Lisbon, Portugal

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Hi everyone!

It has been a couple weeks since my last post, but trust me I have a lot of content to share with you all from the past month and a half. As you all know from my last post, I moved to Barcelona, Spain to study abroad for four months. While living in Spain, I have spent a couple of my weekends traveling around Europe! The first free weekend I had was about a month ago, when I traveled with my new friends (and of course, Anissa) to Lisbon, Portugal!

There were eight of us who went on this trip… now just imagine eight American girls, trying to figure out what to do in a foreign country that we know absolutely nothing about… yeah, it was a slight shit show, but it was SO FUN!! The first day we decided to take a Yellow Bus Tour around Lisbon to hit the main stops around the city, little did we know that the 10 euro bus tour wasn’t much of a bus tour at all!! We got lost in Lisbon, couldn’t find our bus stop, and when we finally did they wouldn’t even let us on because the 10 euro bus didn’t come as often as the other, more expensive ones. Now imagine eight of us, sitting at a bus stop for an hour, in the pouring rain. (Keep in mind: it only rains 60 days out of the whole year in Portugal, and we happened to be there for two of them) Eventually we made it on the bus, sat on the top, got absolutely attacked by the rain and made the best of it. To be honest sitting on the top of that cheap bus, riding around the city where we could barely see anything because it was so cloudy and rainy was one of my favorite memories from that trip. One thing that I have learned from being abroad is the importance of staying positive and going with the flow… you will NOT last as an abroad student if you cannot do that, especially at times like this. We ended up just laughing at how bad our luck was and honestly had a time; I have never had my stomach hurt so bad from laughing so hard! Even after our bus tour we went to a restaurant and enjoyed some yummy bread and pasta, and got charged 37 euros for the bread and butter! (that 8 euro butter better cure Cancer) Were we pissed about it? Yes, at the time. But did we move on and laugh about it? Of course!! We just made the best of what we were given, which honestly made it one of my favorite trips so far!

The next day we took a day trip to Sintra, where we toured the Palácio Nacional da Pena. This is a beautiful palace in a park up on a hill that looks straight out of a fairy tale; it was a Tinker Bell fan dream come true. That whole area had hundreds of trees and vines, and beautiful colorful buildings peeping out from the green. The Palace, where the Portuguese Royal Family used to live, was bright yellow and full of history. If you ever make your way to Lisbon, I definitely recommend spending a day in Sintra and checking out this palace. Supposedly there is an amazing view of the city from the Palace, unfortunately for us the only day we could go it was extremely foggy so we couldn’t see anything, but on a clear day I bet it is unbelievable! Just to top off our bad luck, on our way back from Sintra we missed the train stop we were supposed to get off at, and got lost once again. What did we do? Laughed until we cried about what idiots we are and moved on!

That night we decided to check out the night life in Lisbon, which is very different from what I expected. There is a giant strip of bars in the cobblestone streets where all the locals go. We decided to check it out and were surprised to see that EVERYONE was outside! Everyone goes inside the bar, buys a drink, then goes back outside and stands in the middle of the street and just socializes with each other. I have never seen anything like it before, it was so cool to see people just enjoying their time together laughing and singing in the middle of the streets at one in the morning.

Despite the weather, our 48 hours spent lost in Lisbon were an absolute blast! Luckily we were able to get just a few hours of sunshine so I could score a few pictures that weren’t completely gloomy, that I will share below. So feel free to scroll through the pics, and I will also link a couple of the pieces I am wearing below!

Next post will be about Seville, Spain, so stay tuned!