Because my Spanish course had ended and I still had 10 days before my classes started, I decided to go to Portugal for a few days to take advantage of the good weather. I asked some friends if they wanted to come and ended with a group of four including Luisa from Mexico and Paul and Anna from the Netherlands.
We met to look at flights and found a really good deal, so we booked a 5-day-trip which brought us to Lisbon first for three days and then to Porto for two. Our first flight was early on a Thursday and when my alarm rang to wake me up at 7 AM I was completely lost at first, as I’m not used to getting up in the morning any more. At first I had forgotten what time it is and where I am and why in the world I would wake up if it’s still dark outside. Then it slowly came back to me, I got super excited and got ready. At the metro station I met with my little travel group and we went to the airport together. As we only had hand luggage everything went super quick and I felt sooo cosmopolitan flying with my boarding pass on my phone for the first time!
At 10 AM we safely landed in Lisbon and went to our hostel first. When we got to the street we first passed it, cause there was no sign or anything outside. As it turned out our hostel was located in a pretty big flat on the second floor of an apartment building. They had a total of two rooms with each having six beds and it was really nice. You felt like you were at home, not at a crowded hostel where people come and go all the time. If you wanna spent a night there, look for “We love hostel Lisbon” and I’m sure you’ll find it. After leaving our things at the reception (it was too early for check-in) we decided to go to Baixa, one neighborhood of Lisbon to get some lunch. We found a nice place where we could sit outside and watch people. After sitting there for some 10 minutes a guy came up to us and asked if we wanted to buy some hashish as he had some really good stuff. When we didn’t respond he asked whether we had some cocaine for a trade-off. I started joking and said I had the best cocaine in town and he took it quite seriously and kept asking about it. Finally, Paul shooed him away and he left telling us to fuck ourselves. Very friendly…
After lunch we started walking towards Alfama, another part of Lisbon where we joined a free walking tour. The concept is easy: the tours are theoretically free, but you tip the guide in the end, so that’s how he makes his money. We did ours with a company called “Discover Walks Lisbon” which was really nice. Our guide was a Portuguese student and I’m not sure if they haven’t existed for long or aren’t popular, but our group was very small as there was just one other person besides us. It was perfect, because we could talk a lot to the guide and ask lots of questions. Also we didn’t lose time waiting for people like it happens with a big group. Our guide even gave us some tips on where to go out at night and knew many interesting facts about his city. I would definitely recommend this tour as you will probably get lost walking through Alfama on your own and miss some of the nice places. For example the little apartment where an older lady was selling Ginja, the famous Portuguese cherry liquor, out of her apartment window. If you stay longer in Lisbon it’s probably fun to get lost as you will always discover new places, but if you’re there only for a short period, a guided tour is better.
When we returned to the hostel after the walk, we were all pretty tired, so we decided to take a nap. Before coming to Lisbon I wrote to a girl I know here and we met up with her in the evening. I had met Judita because of a student organization I worked for and she told me that after doing her Erasmus exchange in Lisbon, she fell in love with the city and decided to go back. First we walked to her favorite Miradouro, a viewing point which offered some amazing views over a big part of the city. Afterwards we went to a Chinese restaurant known only by locals. From the outside there was no sign whatsoever indicating a restaurant could be found inside. However, once we walked in and up to the second floor there was a huge room filled with tables at which young Portuguese people were cheerfully chatting. We sat down at a table and Judita ordered a bunch of food as we didn’t understand any Portuguese anyways and didn’t know what to order. When it came to drinks, the white sangria caught our eye and no one knew what it was. But we decided that since we are in a Chinese restaurant in Lisbon, we might as well go for some white sangria. It is just white wine with some citrus fruits and pineapples and tastes quite good. Also the food we got was amazing. Anna and Paul had to learn how to use chopsticks first, as they had never really used them before, so it was a lot more effort for them to eat the food. I was trained after my 3-week-trip to Korea, as there I had to eat absolutely everything besides soup with chopstick and had learned to do it properly.
After leaving the restaurant, Judita invited us for some Ginja at a hole in the wall bar which seemed to be known though, as the owner had put up a lot of photos of himself with people (maybe famous?) spending time in his bar. The next stop was another bar we would have never found without her, but unfortunately they were closing, so we had to leave and find another place. We ended up at “Primeiro Andar”, a really cool but also a little crazy place. You had to enter it through a basketball court and then got into a room with a lot of sofas and chairs, giving it a very living room looking touch. There was a DJ there playing songs and people just hung out. You got the feeling like you just walked in into a sit-in with friends. We stayed there until we got tired and decided to end our first long day in Lisbon.
weltenbummlerinjoanna 