"See Lisbon or Die"

After flying from Morocco to Madrid, Michael and I caught the overnight train from Madrid to Lisbon. It was cheap but not enjoyable! We only had seats to 'sleep' in and they never turned the lights off the whole night. I actually managed to get a fair amount of sleep but I don't think Michael did =(

We arrived at our hostel at about 8am so couldn't check in, despite being sweaty and sleep deprived we decided to go walk around the city to pass the time before we could have a shower haha!

We found the main plaza of Lisbon really easily, it's pictured below with the wavy black and white tiles. The Rossio Square has a giant statue in it which was supposedly made by the city of Lisbon to give to Mexico and that never happened so now it's just kinda there. 

Lots of the buildings in Lisbon are covered in pretty tiles! I liked these two apartments!

Lisbon is another city that has trams! Pictured below is Tram 28, which I think has become more of a tourist ride then an actual means of transportation. It goes through the party district of Lisbon!

Michael discoverd the Museum of Beer (top right), although they didn't seem to be doing any tastings so this dulled his enthusiasm! Rua Do Carmo (bottom left) is one of the main shopping streets in Lisbon, it is always full of people and there are hundreds of shops lining the street. There are also plenty of places to get food!

 We decided to check out St George's Caste - which is situated on the highest hill in Lisbon (and believe me there is a lot of them). The views from the castle were amazing and we spent a few hours wandering around the castle walls and checking out the views. There was also a peacock who seemed to enjoy putting on a show for everyone!

You'll have to excuse our overnight train clothing...

There is mainly just castle walls remaining because the rest of the castle was destroyed in an Earthquake in the 1700's (I think that's correct...)

Amazing views!

Before we headed back to this hostel we checked out a small bakery I had read about online called Tease Bakery, they make the MOST amazing cupcakes! It's a gorgeous little shop!

We then, FINALLY, check into our hostel and had showers! The hostel was called Oasis Lisbon and was a pretty cool place! They had an awesome bar, which I must admit we used most nights, with cheap drinks, you could also get breakfast each morning for 3 euro! The title of this post "see lisbon or die" comes from the picture that was right next to my bed - it's actually a company that provides tours etc to hostels - pretty extreme sounding name though!

The next day we decided to go on one of the hostels tours, this was definitely one of the stranger tours I have ever been on but it was pretty cool. We walked from the hostel to the ferry terminal and caught a ferry across the bay to the other side of Lisbon. This other side of the bay used to be the main business district of Lisbon but was completely and suddenly shut down by the government and is now full of abandoned buildings. We walked through this ghost town style area to get some fantastic views of the fake Golden Gate Bridge (actually called the 25th of April Bridge) and the Christ the King (Cristo Rei) statue, which is actually a copycat of the giant Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio. Yep, Lisbon is full of fake monuments!

This picture does look freakishly like the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco! I think it was actually desgined by the same people!

After a lot of uphill walking we got a yummy picnic lunch (well I don't know if I would call it lunch seeing as it was 6pm) and some wine. 

Of course, no tour would be complete without a little drama, a girl managed to go missing while we were exploring some of the abandoned buildings. After over an hour of searching and escalating panic it turns out she wandered off to go to the toilet and then went back to the hostel. Crisis averted!

The next day we went on the hostels free walking tour (tips not included...), which as it turned out was the best walking tour I have ever been on. For starters our tour guide took us to get Ginjinha shots at a cute local bar instead of a touristy one, Ginjinha is this cherry liquer that you drink rather than shot and at the bottom of the shot are cherries that have been soaking in the alcohol for sometimes hundreds of years. The shot is very syrupy and sweet but the cherries are really strong!

Some pictures of Ginjinha shots and bottles! 

Our guide actually told us some amazing historical stories about Lisbon, now usually this is the part of the tour where I tune out but this was actually really interesting.

Turns out nearly the entire of Lisbon was flattened by an earthquake in the 1700's, it happened to be a Christian holiday on which many people burn candles to remember their lost loved ones, so this resulted in the whole town pretty much going up in flames and to top it off the city was then hit by a tsunami.... not a good day for Lisbon. Coincidentally, on a huge Christian holiday, where most of the city was lost, the only part of the city still standing was the Muslim district...

The top right picture is of a church that miraculously withstood the earthquake and was a special place for those who survived the earthquake to visit. However, years later is was also mostly destroyed in a fire. The locals saved a large portion and decided to rebuild what was lost using all the burnt mable that remained, hence the inside is still covered in burn marks and charcol - it was probably the best church I have visited so far in Europe, the story behind it is amazing, they still have newspaper clippings from when this all happened. 

Lisbon was in politcal turmoil for a long period of time (excuse my vague history lesson...) and in the 1970's the 'captains' - a group of military leaders and other important people in society decided to overthrow the communist government in favour of a democracy. The picture above (bottom left) is of what turned out to be a completely peaceful rebellion - the goverment in power surrended and nobody was hurt or killed - this lead to todays democratic govement. Ok, the tour guide definetly told a better story than me but it is still a pretty powerful image.

And just to lighten the mood I couldn't resist a picture of the most amazing fruit salad I've ever made, complete with cupcakes and iced tea!

Lastly our tour guide took us to check out some amazing street art, we went into a level parking lot, each level was given to a different artist and they basically did whatever they want. Michael and I both really liked this level with the waves/sea theme. The bottom left picture is of Fado, which is traditional Portugese music. 

We spent one of our nights in Lisbon on a food tour - run by See Lisbon or Die! We went to three different restaurants and sampled different Portugese foods - including blood sausage, which I actually really liked! 

Our last stop was at this tiny restaurant at which we all got some kind of whisky shots (top right and bottom left), as you can see I made some new Aussie friends to do whisky shots with because Michael somehow avoided it! After a night of snacking on food and drinks at every stop we ended up playing a drinking version of Jenga and heading out to a Cuban Club (in Portugal... yes that is weird).

Thankfully I was only mildly hungover the next day, having said that I didn't leave the hostel until after midday... 

Michael and I jumped on the train and headed to Cascais, a small beachside town about 40 minutes from Portugal. The streets here are nearly all patterned, it's a gorgeous little town.

Despite the rain (grrrr!) we decided to hire (free) bikes and go for a ride down the coast!

I was happy enough just to be doing a few hours of exercise. We ended up riding for about 3 hours with a few stops on the way (I found an outdoor gym!)

As you can see we also got some pretty amazing views of the coastline of Portugal - we both think it kind of reminds us of the Great Ocean Road.