La Vie Parisienne: Spring Break Part 2: Lisbon

Once again I must apologize for how long it has taken me to get my next post up – between the end of spring break, visiting family members and my schoolwork there’s not a lot of time for blogging!

Nevertheless, I do plan to catch up eventually!

This post is dedicated to Lisbon, one of my favorite places that I visited on spring break.

Huge patterned squares are everywhere in Lisbon

Stairs going up to the road where our hostel was

We arrived in Lisbon Tuesday night (we’re talking April 12^th here) and followed our directions to the hostel, which only required a couple turn arounds to find! We checked in at the hostel, and were told to go to a different building for our room since we had reserved a private room in the hostel. The hostel was actually incredibly nice and our room was spacious and adorably decorated. We shared a bathroom which was nice and clean and complete with a bidet!

Our adorable hostel room

My friend who had been in Lisbon a few days earlier had given us a recommendation for a restaurant, so we went in search of it that night. My friend and I only knew one word in Portuguese (cod aka bacalhau), so we were delighted when we found some sort of cod dish in the all-Portuguese menu! Cod is a Portuguese speciality, and I am not sure where I learned the word (though leave it to me to go to a country and pick one food-related word to know), but I am so glad we did know it! The food was delicious and we left very satisfied. We were especially impressed with how inexpensive Lisbon is compared to Paris – such a great surprise!

The next morning we decided to go on one of the tours around the town led by our hostel. Our guide

was a very nice girl just a couple years older than us who lives in Lisbon, but speaks English very well. There were 4 other American girls on the tour, who also happened to be studying abroad in Paris and were in Lisbon for their spring break. It was fun to compare experiences in Paris while we were wandering around Lisbon. Our guide brought us to the Alfama area, and showed us the castle, cathedral and some great views over the city. The city is very hilly – which leads to a lot of huffing and puffing walking around, but the amazing views are worth it!

View over the city

My favorite little windy streets!

Our guide suggested that we take the metro to Oriente that afternoon, which is a much more modern area with really interesting architecture. We found a grocery store and got some things to make a picnic lunch and wandered down to find some

water views while we ate. The area where we ate was constructed for a world exposition with the theme of “Ocean,” so all the buildings look like sailboats or have some relation with the water. We wandered around for a bit after lunch, but were rather disappointed with the lack of pelouse (if you are confused, see my blog on Madrid for a quick vocabulary lesson!)! After walking around the area, we decided to head back to the old town and check out some of the areas we had not visited that morning. We began our walk up the hill, but enjoyed stopping to take pictures and found a couple of places with reat views over the city and water. We went in search of two cathedrals in the area and enjoyed wandering through the great tiled and winding streets. We got several funny looks from the families we passed sitting in their doorsteps – I don’t think most tourists make it into that area. When you are walking through the streets there, it is almost as though you are walking on people’s private property. All of the families seemed to be out in the street, either watching their kids play, or chatting with their neighbors. It was very cliché, but a great image. The streets are so narrow and twisting that it creates great little private areas for people, and we were grateful for a little peak into their lives. We came across several places that had great views over the city. I loved being able to turn a corner and be floored by the view up ahead. Sure makes those hills a lot easier to climb!

View over the Alfama area

Praça de Commercio

On our way back to our hostel, we passed through the Praça Commercio, which is a huge open square, all lined by bright yellow buildings. On the statue in the middle there was a huge elephant, and we were pleased with what we interpreted to be a Tufts shout-out.

We enjoyed dinner at a restaurant just outside our hotel – and got cod again! We stopped for some delicious coconut gelato while walking around, and then ending up running into the girls from our hostel again. They were on their way to go get drinks with some other people from the hostel, so we joined them, and headed to the barrio alto, which is basically the party area of town. We were once again impressed by how cheap everything is in Lisbon and enjoyed experiencing the very lively nightlife there! It was incredible how many people were out in the street (especially for a Wednesday), and it was fun because once you got your drink you could just go stand in the street (which are all pedestrian streets) with it, which made the bars not so crowded and was great since it was such a nice night!

Jumbo Grocery Store!

On Thursday we got up and headed to the a little beach town called Cascais – about a half hour train ride from Lisbon. Just as we were pulling into the city, and should have been looking at the beach, we spotted a huge sign that said “Jumbo” with an elephant under it. Naturally, we just had to check it out, and discovered that it was an enormous grocery store so we got ourselves a picnic there. We got a few funny looks for our delighted cries when we saw the name of the store, and for the amount of pictures we took, but what can you do – it’s all in the name of Tufts spirit!

A beautiful house we found walking around Cascais

After our picnic, we enjoyed walking along the beach and throughout the town. I think I may have tired out my friend a little because I always wanted to see what was just along the next street. I can’t help it – I love the tiled roads and the adorable little houses. I think it was worth it, though, because we got to see a lot of the little town and came across some really cute little houses and streets.

The very ornate church by our hostel

By late afternoon we were worn out so after stopping for a diet coke, we headed back to the city on the train. On our way back to the hostel, we stopped in a little church that we had heard was very ornately decorated. It was actually incredible, though you would never know it from the outside, and we sat and enjoyed the splendor for a little while before walking back to our hostel to shower and get ready for dinner. We didn’t do anything too exciting that night – found a little vegetarian restaurant that smelled amazing and then took a long way home before getting to bed fairly early because of our morning flight the next day.

The beach in Cascais

We got up around 5AM on Friday to get our flight back to Paris, where my friend met up with her parents, and I was able to get a little work done, rest and do laundry before setting out on my next adventure to the South of France.

Overall I loved my time in Lisbon and Madrid, and would love to return to both places as well as maybe Barcelona and other cities in Spain. However, I have realized how limiting it is not to be able to speak the language where you are traveling. I may not have perfect French, but I do love feeling confident in my ability to ask questions, order food, and generally function as a member of the French community. You can certainly get around in other countries, and there is no lack of people who will speak English to you, but traveling to Spain and Portugal made me realize just how much I enjoy being able to talk to people in their own language. Unfortunately for me now, that means I better get going on language classes since French is not exactly the most popularly spoken language!

And now for the jumble of photos that would not fit in the actual post: