First official day in Lisboa!

Something that I have learned about myself on this family vacation is that I do not like being a tourist. The pressure of seeing everything a city has to offer with a very limited amount of time sometimes makes me feel overwhelmed. Also, being a tourist you always feel lost. I prefer to live a while in a city. I know that it is unreasonable to say that I will live in every that I visit, but I can say that Valencia was my favorite city in Spain and I think that the reason for this is because I lived there. We started out our first real day in Portugal taking a tour in a bus, which to my disappointment and to Gildi excitement was an air-conditioned bus instead of a double decker. The woman who was giving us the tour was a bit peculiar and she knew many languages. I did not like her much though. She got frustrated translating what she was saying in different languages. The thing that I hated most about this tour and any tour for that matter is that we were on a schedule. It is no secret that I like to take my time with everything. I eat slowly. I take things in slowly. I really do not like fast paced life. So when the tour guide yelled at me to get on the bus while I was looking for my brother at a memorial site that showed everywhere that Portugal had discovered I could not deal with it. I hate going on tours. But, at the same time I understand that going on a tour like what we did was and is the best way to see and experience a city over a very short period of time. On the tour we saw memorial sites, an old fortress, an old church (of course), and a car museum. Before we even got to Lisboa David had googled what to do in Lisboa and he came up with this car museum. He was so excited to see a car museum filled with expensive, fancy, modern cars that when walked into the museum of ‘coches’ it was entertaining to me to see the look on the face when the ‘cars’ were in fact ‘carriages’ like in Cinderella. We also were given a chance to visit the old part of Lisboa, which was by far my favorite. Some of the old houses in Portugal are not painted, but instead they are decorated with tiles. This was something about the old part of the city that made it so beautiful. I could just imagine the people who walked around the streets the many years ago. After the tour we went to lunch. Oh lunch. People lined outside of the restaurants basically forcing you to come and sit with them to have some business. I do not like this part of the experience in Portugal. As Americans, we know that we like our time and space to consider our options before being pushed in any situation. Well, we were not given any time or space into taking into account where we wanted to eat that day. Personally, I wanted to sit down as quickly as possible as to not be harassed by any more people with menus. On a side note, Portuguese people really like their eggs. They seem to put it on everything. Whether it be on their hamburger or their steak, it is considered to be their ‘specialty’ at each restaurant that I have seen. After lunch, Gildi and Marshy were too tired to continue looking around the city. So they asked the waiter how long it would take them to walk back to the hotel (we did not know because the tour guide bus had dropped us off). His answer? 10 minutes uphill. So they decided to walk. On the other hand, me and David went exploring. We walked around the city looking at the shops and the restaurants. We eventually reached the ocean, which made the wandering around totally worth it. There was a nice breeze, a beautiful view, and tons of fish. After a while of doing this it was getting a little hot for us and we decided to turn back. So we started our so-called 10-minute walk. It was in no way any close to being 10 minutes. We did not time it or anything, but if I had to guess how long we were walking uphill for I would have to guess about 45 minutes. All we kept wondering on the whole way back was whether or not Marshy and Gildi were able to walk it or if they took a taxi. We found out it was a combination of both. That night we had dinner outside at a really good really cute restaurant. We were finally able to get white sangria! I had been searching for it for a while and it was really good! My first real day in Portugal was a success, even with the semi-cranky tour guide. The pictures attached are David with his cars, me at the the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, and a picture of what the old part of Portugal looks like.

On the way to Lisboa!

First opinions of Portugal:
1. The sidewalks are slippery. How do people walk around here when it is raining? I have had a lot of close calls without the rain.
2. I do not understand these people at all. There is a really big language barrier. I thought that being bilingual would give me some sort of head start on the language so there would be some mode of communication, but I was mistaken. When it is written I can understand it, but they speak so differently compared to Spanish that when they talk to me in Portuguese my face kind of goes blank. I do not have the slightest clue.
3. The city is beautiful. I have now officially seen both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
4. I am a fan of white Sangria.
We got to Lisboa in the late afternoon and it was a pain to find our hotel. As always when you are a foreigner the streets are confusing. We were wandering around the city for about an hour for the hotel. I have never seen Gildi so anxious to get rid of the car as she we in Lisboa. I am not the biggest fan of this hotel compared to the last one. It is very businesslike and futuristic. Not very homey at all. It took us a really long time to find a place to eat. We finally walked into a bar that was playing the Spain versus Germany game and we sat back and enjoyed. Spain won and is going to the world cup! Also, according to the octopus who knows beforehand who is going to win the games (since he is never wrong) Spain is supposed to take the title! On a side note it is really hard to have a car in Europe. Not only was it really hard to come into the city, but when Gildi went to park the car she was really worried about being able to get the car out of the parking garage. Mainly because the entire thing was only one-way.

