Você fala português? Não, não falo.
This weekend I am finally staying home in Valencia trying to catch up on work and, of course, blogging.
Last weekend I went to Portugal with Jacky and Aaron. I didn't want to go, to be quite honest. When it came time to pack up my backpack again and hit the road straight from class to the airport, I really would have rather curled up in bed and gotten a good night's sleep...but we had paid for the tickets and Pedro told us everything that we had to do in Lisbon, which is where he is from, so I felt obligated to go and tell him I enjoyed it...Plus I really DID want to go to Portugal, but I was tired of traveling. I'm still tired of traveling and I think I won't do it for a while now. But now I'm talking about Portugal.
There were times in Portugal when I seriously thought I had chosen the wrong country. I loved the environment, I love the language, I loved that there were fruit stands absolutely everywhere and enough hills in the city to make your legs ache after fifteen minutes, let alone an entire weekend of clambering over the cobblestones. Both Lisbon and Porto, the two cities we visited, had the same terrible cobblestone streets that hurt my feet to walk on with my flats. They're usually comfortable, but the soles are thin. Anyway, since that was the worst thing about Portugal, it wasn't too bad overall.
We got into Porto and found our hostel. The girls running reception were our age and after we checked in and started getting settled, they came in a started talking to us. The one girl, Filipa, was a little younger-in her first year of university-but she was very nice and invited us to go to a concert that night as a part of the festival in Porto called the Queima de Fitas. We looked up this festival before we went trying to understand what it was, but in spite of this I am still unsure as to what the festival honors. It has something to do with university students. All day and night we saw people walking around with ludicrously colored top hats and canes. We’re talking orange or fuchsia or baby blue. These apparently represent the different majors. I want a top hat and cane that are anthropology colored.
Anyway, we agreed to go with the girls and we arranged to meet up with them at a metro stop to buy the tickets to the concert. It turned out that tickets were being sold in El Corte Ingles. Yes, apparently there is an El Corte Ingles in Portugal. How disappointing. The empire spreads. When the three of us met the girls in the subway station, it turns out that they had brought the entire hostel! There were two girls from California, two boys from Canada, a couple of girls from France and some friends of the girls that worked in the hostel. It seems that more people speak English in Portugal than in Spain. I’m sure I could speculate as to why, but I don’t feel like it. Anyway, fun fact: in El Corte Ingles, you can design your own flip flops…for 13 euro. I’ll take Old Navy, thanks. After buying the tickets we went to the supermarket in the bottom of El Corte Ingles and bought food for a giant dinner in which a pot of spaghetti was made, sauce added and far too many people squeezed onto a picnic bench in the hostel’s back yard. It was fun!
The concert was pretty cool. I don’t know who was playing but whoever it was, they were POPULAR. The festival was huge, hard to get into and easy to lose yourself in. We all held hands to go everywhere so that we wouldn’t lose each other. I was exhausted by the time we finally decided to leave the concert and I made it out of the fair grounds without buying any unhealthy but extremely delicious-looking fair food. They had hot dogs. It was tempting, but it was also about three in the morning. Jacky and I were getting up early to get a train to Lisbon. We had to leave the hostel without the breakfast which was sad because it was included, but we decided we would take extra breakfast when we returned to the hostel on Sunday.
So Saturday we got to Lisbon around midday, found the hostel we had booked in the Barrio Alto, which is indeed very high up, but also a hopping area for partying. We walked around exploring a little bit and made a reservation at a Fado which is a dinner with a traditional Portuguese dance and musical performance included in the price of dinner. We knew it would be expensive but we also knew that it would be worth it. It was both but the food was also delicious. The waiter was extremely flirty and randomly guessed that we were students studying abroad in Spain. I don’t know HOW he guessed it, but it truly was amazing. Maybe he heard us speaking Spanish or something anyway. He offered to teach me Portuguese in exchange for Spanish. I would have done it too because I am currently in love with Portuguese as a language. It’s so interesting.
