portugal.

"My favorite thing to do is go where I've never been."
-Diane Arbus

It's a snowy afternoon, here in London. And by snowy, I mean there are tiny snowflakes floating around in the air. These people should travel to central NY to see what a real snowy afternoon looks like. But moving on, my first weekend in London has been fantastic. Between orientation, exploring Kingston, a tour of London, hitting up a few pubs, and a trip to Brighton, I am already falling in love with living here. I'll update on that sometime later on, though, when I have the pictures uploaded onto my computer. For now, I'll move on to the lovely country of Portugal!

On the way from Sevilla to Lisbon, my parents and I decided to stop in the city of Faro for the afternoon. It's a cute seaside town on the southern coast of Portugal, and we thought it would be a nice place to stop for lunch and a bit of exploring. Being right on the water, I'm guessing that it's a pretty tourist-filled area in the summer, but it seemed to retain it's Portuguese charm. We ate lunch at a small restaurant a few streets away from the main square, and it was delicious. In many Portuguese restaurants, they bring out bread, cheese, olives, or other small dishes after you order (yes, you do get stuck paying extra), and the bread there was amazing. After lunch, we walked through a small shopping area to the marina, where there were lots of locals out and about. Then we headed back towards the center of the city to the cathedral. Now, what looks like an innocent church on the outside is really the home of a small bone chapel out back. That's right, the chapel is created with human bones and skulls. And of course, I thought this sounded fascinating. Maybe I'm strange. Either way, it was pretty cool inside, despise the fact that there were plenty of holes where skulls were missing. We had a good time taking pictures in there, and posing next to the skulls that stuck out of the wall. (Maybe I'm not the only strange one in my family?)

From Faro, we drove north to Lisbon (or Lisboa in Portuguese). Due to a wrong reservation and some handy repairs going on in part of the hotel, I managed to end up with my own hotel room at the price of just adding a third person to a regular room. That meant I had three days of peace and quiet at night. Yay! The hotel also had an adorable desk clerk, who was incredibly informative with things such as places to visit and restaurant suggestions. In fact, my father created the nickname "Mr. Helpful" for him. The next morning, we took the train into Lisboa for the day. Sadly, it was pouring rain, so we decided go a bus tour. The city looked like it would be a lot of fun, but the weather deterred us from exploring it too much. We did get off the bus in Belém, where we went into the Jerónimos Monastery to see the tomb of Vasco da Gama and take pictures under our umbrella. (My father had to literally chase down the umbrella man to buy one, only for my mother to leave it at a restaurant later that night.) When the bus got back into Lisboa, the rain had let up, so we did have a chance to walk around the city for a while. My mother found a ceramic/pottery shop and bought some beautiful dishes before we headed back to the hotel. We ate dinner in a Portuguese restaurant that night, and had another fantastic meal. One thing for sure about the Portuguese...they know how to cook.

On our last day in Portugal, we drove to Sintra, a town west of Lisboa. The first item on our list was the Palácio Nacional da Pena, the oldest palace inspired by European Romanticism. The palace sits way up on a hill above the town, so we had to drive up an incredibly windy and narrow road through a forest to get to the top. Despite being a palace, the outside looked more like a colorful castle, with different parts of the outside being yellow, red, and purple. The inside, however, looked much more like a palace, and was fully furnished with ornate furniture. There were a few gorgeous rooms, a few oriental rooms, a few overly gaudy rooms, and a toilet shaped like a throne. All the makings of a cool palace. If it hadn't been so foggy, the view from the towers would have been amazing, but it was hard to see more than a few feet from the mountaintop. We also took a quick walk through the Castelo dos Mouros, which was mostly ruins of a Moorish Castle. It wasn't as exciting as I had hoped, but my father was the only one brave enough to fight the winds to the top. We then made our way down the mountain to the town for some lunch, and of course more shopping. On the drive home, we took a roundabout route to Lisbon by driving to the west until we hit the coast of Portugal. Even though the sky was gray and it was quite windy, not your typical setting for a gorgeous beach, the coast was ruggedly beautiful.

It's a shame that the weather wasn't better for us in Portugal, but it's definitely a country that will be put on my list of places to visit again. Earlier today, I watched the depressing Australian Open, where Federer lost in a disappointing fifth set, after playing well throughout the first part of the game. He is so close to tying Pete Sampras' record for the most grand slams, yet he just hasn't been able to pull out a fourteenth title recently. I'll cheer harder next time, I promise! Now it's time to head off to London to watch the superbowl...go Steelers! I hope you're all decked out in black and gold today!