Freedom!!! well Lisbon! I was free. I was out of the old father country and off to warmer weather. I had heard soo much about how good Portugal was from Elaina so I had to check it out on the way out. I also looked at flights from London direct to new York and I found through a little bit of research that for the same price I could fly from London to Lisbon to Toronto and then bus to New York and it would be about the same price. As long as I had the time then it was always going to be a better deal, and this way I can add lisbon and toronto to my list.
The flight to Lisbon was fine and even making my way into the city via the airport shuttle was quite simple. The hard part was getting from the drop off to the hostel. Lisbon is quite a hilly city and the shuttle dropped me off near the ocean. I managed to find a local map / sign and roughly figured out where the hostel was and the only conclusion I came to was that it was up hill :(
After half an hour of walking in the warm Portuguese sun with my pack and up hill I finally found the hostel :) and to celebrate I needed a beer and some food. The first thing I did when I arrived was have a small nap before heading out to a quiet bar over looking the city. I stopped in and got a coffee and beer and a toasted sandwich of some sort while chilling out and watching the people enjoying the sunset. I remember looking across and seeing Ethan Cruz and Erika Reyes and picking that they were filo. Turns out there were staying in my hostel and we ended up enjoying many drinks later as well as a nice day at the beach.
I went back and into the main room of the hostel which was in a separate building to my room and they were preparing to watch the Euro semi final between Germany and Italy. I sat down next to an American guy named Zach who had just finished the Camino de Santiago walk, from southern France to the cathedral in Spain. He had come over to Lisbon to relax for a week after the long walk. Turns out I'm a really bad influence and proceeded to encourage him to get really drunk with me, Great times :) The hostel had these pub crawls which is a bit different to other hostels I had stayed at which basically means that you pre-drink at the hostel with some cheaply bought booze from a local take away shop. You then proceed onto a local bar where for an hour you get unlimited beer and rounds of shots that range from tequila shots to some poor mans version of a cocktail lollipop water shot that tastes ridiculously bad, but hey it gets you drunk. Then onto another bar where your drunken self spends heaps of cash on beer and dance the night away to bad music.
This seemed like the think to do so rinse and repeat 3 times in a row pretty much sums up the Lisbon experience. Yeah there were a fair amount of cultural experiences too, like hanging out with Chef Leon from melbourne who I went on a epic walk around the city with, saw some nice churches and found by pure luck the best lookout in the town. Walked all around, up and down the tight winding streets and then back to the hostel for some "quiet drinks",
The last day was quite cultural where a bunch of us including Zach, the Ethan and Erica, and a bunch of swedish guys headed out to Belem and went to the award winning pastry shop Pasteis de Belem and got a coffee (Starbucks) and Portuguese Custard Tart then had a most freezing swim on the beach then back for more drinks. The last night involved pre-drinks but there was no pub crawl because it was the last day of June and there was a fiesta on called the "Saints of Lisbon" where every suburb would have a street party in competition with each other and to celebrate their local saints.
Other notable memories include the 3 Australian girls who were quite entertaining and the douche-bag from California who claimed to have 6 years of a Medical degree. I've never really met a guy who every single person unanimously disliked. According to him Zach was not the ideal weight. Ha!
I tried to finish off the night early and get back to pack so I could get to my 6am!!! flight but I got lost in the streets and ended up at a street party. Oh well cant fight destiny.
Song: Not original music of my creation.
"Danza Kuduro" by "Lucenzo feat Don Omar"
please purchase if you enjoy it.
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