Zac and I split from the other three for the first time since joining them some 48 days ago, finding ourselves in the midst of a foggy morning in Lisbon, Portugal, while they headed further north to Porto.
Lisbon was our only city in Portugal, so we made sure to make our three days there wild yet concertedly efficient, while 55 cent espressos gave us the extra energy needed to pull through.
We stayed in the old city, perched atop a hill which we climbed sometimes by foot, other times by what we called the 'space elevator' a sort of room on tracks that does the climbing for you, taking you through a path smothered with awesome graffiti and street art, much to Zac's delight. The old city was the scene for a messy night or two, because although it seems abandoned in the day, at night there is a bar every two metres selling cheap giant cocktails in sizes large through to extra extra extra large. Too much liquid.. I managed to find some great live jazz too which makes a successful night for me.
Our hostel was an interesting conglomerate of modern and dilapidated, with both a rustic ancient foyer and a huge plasma screen tv, with both creaky wooden floorboards and a thumbprint sensor which allowed us to gain entry at all hours. On a side note, but an important note nonetheless, it featured all the walnuts you can eat, for free! If only we could crack the shells... Our hostel was also apparently fat-people-proof, with a front door that we had to turn sideways to slip through.
Until Steve, Gavin and Arryn joined us on our last night we mingled with the other boarders. On the first day in fact a tall, tattooed girl with a shaven head, gangster jeans and big black boots joined us for lunch, during which she told us that on her holiday from her business consulting job in Canada she beat up two British girls who tried to rob her in London with a pair of switchblades. "You need a lot more than a knife if you want to rob me", she said, as we were silently thankful she'd have our back in a barfight. During the same lunch we learned an important lesson about dining in Portugal: Don't touch anything that seems complimentary. At the end of our meal our bill had swollen to almost double what we expected. We had been charged for bread and cheese, for butter and cured meats, all of which were given to us without being ordered. Each single packaged pat of butter set us back one Euro.
We took an intimate walking tour, which was interesting enough, trying the Portuguese drink Ginja which is like port but made from cherries. We took a day trip to Sintra to see a castle in a enchanted forest. The highlight for me was befriending a black swan which was surprisingly smart and a fun guy to hang out with.
We also beached and did other stuff like that but the highlight of Portugal was the people we met. There was Dmitri the friendly Serbian, Voytek the eccentric Polish dj and his friend who spent a solid hour exchanging names of musicians with us, and the pack of 8 Parisian girls who invited us to replace two of their friends at an apartment they booked in Madrid. They offered us a good location, cheap price and the exact same nights we planned to stay there, so it seems meant to be. It might turn out to be a shack outside of town, but I suppose we'll find that out tomorrow.
Oh I almost forgot the chicken, the reason we came to Portugal. We made peri-peri chicken most nights, the last night I polished off well over 750 grams of the stuff, all with a big smile on my face. Having done that I'm ready to move on to Spain, where hopefully the French girls we're staying with will cook French cuisine for us. My plan is to cook the first night and do a really bad job of it so they volunteer to take over. Maybe we can even get them to do our washing.
Aidan out!