Lisbon

OK, so Lisbon is my favourite city now. I dont know if it was because it is really beautiful, has lots to do or if it was just because I had the best time here.

I left Lagos early in Portugal so I came here on my own leaving fedda there to meet later in the week. Lagos was just not my cup of tea.

When i got here i met two blokes from the UK, Matt and WIll. We got along really well and went on the free tour together. On the tour i met Yvonne from Boston who was just a really nice girl and she tagged along with us. We also met some canadian girls who joined the team as well. After the tour we all decided to all go to Bellum which is a famous part of Lisbon.

Bellum was great, it has a very famous patissery there that sells a very unique custard pasty. Legend has it, only three people know the recipe so it cannot be stolen... It is an incredible treat, you put a packet of icing sugar and cinnamin on top of it. World class. It was 36 degree so i got a bit burnt and the heat really wore us out because we did a lot of walking to look at all the statues and castles.

That night we realised Lisbon was celebrating the 'ocean festival' and in the plaza next to us was a huge free concert with Joss Stone. So we walked over there and the crowd would have been 10,000 people or more. It was such a fluke but we were stoked to see a bit of it.

The next day we planned to go to the Sintra which is a day trip out of town (about 40 mins by train) the sintra is full of palaces and fascinating history and apparently a must see when in Lisbon.

So that day Matt, Will, Yvonne and I went to the Sintra, we also picked up Gloria from Australia who wanted to see it too and Aisha from Las Vegas. A really old german guy named Micheal some how tagged along too which was a bit awkward cos he hardly spoke the whole time - but he had an amazing camera so it was handy to have him take all the snaps for us.

The weather was perfect and the SIntra was unbelivable. This is as beautiful as the Cinque Terre if not better. It is basically a huge mountain with epic palaces and gardens all over it. We went to one palace and the garden was so huge. This was not you normal garden, it was full of waterfalls, tunnels, secret doors, lakes. You could just explore all day, and that's what we did. You would go down a tunnel and find another darker tunnel within it, all day we would say 'ooh lets go down this one'.

Fedda arrived this day from Lagos and was completely sick. He had the flu and cold sores on his lips - that's what you get for staying in dirty Lagos! So I continued to hang out with the guys while fedda got better.

I found a hairdresser to cut my hair fairly cheap(not super cheap - ive learnt my lesson - its not worth saving cash on haircuts). Anyway, he ended up being the worlds best hairdresser in 2006 and 2007. He was a Brazlian guy who just opened up a new salon. Was a good haircut too. We had done Lady Gaga's hair once. And i know it sounds bulls*** but its fully legit.

Lisbon has great nightlife, the area called Baixta-Chaida is about 6 blocks and its is full of little bars. We did a pubcrawl in there to show us the best places and we had some great nights there.

I really liked lisbon, having a chance to shop, get myself organised and recharged the batteries. If I ever get a chance in my life to get back to the SIntra i will be a happy man!

I spent a solid 6 nights here and was not bored for a second. When fedda got slightly better we bought our bus to Porto.

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