Lisbon, Portugal

With all the traveling, eating, and sitting that I do, I've run out of time to properly describe my last weekend, which was spent in the land of Lisbon, Portugal.  My study abroad group, ISA, bused the 150ish of us over to the capitol of Portugal to spend a few days touring castles, cathedrals, and ocean-side towers, in-between meals of the best seafood in the world.  At least, thus far in my  world.

Words can't quite do Portugal justice anyway, so I'll mostly just let the pictures speak for themselves.

View of Lisbon from the castle of Saint George.

Inside the Lisbon Cathedral

Lisbon Cathedral

Belem Tower

Laying in a Portuguese gutter

4th item down...Google translate strikes again.

Swordfish for dinner!

I literally cannot say enough about the food.  Because it was a liiittle pricey (contrary to the recommendation from the hotel lobby guy) for us college students, we ordered three dishes and split them among the five of us.  I had never had swordfish before and I don't think I will ever again, unless I'm back in Portugal.  I don't want one of the Top 5 Meals of My Life to be ruined by some questionable second-rate seafood place in Idaho.  The salmon was incredible (sorry Dad, it actually did beat yours--but made with less love), and the shrimp paella was to die for.

Lisbon's famous postres

Also, Lisbon is famous for their postres.  They are basically little cream-filled, flaky crusted miniature pies.  It would have been rude to not sample them...so I ate three for lunch.

Exploring the nearby town of Sintra

A group of us took a train to the nearby town of Sintra to explore one of the famous castles.  Upon arriving, however, we discovered that it cost a quite a bit more than we had originally thought to explore the royalty's former house and playground.  So a few of us opted out and instead chose to explore the town and the (much cheaper) summer mansion of the royals.

Royal summer mansion.

The royal mansion was beautiful, but the grounds were the really cool part.  We explored dark, creepy tunnels, which led to beautiful ponds, former wells (that you could play in!), tall princess towers, and secret grottos.

Going to this place was the best decision of the weekend.  Even better than watching "The Hunger Games" in English...which we also did, and was also awesome.  So keep your Katniss opinions to yourselves, haters.

View of Sintra from one of the twisty tall princess towers.

Twin Falls senior pic blue wall shoutout

Lookit!!

One of the really cool things about Portugal was that people are very polite.  Obrigado is "thank you" in Portuguese, and we heard it often.  I've said before that the Spanish and Italian men think they are funny when they call after American girls in the street with "Ohmaigawwd."  It's the same way in Portugal, only instead I heard, "Ohhhh myyy gooodness."  The change is small, but appreciated.

So beautiful I passed out.