Fun in Portugal

It was such a beautiful day here yesterday - warm but with a really nice breeze, so I tagged along with my roommates from Australia, Jess and Andrew and 2 other people from the hostel, Matt and Anna and we went to Belim to go see the sights.

We stopped at a cathedral for the first stop and after the offending absolutely all the devout Portuguese Catholics with our skimpy western wear, we wandered over to look at the ocean which smelled strangely like sewage.

There was a drain cut into the side of the platform where we were standing and I was looking out at the bay and what I thought was a huge patch of seaweed, but upon closer inspection actually turned out to be a huge group of fish feeding on the waste coming out of the pipe.

If I ever needed a reason to justify my dislike for fish, that image will always come into my head.

At this point, and despite the experience with the fish, we were all famished so we decided to head back to the Chiado district, where we were staying.

We hopped back on the tram and found a little Portuguese place that was actually closed for a family lunch, but after standing examining the menu for a few minutes, the very gracious owner opened up and allowed us to order lunch.

I'm ever impressed by the hospitality the Portuguese people have shown me so far. Even those who don't speak English certainly try to understand it, and they are all very accomodating.

We bought stuff for dinner last night and all chilled out for the rest of the afternoon, getting ready for the pub crawl that the hostel was hosting and watching movies.

The pub crawl was amazing fun. We got free shots at a few bars and I got a massive pink mojito from one bar that pretty well did me in. One thing I'm still getting used to in Europe is that you can drink almost anywhere. You walk out of a club or a bar with your drink in hand and can walk all the way to your hostel with it with absolutely no hassles. Needless to say the Bairro Alto district in Lisbon probably has 5 or 6 of my partially finished drinks sitting in alleyways because when I tired of one or started gesturing wildly when telling a story, I simply bought another and left the first where it was.

I was having a lot of fun trying to chat with these 4 guys from Madrid, and then this cute little guy from Alabama named Erik came over and started chatting me up and I was drunk as all get out so I started flirting outrageously.

Jess and Anna left, and Erik and I had to find our way back to the hostel which probably wasn't the hottest idea I'd had all night. We ended up hopelessly lost, caught a cab, ran into the boys from Madrid, tottered along behind them, assumed we were still hopelessly lost and then got back about 5:30 am. It was a good night.