I knew within an hour of setting foot in Lisbon that I was going to love it. Weird, but my mood changed from melancholy to overwhelming happiness and contentment. The vibe here is amazing. Nothing feels rushed; the town shows it's age but embraces it in a perfect way. I love watching the hundreds of engineers fix the cobblestone sidewalks with sand and piles or misshapen rock, and use buckets and rope pulleys to transport materials to a second story window, with both men singing the whole time.

The weather here is unbelievably beautiful with every day being 75 to 80 with blue skies. We both got a little sunburned on our 4 mile walk along the waterfront to the nearby neighborhood of Belem. We enjoyed an .80 euro beer at a waterfront happy hour to rest our feet before trucking it back to the hostel up some serious hills.

Portuguese is definitely the primary language here and much fewer people speak English. I've learned that obrigado is thank you, which is probably the most important thing for me to know. After that, there's always the pointing method and the attempt to pronounce whatever is written on the label.

Our hostel is super sweet with a full kitchen, patio, friendly and relaxed staff and it always feel like we're the only ones here, which is nice after being in dorms all the time. The radio is always on as well and I'm currently listening to some old school Pink. Fabulous. I got excited last night and was going to watch Curious George on dvd but I quickly realized it was dubbed in Portuguese...just not quite the same!

So I've been struggling with random and obnoxious bug bites since Paris and I've been trying to determine the cause. I even went to the pharmacy here in Lisbon and communicated enough to purchase insect repellent, which I immediately put on. But when bites show up on your face, arms, place wheres you've been weraing clothing, and you haven't seen a mosquito in days, you start to wonder. So...this morning the fabulous hostel owner checked in on my status, I'd asked her what insect repellent was in Portuguese, and she looked at my arm and said pretty definitively that they were bed bugs. Lovely. I figured I might be best off to ditch my sleep sack and pillow since I feel like after Paris, I'm just carting them around with me all across Europe. Good thing is my pack will be a little lighter with more room for a few souvenirs, and hopefully my body will recuperate from the huge welt like bites I've got going on. Jessie has escaped these fun trials of traveling some how so I figure the sleep sack and pillow have to go to try and even out my chances.

Nevertheless, this place has still got me in the highest of spirits! We saw fado singers last night and I drank quite a large portion of wine which made the walk home up the huge hills quite entertaining. Fado is a traditional type of music and the men and women had some serious vocal chords! More melancholy at times and no particular base line or chorus to follow, but we felt very cultured!

As today is our last day, we're planning to head to Cascais, a nearby beach town, to relax in the sun and check out the restaurants there. We hit the train station again tonight for an overnight train to Madrid, with a connection to Granada at some point tomorrow.