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One 7am flight later, we were in Lisbon and from the very beginning I knew I loved it. We stayed in the Living Lounge Hostel (which was apparently voted the third best hostel in the world by hostelworld.com) and was in the perfect location, right in between the Chiado district (with shops spanning from Bershka to Gucci) and the Bairro Alto which is known for its nightlife. It was surprisingly cheap (18 euro a night) and had a really cool/fun interior (each room was designed by a local artist). We got in at 9am and were lucky and able to check in early, have a free breakfast, and take a quick power nap before the hostel's free walking tour of the city which started at 11am.
Our walking tour lasted around 5 hours and led us all over the city. We got to see the shops, Bairro Alto, a LOT of billion dollar churches (why they put that much money into building all-gold churches rather than using it to help the people is beyond me) ride in one of the street cars, and stop for a late lunch at a small little local Portuguese restaurant which served the "menu of the day". I had a traditional bacalao (cod) dish with some kind of potatoes and cheesy(?) sauce with the Portuguese vino verde to drink. Everything was delicious and only cost around 10 euro all together. Here are some pictures from the tour.
When we got back, we indulged in a short nap before heading out to a few bars in Bairro Alto for some Port wine and tapas. There are so many little bars and restaurants in Bairro Alto, that we constantly had people harassing us trying to hand us their menu or convince us to come into their restaurant/bar. We finally settled on a cute little place with live music (they even played Wonderwall!), before continuing on to a few other bars in the area, all serving crazy drinks I had never heard of before.
After our own little bar crawl, we went over to one of Cara's friends, Marta's apartment. Marta's from Milan and knows Cara and Morgan from when she studied abroad in America and went to their high school in Milwaukee for a year. She's now studying in Lisbon for a year and invited us over to their apartment for dinner and a final farewell party dedicated to their neighbors (they're getting kicked out of the apartment by their landlord for being too loud). Dinner was a thick onion soup served over little toasts AND homemade pasta...soooo good. We hung out at the apartment for a while just talking (between Portuguese, Spanish, English, and Italian, there were a lottt of languages flying around, but we all managed to get our points across...or have Marta translate back and forth) and playing the guitar/singing. It was awesome to finally hang out with a lot of non-American people for an entire night and they were some of the most hipster people I have ever met which made me like them even better. Later that night, we left and went to a really small little place down the street where Marta's friends were putting on a flamenco performance and hanging out. We were all having so much fun we could've stayed out all night, but since we knew we had to wake up for a day trip the next morning at 8:30am, we went home early (around 2). All in all though, I think that night has for sure been my favorite since I've left home.
Marta and her friends
such good pasta
Marta's mad guitar skillz
Flamenco performance!
Feeling content that we had experienced what Lisbon had to offer, we took Saturday to do a We Hate Tourism Tour to the surrounding coastal towns. Naturally, we had all procrastinated until Friday evening to book, so the website said that all the tours were sold out. However, the concierge at the front desk heard us talking about it, called WHTT, and convinced them to add another tour on Saturday just for us! (the staff at Living Lounge are so nice). We did the X-Day Trip tour, which was an 8 hour tour (more or less) with a young local guide and this beaut of a van
It was nice, though, because since it was such a small van, we essentially were on our own private tour. The tour started off in Sintra where we walked around the small hilly town and sampled queijada cakes at a famous little bakery that dates back to the 1800s. In the downtown area, we stopped in a small shop where we tasted the traditional Portuguese cherry liquor, Ginja, out of little chocolate cups. Although not terrible, I wouldn't exactly recommend taking a shot of the cough-syrup flavored liquor at 10am. It wasn't exactly what I wake up in the morning and crave, but it was cool to try.
After our Ginja tasting, we drove to hands-down the coolest park I have ever seen, Quinta da Regaleira. The park only costs 6 euro to get in and is surprisingly untouristy for how amazing it is. Although the park had an unbelievable Hogwarts-like palace, the most impressive parts were in the enormous gardens where there were waterfalls, underground caves, stone wells, underground tunnels, secret pathways, moving stone walls, and hidden churches, among other things.
From there, we got back in the van and headed to a roadside market where we bought local food for our oceanside picnic in the mountains. Lunch consisted of a chorizo and cheese filled heavenly concoction with cheese, chips, olives, and wine on the side.
Oceanside Picnic.
Our wonderful tour guides
From there we walked over to the Cabo da Roca lookout point, the westernmost point in continental Europe and took pictures at the top of the cliffs before hopping back in the van and taking a short drive to Guincho beach (cold water, but beautiful).
From there, we drove along the coastline to Cascais (gorgeous little summer resort town) and indulged in some Santini gelati (famous for being the best in Portugal). I got chocolate and strawberry (although the picture isn't my gelati). Yummm
Summoning our remaining energy (pretty non-existent by this point) and with all of us starting to act a little weird from complete lack of sleep, we drove to our final stop, Belem, where we sampled Pastel de Belem (since we apparently hadn't consumed enough calories yet by that point in the day) which was also delicious, and saw the Golden Gate bridge knockoff (same time period, same architect), pier, and monastery.
From there, we said goodbye to our guides and got dropped of back at our hostel. I couldn't believe we got that entire tour and all that food for only 45 euro a person! Our guides were really nice and exchanged numbers with us, offering to take us out and show us around the nightlife scene later that night. Although we had full intentions of "only taking a 30 minute nap and then getting ready to go out" we crashed and burned and ended up staying in to rest. Morgan and I did go for one final little trip to Cafe A Brasileira for a cappuccino before bed and a final farewell to Lisbon. Early Sunday morning, we grabbed breakfast in the kitchen before taking taxis to the airport (we missed the bus...oops).
All in all, it was a great trip and I loved Portugal and hope to go back!
P.S. Photo cred to Jess Karam for all these pictures. My camera died 10 minutes into the trip, which if you know me, should not surprise you a bit.
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