Thursday night I met a group of American college students that are doing basically a semester abroad program and Portugal was their first country on their multi country trip. There was about 20 students in total and there was a small group that I really connected with. The next day they were going to be going to Belém to have pastries and tour around the area and I was invited to join them. We enjoyed a nice breakfast of pasteis de Belém and coffee. Afterwards a group of us broke off and I became the tour guide of the water front for my small group of four students. Most tour guides in Portugal have some kind of random thing that they hold up in the air so that their group can follow them, usually an umbrella, fan, or fake flower. So, in tour guide fashion I had a starbucks bag, because I had bought a togo cup, that I walked around the water front holding it above my head whenever we were going to be continuing on in the journey or when we were passing another group.
I took my group to the important monuments such as the Navigator monument and the tower of Belém. Because I had been to both locations before and have done some research on the monuments I was able to give cool facts like the Navigator has one female on the monument and the tower was actually built by Muslims and was used as a jail that held people like the King of Spain. It was really fun and I had a great time showing the group different things that I had learned about since being here in Portugal. I love it when you are given the opportunity to help other people and by doing so you realize just how much you have learned from the trip.
After we walked the water front we rejoined most of the group for lunch at a restaurant. Many restaurants have a huge outdoor seating area where you sit and eat your lunch, so we enjoyed our lunch under an outdoor tent. Just about everybody at my table ended up getting sardines even me! I am not usually a very big fishy person, except for sushi, but I have began to enjoy seafood more since being here. When you order sardines there are two basic ways that you can get them, the first being grilled and the second being sautéed. If you decide on the grilled sardines then you get about five 6” whole sardines and it is then your responsibility when you begin to eat them to remove the back bone and bones attached to it, the tail, and the head; usually you can do this all in one piece. The grilled sardines are then served with a couple small boiled potatoes.
If you decide to get the sautéed sardines then you are going to get about 6 filets that have been breaded and then cooked and it is usually served with a very healthy serving of a beans and rice mixture. I decided to go with the grilled sardines because it was a go big or go home situation. Besides having to debone and see all the insides of the fish I actually really enjoyed it. It reminded me of tuna in flavor but not so much texture. Along with our fish we got a salad, olives, bread, a drink, and a dessert of our choosing. I chose a DELICIOUSSSSSS chocolate mousse.
When we were done with lunch we decided to walk up a huge hill to the palace of the last King of Portugal. It was so amazing and so beautiful and I so wanted to take pictures of things but unfortunately they didn’t allow photography and their were people sitting in every room “to answer your questions” but I am pretty sure they were there just to make sure that we didn’t take any pictures. In one room we met a French woman who worked at the palace and wanted to so badly to answer our questions that we didn’t really have any to ask so instead she just started telling us random facts about the different room. One room she told us about was the banquet room on the next floor that is still in use to this day for presidential parties and President Obama is going to be there in November! Booya! We were pretty excited to see a room that the president would be enjoying a dinner in next month! I guess I will be going to Belém everyday next month. Maybe I can give Obama a tour also!
At 3:30 we had to meet back up with the rest of the group because some people wanted to go back to their rooms because they were going to be leaving for London early the next day. However I had a group of three that wanted to go into Lisbon with me so we headed to Lisbon and I showed them the main free sites of Lisbon. We walked up a hill to the oldest church in Portugal and also to a cool shop that sells pieces of art made by artists in the area. We then walked around the main walking street and met a guy from Poland that was setting up to do his street mime show. He was a very interesting character and we wanted to see his performance but after about 15 minutes of watching him set up we decided to move on. We headed to the top of another hill to go to my favorite t-shirt shop and on the way we got a bag of freshly roasted chestnuts which were amazing! I think I might have talked about the t-shirt shop before but it is a shop of a different Lisbon shirts that have been designed by young artists. The shirts are really awesome and are not the usual tourist shirt.
I helped my group of Americans by their train tickets and sent them on my way and I ran to another station to catch a metro to a different train station where I was heading to Cascais, which a beach town. I was meeting my group of youth from Vialonga there with a couple other leaders to have a beach day. The girls and I went and walked in the water a little bit and we went exploring for cool shells. There were tons of mussels along the rocks. We also had a fun game of 2 truths and a lie. Where most of the students made their lies so crazy that you could totally tell what the lie was or they totally forgot the lie altogether.
By the time I got home I was exhausted and sore. I had left my home at about 7:30am and didn’t return home until 11:30pm. When I woke up on Saturday I was tight and sore and could tell that I had been walking up and down hills the entire day before. I am pretty sure Portugal means the land of trillions of hills!
My tour group from Lisboa!
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