Portugal - "It was.. interesting." :)

Belem Tower

HI!! :) Okay, I know it's been about a million years since I have updated. Sorry! :( I have been so busy and it is so easy to forget to blog.. and then when you realize you have like 5 trips to blog about, it takes courage to sit down and do that, haha. But, here I go!

So.. Portugal. Like the title says, it was interesting. It wasn't exactly what we had expected. To be honest.. it really wasn't as great as we expected. BUT.. I think that is because Ireland and Barcelona are really difficult trips to follow, because they were so incredible. It was still a good trip, all in all.

We arrived n Portugal early Friday morning, checked into the hotel and left our bags there to start our day of travel. The first thing we did was visit the Lisbon Aquarium. It was so big! But, surprise surprise, it was under construction. It was still really cool though. There were so many fish, and penguins, and otters, and sharks and everything! :) It was awesome. After the aquarium, it was time for lunch. We went to the Lisbon HardRock Cafe. It was sooooooo nice because we got to have burgers and shakes. A REAL AMERICAN MEAL! It was yummy. After lunch, we headed out to meet for our walking tour. However, unfortunately, we found out that you actually had to have a reservation lined up for this tour. We had never run into that problem before, so it was a little unexpected. But, we made the best of it. We decided to walk up to the look-out point at the top of the city. It was nice.. not nearly as nice as Barcelona.. but still nice. We continued on to try and find a beach, as Lisbon is a coastal city.. or at least we thought it was. We spent about 2 to 3 hours walking aimlessly trying to find sand. Finally.. we found what looked like a patch of sand! We walked excited to it.. only to find out that it was concrete!!!!! It was concrete next to the RIVER. Apparently the coastal part of Portugal is about 10 miles up from Lisbon.. NOT where we were. Oh well.. at least we didn't throw off our shoes and start running to it! Haha. :) After all the walking and the little success (it was pretty much a fail of a day), we decided it was time to head back to the hotel. We got in and reception gave us the keys to our room. We walked up and opened the door with the key... AND THERE WERE PEOPLE IN THE ROOM! The room was alread occupied. Talk about an awkward moment!! Hahahaha! :) We said sorry and quickly closed the door. We walked to the elevator and started cracking up. We couldn't stop laughing. Reception apologized for the mistake and gave us the correct room. We slept well that night after such a long day.

Saturday was a relaxing day. We woke up around 10 and decided to do a hop-on, hop-off bus tour to see the city. It was nice to be able to sit down and hear the history behind everything we wanted to see. We got to take a look at the major historical attractions, of which I have pictures on Facebook. By the time we finished the bus tour, it was raining. We did some quick souvenir shopping to get our trinkets and then had dinner at a nice Italian place. I had a delicious carbonera pasta. Yummy. :) Since it was still raining pretty hard.. we headed back to the hotel to call it a night. We had to get REALLY early for our flight home on Sunday.

It was nice to see Portugal, because it's very different than the other cities we have been to. But, if I ever were to go back.. I don't think I would go to Lisbon. I hear the countryside is beautiful. :)