Sevilla the land of the heat.

Getting to Sevilla was not easy. The streets there are one of the most confusing I have ever witnessed. Between the one way streets, the taxi lanes, the river that only connects to the city with three bridges, and the vague if existent street signs it was a miracle of life that we made it to our hotel. You know a city is confusing is Gildi is willing to break the law by making a left turn somewhere or driving in the taxi lane to avoid getting any more lost than we already are. Sevilla is beautiful city, but I feel like I did not enjoy it as much as I could because of the heat. It is so hot in Sevilla that in front of our hotel they had water mist shooting out of the sidewalk. And to give you more of an idea of how hot it was in my travel guide there where only three tips given for Sevilla. One of the tips was ‘do not visit Sevilla during the months July and August because it gets really hot.’ The heat just about killed us. We saw a church there and we saw a fortress. In the church I was able to see Christopher Columbus’s grave. I am glad that we were not in Sevilla for more than a day because the heat would have absolutely killed us. I am also glad that I did not pick this city to do my study abroad in because Sevilla was the city I wanted to go to. I guess everything works out for the best. Hopefully some day I will get to go back and experience the city, but when it is winter here. Otherwise, I am not really interested. Our hotel was awesome though. I wanted to take some of the furniture in the hotel back with me to the states. Everything was really original and very charming. I will miss that place. Another lesson was learned in Sevilla. Do not trust old people in Spain in general not just old men. The old women will act like they have to talk to the ticket desk because they have a problem, but in reality they will not stand in line and wait their turn. A group of senior citizens walked right in front of us and past the line of people to see a church. And I let them because I thought something was wrong. Again, lesson learned. It will never happen again. The pictures attached are from Torremolinos (a beach that we stopped at on the way to Sevilla), a picture of me inside of the fortress, and a picture of Christopher Columbus's grave (weird of me to post I know, but he was an important person)

La Alhambra

La Alhambra was one word AMAZING. It was so beautiful to see and there were a lot of details in the buildings. The only disappointments that I had were that the main fountain was under construction and that none of the fountains were actually on. For this place to reach its maximum awesomeness the fountains needed to be on. For those of you who do not know what the Alhambra is you should Google it and see for yourselves. As for the rest of Granada, I loved it!! The city is absolutely charming. Me and the family tried to walk the claimed ’15 minutes’ to the center of the city (by the concierge). After about 20 minutes in the heat we took a bus. That is when we realized that we were only half way to the city. So the so-called 15-minute walk was at least a 40-minute walk. One thing that I will not miss from Spain is their ‘approximations.’ Everything is majorly underestimated. That night in the city we found a restaurant and watched the Spain versus Paraguay and we won! It was fun to see the people cheering in the streets. I really wanted to go back to the hotel, while David wanted to go out into the city. If there is anything that I have learned about myself in Spain is that I do not like crowds, I do not like to drink, and I definitely do not like crowded bars. They are not fun for me. I would honestly have a better time at home without the chaos. Also in Granada I was able to ride my very first double decker bus, which was a little bit miserable. It was really hot in Granada (not as much as in Sevilla) and those buses are not air conditioned. Gildi was so hot after lunch that she and Marshy took a taxi back to the hotel. But, me and David wanted to explore the city some more, so we walked around some. To be more cost efficient and to see more of the city we decided it would be best to take the double decker bus back to our hotel. What a mistake. It was so hot and there was not any shade anywhere. Also our bus driver stopped to talk to his buddies on the way to our stops for at least 15 minutes at each stop. This really frustrated me a lot. They were trying to recruit people onto the bus and would not leave the stop until they had gotten a certain number of people. I wanted to scream at the people who were buying tickets and tell them not to waste their money because they make you wait to long in the heat. We did eventually make it back to the hotel, but it probably took us 6x longer. Oh well. Live and Learn.

One head is better than four.

