ESN trip to Lisboa (Lisbon), Portugal- 5-8th December

Hola Teresa y la clase de 9C de Onslow St Audreys,
I am very sorry for the lateness of this post. I have been very busy and I have had exams in January which I have only just finished. I hope you have all been well and that you have received the Christmas card that I sent. Before Christmas I visited Lisbon (Lisboa in Spanish) for 4 days as I had 2 days of bank holidays off. This is my experience of Lisbon whilst I was there.

Day 1 in Lisbon:

On the first day I was absolutely exhausted as I had to get up at 2 am in order to leave Valladolid at 3am for Lisbon! Once we arrived at Lisbon at just after 10:00 we had a city tour of Alfama, Castelo and Miradores. In Castelo we went inside the famous monument of 'Castelo de S. Jorge' which I have attached some photos of below:

Castelo de S. Jorge

Castelo de S. Jorge

The 'Castelo de S. Jorge Monumental Nacional' reminded me of 'Las Murallas' in Avila but it was a much smaller version of it. Later we had a city tour around the centre of Lisbon which was amazing and we had our own personal guide who luckily for me did not speak Spanish so the entire tour was in English! I have never been so grateful to be English! He told us about the history of Lisbon and how it used to have a canal through the middle and how Portugal became separate from Spain.
The tour around the centre of Lisbon was absolutely amazing and I have attached some photos below so you can see for yourself. I am also going to send a postcard that I bought from Lisbon which you will get to see in the New Year (because I will not be able to do any trips in the New Year to start with as I have exams for the first three weeks of January :() .

I have also attached below some photos of the beautiful photos of the lovely Christmas decorations in Lisbon in the streets-my favourite is the giant lit-up present which I have also taken a photo of me and my friends with.

Me and my friends in Lisbon

We were unable to find anyway to eat as it was our first night here and we did not know where was nice to eat and lots of the restaurants in the centre were very expensive so we ate at McDonalds. Later that same night we went out for the first 'fiesta' in Lisbon and I had a really great time. It was good because in the nightclub it was just all of the Erasmus students from Valladolid. 

Day 2 in Lisbon

On my second day in Lisbon we went on a day trip to Sintras. We visited the Quinta da Regaleira in Sintras. It was really beautiful and I have attached some photos of it below:

Quinta da Regaleira, Sintra, Lisboa, Portugal.

Quinta da Regaleira, Lisboa.

Quinta da Regaleira, Lisboa

. After we had lunch we had to head back to the coach to our next destination which was 'Cabo da Roca', also known as 'El fin del mundo' (the end of the world!). It is famous because it is supposed to be the most western part of the world. In 'Cabo da Roco' the weather was really windy and for this reason I do not have many photos of myself as I got very windswept!!  I have however attached a photo of it below:

We returned to the main centre of Lisbon (Lisboa in Spanish) and that night we had a typical portuguese dinner. This portuguese dinner included black beans with rice, a seafood dish (with prawns) also with rice and a dish with chicken in a champagne sauce which I liked very much. The last dish though was after the other dishes so by the time it came to this third dish I could not eat as much of it as I would have liked to. In the evening we went to a different nightclub than the first night which had no just the Erasmus students from Valladolid but also Erasmus students studying in other parts of Spain.

Day 3:

 Firstly we visited the Cristo Rei statue in Almada in Portugal for a day trip. It was a very nice sunny day-it was not particularly warm but it was not freezing like when I went to see the Cabo da Roca. I have attached some photos of it below:

This last photo is of the view from the Cristo Rei. 

We then we dropped off by the coach to Belem. In Belem I tried one of the speciality pastries of Belem which was called a ‘Pastéis de Belém’. It consisted of pastry with vanilla custard inside that had been baked in the oven and looked something like this:

Afterwards we had free time to explore Belem and get lunch. I went with my Italian friend to find a restaurant as the other people with us wanted to do McDonald’s again and we did not. It took us quite a while to find somewhere and on the way we met some Italians that my friend knew and so we all ended up eating together at this Portuguese restaurant having white wine. I ordered a steak which was very nice but the food took ages to come and so we were all late to the meeting point which was the Jeronimos monastery. It was fine though because all we missed was the ESN giving people another Portuguese delicacy to try and we were able to go into the monastery together. However everyone had to wait until we could be let in as the monastery had set times for visitors.  I have attached a photo of Jeronimos monastery below:

I have attached some photos of Belem so you can see what it looked like. As you can it was beautiful. The weather was really cold as it was December but I enjoyed my visit to Belem.

Finally we ended the day at Belem and returned back to the hotel.

Day 4:

On the last day we had to pack up our suitcases which we had to put in the bus and we had one final walk around the main city of Lisbon where we saw the Catedral which looked like this:

Later we had to return to pick up the bus. However we had problems getting the bus as there was a marathon going on so we could not meet it where we had met it earlier so had to walk a little bit to another place to get on the bus. We made one final day trip where we visited Cascais which was a beautiful place in Portugal by the sea. It was by far my favourite place that we visited during this trip to Lisbon, Portugal. In Cascais we had free time to do whatever we wanted. We went to go and find somewhere to eat and me, Thaisa (Brazilian girl) and Marina (who was Italian) found a lovely restaurant called Flamingo Cafe which had lots of choice of food to eat. I have attached some photos of what I saw in Cascais because it was very beautiful. I had a burger which was very delicious and my friend had a typical Portuguese dish which I tried a little of and absolutely loved (unfortunately I cannot remember the name of it though). We finished our food and made our way back to the bus. However we were a little late back to the bus because Thaisa kept stopping to take some final photos of Cascais. Overall I had a really good time in Lisbon and I would definitely come again in the Summer when the weather is warmer. I'll leave you with some photos of Cascais and two Portuguese phrases that my Brazilian friend taught me. The first is 'Obrigada' and means thank you; the other is 'A conto por favor' which means the bill please. 

Tomorrow me and my Italian friend Marina are planning to visit Burgos and possibly Leon as well so my next post will probably be able this trip with my friend. Unfortunately Marina is going back to Venice next week-that's why she is doing so many final day trips. Therefore I will not see her next semester. Next week I do not have lessons as it is a week of Matriculation for the Spanish students at the University. Therefore my family decided they would come and visit me next Wednesday until Saturday morning in Valladolid. I hope to do a bit of sightseeing next week around Valladolid and possibly visit either Penafiel or Salamanca whilst they are here. 

Hope you are all well and that you have had a happy new year.
Adiós para ahora y hasta en aproximadamente dos semanas,

Becky