Jacky and I managed to do everything we wanted to do in Lisbon (Aaron stayed in Porto with a friend he knows there). Pedro, who is a student in our colegio who is actually from Lisbon, had given us a map and some very useful information, and Jacky and I managed to really do it justice. We even went out and found a place with latin dance music after the Fado, so we managed to party in the Barrio Alto and STILL not go to bed too late. On Sunday we decided to take a train to a neighboring pueblo called Belém for a little trip out to see some of the monuments. We saw the bridge across the river Tajo that looks exactly like the San Francisco Bridge. Also, across the river is the Cristo Rei that is a statue of Jesus that is facing its counterpart in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. We saw all these things and also had the best bocadillos of our lives in this restaurant called Pão Pão Queijo Queijo (Bread Bread Cheese Cheese) recommended by our guide book. I had a ham and cheese sandwich, but I had no idea that ham and cheese could be that delicious. Pedro told us where a McDonald’s was. I don’t know why he didn’t mention this place. We took a rain check on the pastry for which Belém is supposedly famous because the line out of the pasty shop practically wrapped around the block. We also visited a surrealist exhibit in the Cultural Center of Belém which was free, open, and a good escape from the intermittent downpours that we were experiencing. The rain was following us and I had to buy an umbrella because my Paris umbrella broke in Toledo. So now I have a Portugal umbrella. Jacky and I found an H&M in Portugal as well and went in to poke around. I bought some head bands that were dirt cheap and I had wanted to get for a while.
We felt accomplished after managing to visit all the things in Lisbon that we wanted to see, and at 5:30pm on Sunday we boarded a train back to Porto, tired but happy. We got back to our hostel in Porto around 10pm and realized that everywhere to get dinner was probably closed and we were too tired to go hunting for something. Luckily for us, Jacky left her bocadillo in the refrigerator of the hostel and it was still there! We ate dinner and chatted a little with the people that were hanging out in the kitchen. We met a Greek guy and an Italian girl who happened to be studying in Valencia!! What a small world. They left because they had to go meet friends and we decided to go to bed, but we realized that we had all come to Porto on the same flight, been in Lisbon at the same time and were leaving to return to Valencia on the same flight as well. I should perhaps explain that we were using Ryanair which is a ridiculously cheap airline that I am not sure I have explained previously. You can get flights for free and only pay taxed and fees. It’s an incredible way to travel and that’s why the coincidence was understandable-there’s only one flight from Valencia to Porto each day, so it’s not all that surprising that they were on ours.
We went to bed early hoping to take advantage of a little bit more of Porto the next day. Jacky wanted to see the library and we needed to go Port tasting before our flight at 3:10pm the next day. We got up, had breakfast, which was very good. We did end up taking extra with us and having it for lunch. We packed up, said goodbye to Filipa who was there again that morning, and headed over to the river. We saw the library that had been around since the late 1700s. It had a lot of old books and librarian who only spoke Portuguese and a little Spanish (thereby partially negating my previous statement about the prevalence of English-speakers in Portugal) asked us what we wanted. She understood us when we said we were just looking around she left us alone, but we decided to leave anyway because we were short on time to get to the river and go port-tasting.
We took a tour of the Calem port winery. It was really interesting to learn about the different kind of port and to see where it was all kept. There are shops lining the river front that will just give you free tastes of the wine. I had never had port before. It’s pretty delicious. We had to take the winery tour in Spanish because the English version was too late. It’s a good thing to be bilingual. It opens up more options. I tired to send electronic post cards from the winery, but the computer froze in the middle. After a successful morning we made our way back to the metro and by 2:30 we had purchased port from the duty free shop and were sitting waiting to board the plane. I like the Porto airport. It’s very relaxed.
The whole trip to Portugal was a good experience. Jacky and I are pros traveling together-we like to see things but not pay for them, so we spend most of the time walking around. I really wish I could spend more time in Portugal. I learned to say a few things and had a few conversations in mock-Portuguese. The most interesting, recurring experience was how people would come up to me speaking Portuguese clearly asking me a question of how to get somewhere or where something was. Maybe I look Portuguese, or I fit in, or I looked like I knew where I was going, but whatever the reason I did get quite a lot of practice saying “não falo português”-I do not speak Portuguese.
I'm taking it easy this weekend. There is a fair in the river bed this month called La feria de naciones and they have lots of different kinds of food from around the world. I tried heart yesterday. I don't know what kind of heart, but it was delicious. It was from the Peru stand. It's a nice change to be chilling out here in Valencia. I'm going to a futbol (soccer) game at the stadium today. I'm excited about it. I've never been to a professional soccer game and this is the last one of the season, so it should be good. Next blog entry to come. Check for pictures. I'm in the middle of trying to get up to date. :) Congratulations to everyone at Rutgers for finishing another semester. I guess I'm technically a senior now since the Rutgers semester is over. How odd. And exciting! Once again, thanks for reading and happy summer vacation!!