you squint and maybe tilt your head,
you'll see a man who was actually crawling
on his knees down the path.

Next, we drove about one and a half hours to Lisbon. We had about two or three hours to kill before dinner, so Andrew and I walked to a nearby bullring with a shopping center underneath it. I bought a kickin’ yellow watch there.

Dinner was part of one of the optional excursions. This one included a city tour and traditional Portuguese show. Tons of cabbage in the traditional Portuguese food—in the soup and in the casserole thing. The show was pretty good. Lots of singing, dancing, in the Fado style, which was described to us as a sort of melancholy, bluesy style of music. It didn’t sound very bluesy to us, but was nice, with lots of guitar music. After the show, the bus drove us around town for a bit before heading back to the hotel.

The hotel, by the way, is awesome. We scored a room on the top floor—the tenth—with a large balcony and views of the city.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Didn’t sleep well last night or the night before. Jet lag, or maybe just sleeping in a new place? It stinks. I’m exhausted. But the trip goes on. We boarded our bus this morning before the sun was even up, but that was about 8:15. We drove to Avila, another super old city. It was much colder there, because we were in the mountains. Lots of snow on the ground. Okay, not lots. Some.

Avila was interesting, because there were lots of very modern shops in these thousand-year-old buildings. The main part of the city is walled, you know, to keep out the intruders, like Wal-Mart. But of course I kid. We wandered around the streets, and because of a lack of time, we decided not to visit St. Teresa’s cathedral or the museum. Upon someone’s recommendation, we did purchase yemas, a candy made with egg yolk and sugar. Must say, I’m not a fan of yemas.

We purchased tickets that got us up on top of the walls. This was awesome. We had such a fantastic view, and it was cool to think about who once stood up there and protected this little town from intruders, hundreds and hundreds of years ago.

Then back on the bus. Don’t think I’m going to like spending so much time on the bus. Andrew and I both felt sort of ill while on the bus. For me, it was the motion. For Andrew, it was last night’s wine. Definitely no drinking tonight.

From Avila, we headed to Salamanca. We both felt pretty shitty, so we didn’t want to do much. For some reason, we’re always hungry here. Not sure why. Maybe it’s just that we’re eating breakfast so early and lunch is so late? Maybe it’s because we haven’t figured out how to order normal meals? Anyway, we ate these tiny little sandwiches for lunch, but after wandering around Salamanca’s university grounds, we were still hungry, so we used the rest of our free time there to get more food. We went into this little wood-paneled place and ordered pizza margherita and agua minerale. Really hit the spot, but it took awhile, and we barely had time to make it back to the bus. So much for sight-seeing in Salamanca. We felt much better afterward, though. Thank god for that, because we still had a three-hour drive to Coimbra, Portugal. I’m for sure going to be more prepared tomorrow, with my PsiBands and Dramamine ready to go.

On the bus, our driver, Abdel, started playing bizarre Spanish music. Loudly. I found it irritating, because I wanted to sleep. Fortunately, I did doze a bit, but I hope this music thing isn’t going to be on every day. When I wasn’t sleeping, I watched the countryside go by. It’s beautiful. We were on a plateau, then headed into an area that had lots of hills and lots of limestone rocks. It got warmer as we headed west—no more snow. We saw a lot of wind turbines atop the hills in Portugal. Very cool. Also saw lots of smoke, lots of small fires burning. Trash, maybe? Also, there are tons of sheep in Portugal. We stopped at a rest area in Nowhere, Portugal, and I had the most delicious chocolate muffin and café con leche (but in Portuguese). The bathrooms are freezing here. A lot of things are cold—they’re not big on using a lot of heat, it seems. After awhile, Abdel switched the music to old American stuff, like “What a Feeling,” the ’80s classic, among other things. Andrew secretly hoped we’d hear “Bohemian Rhapsody” and that everyone would sing along.

It was dark by the time we got to Coimbra. We had a buffet dinner in our hotel. I thought everything was pretty good. We were sitting at a table with this British family of three that was part of our tour. People seem to think Americans are rude, but we were embarrassed to be at the same table with them because of how rude they were to the servers. They complained about everything. Crazy.

