Hanna en el país de las maravillosas

(Happy St. Patricks day! I wore green today on accident, no really, I did.)

My group and I went to Lisbon Portugal last weekend for the first of our two excursions here. It was AMAZING. If you ever have the chance to go to Portugal- GO. You won’t regret it.

We all boarded a bus at 8am in the morning and took the long 8+ hour ride to Lisbon. We stopped at a town called Evora and got to see some tomb thing made out of human skulls and bones- creepy but cool.

We all stayed at a pretty nice hotel except for the fact that you had to pay 7.50 euros to use the hottub (which we did NOT pay). The first night was spent in our hotel room relaxing and doing our Linguistics homework. The next day we headed out to explore the city. We decided to go on one of those double-decker red tour buses which turned out to be cool but stopped running it routes really early so it was pretty useless. We walked around part of the city…..found a Starbucks (!)….and found the most incredible view of the city ever- Castelo Sào Jorge (I think). It was one of the most incredible views I’ve ever seen. The streets of Lisbon are pretty much those picture perfect cute European tiny streets paintly brightly with red roofs and tons of charm. Everyone there spoke English and Spanish it seemed so it was a very comfortable place to visit.

The next day we went to a little city just outside of Lisbon called Sintra. We climbed a seemingly never-ending windy road up to a Palace where apparently Walt Disney got a lot of his inspiration for his Disneyland. I kind of felt like I was at the Disneyland Castle. On our way back from Sintra we stopped at the most Occidental Point of continental Europe, I have no words to describe how spectacular it was…The sun was perfect, the water was magical…my pictures can’t do it justice but they sure come close. We continued down the coast and I stopped by Boca do Inferno (Mouth of Hell!) and it was again- magical. I ended up falling in love with a city called Cascais and plan to go back at least one more time in my life.

On our last day we stopped at a little place called Belém (which also had a Starbucks!) and walked around the palace garden, around the waterfront, and ate their famous pasteries.

All in all it was one of the best trips so far and I’m blessed to have gotten to experience it.

I think I’m finally over my hump of homesickness (granted it was a VERY large hump, shall I say a mountain, and my parents can attest to this). I can’t believe how fast the days are going by and I just hope I’m ready to go home when the times comes.