LISBON PART II

After our private tour of Portugal, we wanted to find a restaurant where we could try some traditional Portuguese food. We asked Carla, but when she talked to the attendant at the hotel he only gave a name of a really expensive restaurant. We passed on paying for the nice restaurant and practically everyone in our group got pizza delivered from the Pizza Hut right down the street. Who would have thought Pizza in Portugal! The pizza tasted just like America, which was what we were all craving. After dinner a bunch of us went out the docas, where everyone had been last night. I think we ended up at a gay bar because there were so many really attractive men that were dancing with each other. It was kind of funny because we got stared down when we came into the club but all these men were just interested in other men. In the bar we did meet a bunch of Greek wrestlers, who were in Lisbon for an international wrestling tournament. We also met this sketch ball guy who was doing magic tricks. At one point he pulled a rubber rabbit from under his coat. I decided to avoid any more rabbit tricks. This guy was really weird. I left with some girls around 3 and took a cab back to our hotel. Some the party party girls in our group decided to go out to another club with a 15 euro cover change. They ended up meeting two Portuguese men and not coming back till 10 the next morning. They must have forgotten about that girl in Aruba that went off with two men and ended up dead. I am glad they returned safely, but I hope they don’t do it again.

The next morning we thought we had to be on the bus at 12 with all of our stuff. However, Antonio changed his mind with out telling us and brought the bus around at 11. Nobody was prepared so Antonio called each of our rooms and told us to hurry up. After everyone was on the bus, Antonio dropped us off downtown. He us told we needed to be back at the bus at 3:30 and he would be parked in a park just up the street. My friend Ashley thought she left her phone at the club we were at last night, so I offered to go with her and find it. We jumped in a cab and headed back toward the docas only to be disappointed because there was no sign of her phone. We did get to see what the club looked like the morning after, not exactly a pretty picture. We wandered around the deserted docks for a little bit trying to find a cab. Eventually after finding the main street we hailed a cab that took us back to the center of town. When we got there I showed Ashley some of the stuff Carla had shown me the night before. We went up on the tower elevator thing where you could see the entire city. I took some really good pictures from up here. It was really beautiful because you could even see a castle in the background. We had lunch at some little café in the main plaza. It was really cute and it was wonderful that our waiter could speak Spanish and English because Portuguese may look like Spanish but it sure does not sound like it. While we ate lunch we had the pleasure of several street venders and beggars coming up to us asking for money or trying to sell us some pointless trinket. One guy came up to us with some toy zebras. After telling him no several times he started pulling out other toy animals. Eventually he left after we practically screamed at him. We walked back to the bus after this only to find Antonio and the bus missing. Antonio eventually got there, but he did not park where he said he was going to be. Everyone slept on the bus ride back, because we were all exhausted from our wonderful weekend in Lisbon.

I really love taking the excursions everywhere. It was interesting to see how differently people live in other countries. Lisbon really reminded me of San Francisco. There was a red bridge over the bay that was almost identical to the Golden Gate Bridge. Also the building had the same pastel colors and tile roofs, like in San Fran. The were also a lot of homeless people, which we have not really had exposure to since we have been in Europe. Overall the city was impeccably clean. I hardly saw any trash or trash cans anywhere.