Study Abroad
Day 20
February 6th, 2006
2:33 PM

The Portugal trip was Danielle’s idea, since it was her official Birthday Weekend (as if I didn’t want to go…) We spent all day Thursday scrambling to get ourselves together for the trip. We went to pick up our “Carnet Joven” which is a card that supposedly will get us discounts on transportation. While the others were in class I finally went over to the biblioteca in the Alcazar to get me a library card. I also discovered that the hotel where my family is staying over break is right across the street.

We did our best to get down to the train station as soon as Amy and Danielle were done with their business class, but we still had to sprint up and down Toledo’s hills to make it in time. We took the train into Madrid’s Atocha station, hopped the “Cercanias” train to Chamartin, Madrid’s other station (where I embarrassed myself trying to talk to a random guy who was reading Harry Potter), then got in line to buy our tickets for Lisbon. The bitches had no interest in our newly acquired “Carnet Joven” and there was no discount to be had.

The train didn’t leave for a couple of hours so we settled in for some quality train station dinner. Actually, it was quality. We had some bocadillos (sandwiches) filled with jamon y queso and tortilla Espanola. Oh, and a bag of what I have dubbed “crack Cheetos” because of the crazy addiction I have developed to them. We sat down on the overnight train at 10:45 in four seats facing each other, just giddy enough to disturb the other passengers.

The ride to Lisbon was about 10 hours, and let me tell you, sleep was tough to come by. One magical moment was when I woke up with Robin’s feet stretched across the aisle—into my mouth. ‘Twas gross. In the end my strategy was to give my seat to Amy’s feet and curl up in a ball on the floor. I slept a little.

We pulled into Lisbon’s Santa Apolonia’s station at a little after 8 (we discovered a time difference between Madrid and Lisbon that caused me to have to do even more math whenever I looked at my watch). We followed the directions the hostel gave us to get on a certain bus and ride it…where? Through luck, good eyes and Amy’s amazing sense of direction, we were able to hop off at Rossio. We’d read in the guidebook that pastry shops are to Portugal what tapas bars are to Spain, so we walked into the nearest one. We ordered some flaky pastries and some tasteless papaya juice and asked directions to our hostel, which turned out to be right around the corner. Our room wasn’t ready yet, but we left our bags at the desk and set out.

We picked up a 3 day transportation pass, which turned out to be an excellent idea. We hopped on the Metro and took it out to the end of the line. We wandered the mall a little then walked outside to discover the ocean. Right there. We hiked up and down the waterfront for awhile and found our destination: the Aquarium. It was a brilliant idea to go there, because we all either really like fishies, are quietly obsessed with “Finding Nemo” or both. We wandered around for a few hours, looking at scary huge rays and sharks, glowing jellyfish, cute otters and penguins and the Portuguese schoolchildren looking at them all. It was awesome. If you’re ever in Lisbon, that is the place to go.

We walked down to a little restaurant for lunch, where we quickly discovered that in Portugal, English serves us much better than our made-up Portuguese. Seriously, you think you have it down because Spanish and Portuguese are so similar, but you don’t. You just sound like a moron. In fact, it was brought to light that the only Portuguese any of us knew was from “Love Actually” and it didn’t work well to wander around beginning sentences with “Bonita Aurelia…” Though, I won’t say we didn’t learn anything over the weekend. We learned that “thank you” is “obrigado.” We learned that words that in Spanish end in “-cion” in Portuguese end in “çao.” Yeah, that’s basically it.

By the time we picked up some food at the grocery store, we were quite sleepy, and headed back to Hotel Internacional for a nap. We got up ready for more “crack Cheetos,” which we consumed. We watched some CNN (which gave me nightmares), “Who Wants To Be A Millionare?” in German (that makes 3 languages I’ve seen it in) and a creepy Portuguese cartoon which none of us could understand before we went out to find some dinner. A day at the aquarium had made us all (counter intuitively) hungry for seafood, so we searched for a place to have some of that. In the place we chose, we discovered another truth about Portugal—they love the Police and Phil Collins. They played the latter’s concert video over and over again during our dinner, which consisted of seafood, but seafood with a lot of eyes and other parts still intact. It was good, but kind of a panicked eating experience. I am trying to try new things.

Sleep was necessary after dinner, but we woke up nice and early for our continental breakfast, which was FANTASTIC. Yogurt and bread and jam and cocoa and tea and ham and cheese to steal sandwiches for lunch. We packed up afterward for our hike up to the Castilo de São Jorge. And it was quite a hike—up, up, up. Finally we spotted the ocean again and knew it had to be close. We went in and had a great afternoon in the sunshine, running around the castle, snapping pictures. We ate our lunch and ice cream in the big courtyard with the pigeons and Portuguese cub scouts.

We decided to take the tram back, which was a good time. They’re a lot like the trolleys in San Francisco, and they zip around like roller coasters up and down Lisbon’s hills. We stayed on past our stop so we could ride all around the city. We got off at the end of the line to do a little shopping, the got back on and went back to the hotel. It was naptime when we got back, followed by snacktime. Then we all got ready to go out. Amy did eye makeup again, and I got to wear my magazine shirt.

Wait, let me explain that. The amazing thing about Spanish magazines (at least at the moment) is that they all come with some sort of prize. Robin and I wandered the newsstand and discovered that an entire (albeit weird) outfit could be assembled with the magazine freebies. And yes, I did buy Marie Claire in Spanish just for the shirt.

Anyway, so on the advice of the desk guy at our hotel, we took a cab down to “The Docks” where they have good bars/clubs. We had dinner first at the Irish pub (tuna sandwiches—quite tasty). Then we walked up and down and decided on a club called Havana. As we’re still not used to the European routine, we were early. But we hung out for awhile listening to the music before people started filing in. And I’ll tell you, I still don’t like the song “My Humps.” I just don’t. We danced for awhile, but Amy and Danielle, who are still getting over colds, needed their rest--so we headed back.

Sunday was, well, the best day ever. Brilliant Amy suggested we take the train up the coast to Cascais and hit the beach. Obviously, it’s not summer yet, even over here. But the fact that we were able to peel off our jackets, kick off our shoes and run around on the warm sandy beach on February 5th was pretty awesome. We got nice and pink and sandy, ate ice cream, I made a sand castle, Amy jumped in the ice cold ocean with Jay, a Portuguese guy who came over to practice his English. We walked up and down the beaches, watching all the babies and puppies running around. It was a perfect day.

We finally got our quality (faceless) seafood Sunday afternoon in a little restaurant right on the beach. We had grilled halibut and garlic shrimp. Amy and I ordered a big mango for dessert. We were sad to have to get back on the train to go home. The overnight train home was similar to the first—me curled up on the floor and little sleep.

The problem occurred when the train arrived over an hour late into Madrid on Monday morning. We were supposed to arrive in time to hop on the AVE train to Toledo and be back at the Fund in time for my 10:15 class. Instead, we got into Madrid Chamartin at 9:30, had to beg to have them change our AVE tickets to 10:20, which they said we’d surely make—a statement that we discovered (after a sprint across two train stations) was entirely false. We begged to have them change our tickets again, they obliged, but we didn’t actually walk into the doors of the Fund until almost 1:30.

All in all, it was a lovely birthday weekend in Portugal for Danielle, even if it did get a little ridiculous at the end there. Now we have to gear up for another week of school. Sigh.