Our hotel room was absolutely freezing. We couldn’t even get our heat to turn on. Thankfully there was an extra blanket in the closet, so we snuggled up, got warm, and were finally able to get some good sleep.

Monday, December 15, 2008

We started the day with an optional trip to Toledo, which is about a 30-minute drive from Madrid. It was incredible. Very old—medieval, I think. We visited a cathedral that was just gorgeous. It was huge, with ornate details in carved wood and stone, lots of gold everywhere, lots of stained glass. It had three enormous organs. We wished we could have heard them play.

Our guide led us through the town, down really narrow, winding streets—not even wide enough for a single car. The city was on a big hill, too, so it was all pretty steep. Beautiful buildings, with some of the original doors. We saw El Greco’s famous painting of the ascent of a spirit to heaven. It was a cool painting, but we spent at least 30 minutes standing there listening to the guide talk about it. Could’ve been fully discussed in 15 minutes, if you ask me.

We also visited a Damascene workshop in Toledo. I bought a beautiful pendant there, all gold and black with a bird on it. Just lovely.

We took the bus back to Madrid and found lunch at a little place down the street from the hotel. The sign said fumar was prohibido, but there was indeed fumar (smoking) there. Plenty of smokers in Spain, actually. Seems like pretty much everyone smokes. Anyway, lunch wasn’t great, but that could’ve been our fault. (We aren’t sure how to order sometimes, because we don’t know the language well enough. By which I mean we don’t know the language at all.) Also, it’s strange how they just throw trash on the floor here. All around the bar area, the floor is littered with wadded up napkins and cigarette butts.

This afternoon we took a bus tour of Madrid. It was kind of lame, because we saw a bunch of the same stuff yesterday, like the Royal Palace and the Prado. We did stop at a bullfighting arena, but couldn’t go in. Also stopped at a statue of Don Quixote. We heard a lot about him on the way to Toledo. I get the feeling this won’t be the last we hear of Don Quixote while in Spain. When the tour was over, we went with Mark and Natalie to this cool indoor botanical garden and got coffee, then went across the street to the Reina Sophia museum. We saw lots of Picasso and Dali there. Saw Picasso’s Guernica.

We ate tapas and pizza with Mark and Natalie at a charming little place with stone walls and servers who tried to understand us and we tried to understand them. Again, drank lots of wine—four bottles among the four of us. Pretty sure I drank far less than my equal share, and for that I’m grateful. We decided to take a bus back to the hotel since we were tired, even though it was probably only a 20-minute walk. We missed our stop, though, and after a really long time on the bus, we ended up getting off at a random subway stop and taking that back toward the hotel—six stops away. Fortunately, Natalie and Mark knew which stop the hotel was closest to, because we didn’t have a map. When we eventually got back, we drank even more wine before heading to bed at around 12:30. Which was too late for still-jet-lagged me, especially considering our wake-up call tomorrow is at 6:45am.

Sunday, December 14, 2008

When we got to the airport, I noticed two things right away: 1) It smelled like cigarettes in the airport. They had a smoking area, but it was wide open to the rest of the room. So different than back home. 2) The toilets were a different shape. More square. Weird.

Took a taxi to our hotel, since we had no idea where we were going. When we got to our room, “Don’t You Want Me” by Human League was playing—loudly—on our arrival. Also the TV welcomed us by name. Awesome.

My first thoughts on being in another country: I’m surprised how many signs are in English. Overall, the cars are much smaller than in the U.S., and they’re all different styles. Wonder why we don’t have these cars. They’re cute. No one seems to stay in the lanes on the streets. It’s like the lanes are more of a suggestion than the rule. I’m feeling very American and lacking in cultural awareness and language skills. It’s hard to be somewhere where you don’t know what things say or what people are saying.

Andrew and I wandered around Madrid all afternoon, since we didn’t meet up with our tour group until 7:00. We took the bus to El Rastro, an outdoor market that sold clothes, hats, scarves, bags—all kinds of stuff. I’m pretty proud of us for figuring out the bus—how to pay, how much to pay, where to get off. I can do subways, no problem, but I find buses much more complicated.

Yes, he is playing the water glasses. Awesome.

We were starving, so we stopped in a little place for café con leche and ham and cheese sandwich and tortilla espanola. Next we walked to the Plaza Mayor, which was very cool. We saw some musicians on the street playing the Pachelbel Canon. Basically we wandered in a big circle. Came upon the royal palace, but couldn’t go in because it was closing soon. The guard suggested we go to the Prado museum because it was free from 5:00 to 8:00 (but it was only 2:00). We took the subway to the museum. So glad we learned the New York subway system.

We paid 6€ each for the Prado, which is not free. It was okay. Liked "The Garden of Earthly Delights." At the museum cafeteria, we got more café con leche. So tasty.

Did someone say jet lag?

Next we walked over to the big park that was right by the Prado. It reminded us of Central Park, because it was just so huge, with lots of walking paths. I thought it would’ve been pretty in the summer. It actually started to snow while we were there, though just flurries. It was quite cold. We saw a monument to Alphonso, whoever that is. There was a lake with lots of koi and lots of people in rowboats, in spite of the cold weather.

We walked back to the Plaza Mayor and El Rastro, not because we wanted to see them again, but because that was where we knew we could catch the bus back to the hotel. On the way, we stopped at a little outdoor market area and bought some pastry that was similar to Boston cream pie. Funny that we’ve come all this way and got something like that. Don’t regret it though—it was delicious. We got off the bus too early, though, and had to walk about five blocks anyway. Did tons of walking today. Maybe five or six miles? Not sure.

We were glad we were wearing our fleeces and coats. Wished I’d gotten out my gloves, though.

We met up with our tour group at 7:00pm. There are only 17 people in our group. We’re the only Americans. I think one other woman has a U.S. passport, but I don’t think she’s been in the U.S. very long. She’s got a very strong accent, not sure where she’s from.

We met a couple from Australia. They’re awesome and very close to our age. Natalie and Mark. We ate dinner with them and really hit it off. We laughed and joked, like we’ve known them forever. They’re very funny and very smart. Mark’s studying medicine (I love how they talk—we’re meeting them for brekky in the morning) and Natalie does logistics for the navy.

Dinner was included with the tour, and we were each allotted one bottle of wine per table. The four of us sat together, and drank our wine pretty quickly. Another table from our group gave us the remaining 1/3 of their bottle of wine, then Mark sweet-talked the waiter into giving us another bottle, then Natalie stole another table’s remaining 2/3 bottle when they left. Plenty of wine was drunk. Fun times. Feel like this is going to be a great trip.

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Today was departure day. Nothing too interesting to report. We flew from Kansas City to Newark, then from Newark to Madrid. The flights were fine. Only about 20 minutes delayed, which is practically early in airport land.

Our flight to Madrid was an overnight flight, but I only got about two hours of sleep, despite the sleeping pill I took. Lame.

Did you miss me?

Though I’m sure you were all busy with holiday things, I assume that when your families drove you crazy, you may have turned to the internet for entertainment and blog updates. And you may have noticed my blogging absence. I have been gone for quite some time, but you can stop worrying now. I’m back.

Andrew and I just returned from an amazing European/African adventure. Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Paris . . . And I’m going to tell you all about it. But not today. Today’s post is meant to build suspense over the upcoming vacation posts. Also, I have not yet removed the red eye from the gazillion photos we took.

We were gone for three weeks, so over the next three weeks, I’m going to post once a day. One post for each day of the trip, as if I were still on the trip. Won’t that be fun? It’ll be like you’re traveling with me, except we won’t have to share the bathroom.

How were all of your holidays? To all my friends who were in KC while we were gone: I’m so sorry to have missed you. Christmas just wasn’t the same when we weren’t trying to juggle hanging out with 14 different people all at once. Maybe next year.