The Never Ending Day

Hello, everyone! I, Katie, will be writing today...Aleksa will take over for tomorrow.

As you know, we arrived in Lisbon yesterday at 8am. The sun was shining and the ocean breeze was blowing as we stepped out of the airport-the weather was perfect! Our kind taxi driver told us all about the city as he dodged Monday morning rush hour and dropped us off at our hostel. We moved into our room, got situated, then headed off to start sightseeing. We were feeling pretty tired at that point with only two hours of sleep and international travel, but we decided to make the most of our day.

We headed up the mosaic decorated street, passing cafes and shops located in ancient and beautiful buildings. Our first stop was a tall tower that took us up to the Archeological Museum. Once a large cathedral, the museum was open-aired and full of mummies, coffins, and other ancient relics. After the museum we wandered down some very steep streets, into a few different large squares, up some more steep streets, and into an absolutely incredible cathedral. The temperature had...climbed throughout the day (read: we were dripping and our faces were red). We took our time in the cathedral and used the dark building to cool off a bit.

After marveling at the stained glass and statues in the church, we walked down towards some buildings we had passed that morning in the taxi. The driver had told us that there was an open square on the other side of the buildings, but we did not know what else to expect. We finally turned a corner and found ourselves inside a massive square with a huge sculpture in the center looking out onto the river. Hot, tired, and hungry, we headed for a cafe on the edge of the square where we dined on gambas con alho (shrimp and garlic) and pancetta and melon. It was simply delicious.

After lunch we jumped onto the metro that would take us to the Jardim Botanico, the Botanical Gardens. The metro was another much needed escape from the heat, and we were happy to board the train. We arrived in a different part of town, but we could not figure out how to enter the garden, whose gigantic palm trees were staring down at us from atop a hill. We followed the giant greenery up many more VERY steep streets. By this point we were burning. All three of us were in jeans, a big mistake. We climbed the streets for about 30 minutes, and finally found the park entrance (after sneaking in through a side gate that led us into someone´s backyard...woops). The gardens were teeming with life-butterflies, ducks, turtles, frogs, and enough greenery for it to seem like a rain forest. For any of you who know me, you know that I am not a fan of heat. In fact, you may even say that I hate it. So after walking a huge distance around the city, I was not the happiest of campers. A little indoor cafe where we bought water bottles momentarily saved us from the Lisbon sun.

We eventually found ourselves back at the metro station, and we traveled to a train station where we reserved tickets to Sevilla for later this week. We trekked back to the hostel where we showered and changed. I took the coldest shower of my life...it was perfect. We headed back out to a cafe where we had afternoon snacks and teas. Aleksa and Madison realized the wall of exhaustion had hit me when I crossed a street when walking back to the hostel and was almost hit by a motorcycle when I failed to look both ways. I immediately fell asleep when we got back to the hostel.

At 9pm we had dinner in the hostel. 8 euros each for soup, three different pastas, salad, and chocolate cake. It was very delicious and cheap! We chatted with the other travelers at dinner and heard about their traveling stories and adventures until we almost passed out into our plates, so we went to bed immediately. The day was long, but the adventure was fantastic.

Stay tuned for some more updates as we continue the adventure. They hopefully won´t be this long...

Ciao!