Having a car in Spain or in Europe for that matter is a lot harder than walking. The one way streets, the confusing signs, and not to mention the expectation that others have for you to stop the car for them to cross no matter where on the road that they might be. Something that does not make having a car in Europe any easier is driving a manual car instead of an automatic because it would cost 500 more euros. So, have that in mind and then put me, Dave, Marshy, and Gildi in a car and you have a story. Maybe not a fun story at the time, but later we should be able to look at it and laugh. It is no secret that Gildi is a very nervous person. Therefore, having her in the drivers seat in Madrid because Marshy does not understand the street signs was a very interesting experience to say the least. Madrid is confusing walking around it, let alone driving around it. But, even so we managed to make it out of the city. The entire time Gildi was wishing that we had invested a little extra money in a GPS. Despite of these thoughts I am still confident that there is no need to get a GPS because getting lost is always part of the experience. A lot of the coolest things that I have found anywhere have been because I have gotten lost and stumbled upon them. With that being said, Gildi does not like getting lost so for the rest of the trip we have to be very careful as to not get lost. On the way to Granada we stopped in Toledo for a few hours. Toledo used to be the capital of Spain before they moved it to Madrid. I enjoyed seeing Toledo, but I only wished that it was not raining. (The rain was also something that contributed to not having fun with a manual car.) There is a wall that surrounds the entire city, which we drove on the outside of and we went to see the Cathedral. I have been to so many Cathedrals in Spain that they are all starting to look the same to me. After Toledo we made our way to Granada without lunch. It is hard being around people who still have jetlag from their trip because while they are never hungry because of the time change, I am hungry. The solution for this problem? Snacking in the car. I am happy to say that we made it to Granada, but we did get lost. Like I said before and I keep on repeating to my family: It is part of the experience! The pictures above are from Toledo and Granada at night.

El Prado...

Me, Marshy, and Gildi woke up to try to make our way to El Prado (a famous art museum in Madrid). David made up his mind early that he did not want to come along on this adventure of ours and after experiencing it ourselves I can say with absolute certainty that I do not blame him. We tried to get a taxi to the art museum since it was raining, but the streets by our hotel were closed because of a gay pride parade that was going to be happening all weekend long. So what was plan B? The Metro. First off Madrid’s metro is ridiculous. It is so big. We were walking what it seemed like a never-ending line of escalators. Second, Marshy did not enjoy the metro because of the smell. He claims that the people who ride the metro do not shower very often. Honestly, I did not even really notice. After getting off the train and asking a police officer and a few locals we finally got there. We got the audio tour guide, who was initially nice to have, but after a while it became really annoying. I really have no interest in staring at one piece of art work for twenty minutes while some man is talking in my ear with an accent telling me some story about the particular painting which I can only be about forty percent sure that it is actually true. Let’s just say out of the three floors of El Prado I was only able to visit 1 and a quarter before I had to leave. I have come up with a solution to this problem, which I do not think that Madrid would be too fond of. I think that the top twenty most famous paintings in the art museum should be put in one room at the very beginning. That way I do not have to look through hundreds of paintings of artists I have never heard before to find the painting of ‘Las Meninas’ and then question myself as to why I wanted to see it so badly. While I do enjoy seeing history, I like to see more concrete history like buildings instead of paintings that all look the same to me. I feel bad saying this because I do know that there was a lot of work put into each work of art. It is just that I cannot spend an enormous amount of time ‘appreciating’ works of art. After leaving ‘El Prado’ early and taking a victory picture in the back with my mother, we all headed back but this time in a taxi because not all of us could take another metro ride. Other than ‘El Prado’ all we did is eat meals, which then again reassured myself that maybe becoming a vegetarian might be in my best interest because they literally have hanging animal legs all around restaurant comparable to hanging animal heads on the wall. I just cannot eat meat with all the animal legs so close by. The pictures above are us eating at restaurant in Plaza Mayor and me and Gildi leaving El Prado forever!!

Adventure #2: With the Familia

We left Valencia around 10am and got to Madrid around 3pm because we had to stop at a rest stop for 45 minutes. When we finally got to Madrid we immediately went to go put our bags down in the hotel room and then went to get gelato because it was really hot. After gelato, we walked to Madrid’s park called ‘El Retiro.’ It is beautiful. After walking around five of us sat in the grass and played cards for an hour. It was a lot of fun. Then we went back to the hotel because I had to meet my parents in the lobby of the hotel at eight. When I was finally able to meet up with my parents the program would not allow me to leave for 30 minutes because I had to write an evaluation. Honestly, although I had the time of my life on this study abroad, I do not think it had much to do with the program. For doing the program for ten years I was hoping that they would be a lot more organized. Also, the euro went down by ten cents since the beginning of the program and I was hoping to get some money back. But, I do not think that they are planning on giving back anything. After the evaluation I finished my night when I went with my parents and David to a good tapas restaurant.