Finally going to another European country...Portugal day 1

We got into Lisboa around 4:30am. There are 2 stations in Lisboa, and we first pulled up to Esticao Sete Rios. The driver than addressed the bus in Portuguese about where we were. We couldn't really understand him, so we asked the woman next to us if we were in the most central station of Lisboa and she said yes. OK. It was confusing. The station was completely deserted except for all of us that had gotten off of the bus. We didn't really no where to go or what to do, with our grogginess and the language barrier. Yeah, about Portuguese. I thought that it wouldn't be hard to understand it. Boy was I wrong. Portuguese on paper looks just like Spanish, but it is pronounced completely differently. I mean, you can pick out certain words that sound Spanish, but really, it sounds like gibberish when spoken. For example, the word esticao (station) looks like the spanish word for station, estacion. Easy enough, right? Nope. It's pronounced strangely. I don't know how still. Craziness. After much confusion Courtney decided to give in and grab a taxi to our hostel which turned out to actually be pretty close. So we did everything right. Phew. We buzzed into the hostel, it was located on the second floor of an apartment building. We went up the two flights and entered the Lisbon Lounge Hostel. We were greeted by the whisper of a groggy, extremely handsome I may say, young Portuguese guy who spoke pretty good English. He told us that check-in wasn't until 11am that morning (it was 5am-ish by then), but we could sleep in the main room on one of their big bean bag love seats until then. Hehe, oh man. This was my first hostel stay, and I judged it to be pretty alright. I chose it because it got a really great review on hostelworld, and it's rated one of the top hostels in Portugal. Well, I didn't have much to compare it to so I couldn't really make a judgment. As we entered the main room we saw on our right a huge picture of George W. Bush with some Russian Slavic words spray painted in red over it. Note to self: find out what it means. The main room was nice, wood floors, a flat screen Dell with free internet access, a bunch of low glass tables with bean bag chairs and love seats all around. We both picked out bean bags and immediately curled up on them with our luggage. I slept so deeply, I didn't even realize it! I woke up at 9:15 to the sound of clinking dishes--breakfast had been served and people were sitting around me eating. I had no clue! Wow. Everyone there was around our age and spoke English (most were American, one British guy). After groggily hanging out a bit I decided to shower cuz I just felt gross. The bathroom was really nice, very clean. There are funny pictures of stick figures in front of it urinating (one guy and one girl...the bathroom is coed). The shower was very nice, great pressure, although the hot water ran out pretty quickly. Then I got ready and Courtney and I decided to explore to pass the time since we couldn't check in yet. When we walked outside it was raining! However, that didn't ruin much, I already had a good feeling about Lisboa. The hostel is located in the middle of a pretty happening area, so there was already a lot to look at. The streets are so cute and quiet (especially for the capital of Portugal). They're very hilly, it looks like a European San Francisco. The buildings are awesome, so colorful and cute, they look nothing like Spain's. Across the street there was an entrance to a cute old cable car ride (there are cable cars on every street!) that takes you up one of the many steep hilly streets. It was a cute lil ride, it had character and it was a good first little Portuguese activity. We then walked around, I bought an umbrella, we went to some stores (I bought a paperboy purse...it's bright orange and fantastic) and explored. The streets, again, are so cute, and they're quiet yet active. People seem much calmer there. There's a certain, well, "uptightness" in Spain, but here life seemed so much simpler. You definitely don't see women and men dressed to put on a fasion show like in Sevilla. Anyhoo, we wandered in the rain and such, fell in love with Lisbon more and more. Soon we went to a little cafeteria for a small Portuguese lunch. This cafeteria is just like the ones in Spain, except, well, Portuguese. We started speaking Spanish which turned out to be unsuccessful. So we gave English a go which turned out to be much more successful. We learned that there is a lot more English spoken by the Portuguese. And their accent when speaking Spanish is not as heavy as the Spanish speaking English, so it's easier to understand the Portuguese English than Spanish English. Does that make sense? OK. So. Portugal, of course, is known for its fish, and especially its bacalao (cod). I wasn't terribly hungry so I got this cod fritter that was filled with eggs and onions and spices. Not bad. Portugal is also known for its pastries so I got a sweet bread with toast coconut on top. Not bad! The rain let up a bit so we decided to be all touristy and visit the famous Moorish castle in Lisbon. It was about a 45 minute walk uphill which was very tiring and difficult since the streets are stone and therefore extreeeemely slippery when wet. On the way up we ran into a big cathedral, so, since we had grown accustomed to the cathedral visits, we decided to check it out. It was a gorgeous cathedral, definitely smaller than the others we had visited, but very nice. Lots of artwork, although without a guide and without and understanding of Portuguese I couldn't decipher what the pictures were, who was in what tomb, etc. etc. Ah well, I guess if you've seen one cathedral you've seen 'em all. As we neared the top we got lost a few times and the rain really started to pick up. We finally reached the top and entered the castelo (Port. for "castle"). It was cool at first with its huge courtyard overlooking the bounding hills of Lisboa. Then we walked around more, went up the steep, slippery steps, took some pictures. I don't know, we saw a pretty kick-ass Moorish castle in Granada the week before, and this one just wasn't cutting it. It's smaller, and pretty plain. Again, ya seen one Moorish castle, ya seen 'em all. There were some steep terraces you could look out on, and on my way down from one I slipped and fell. Not badly, but enough to get damp and dirty all up my pants. Blech. So we had had it with the castelo after about 20 min. As we walked down slowly as to not slip on the steep, slippery streets, it began to rain pretty heavily. As we slowly neared the bottom we passed a wine shop--one of many, Portuguese wine is a big deal, it's called Porto coming from that major region--that had a sign advertising free tastings. Yeah, we were in. We walked in and were the only ones there, but the shop was extremely cute mimicking a wine cellar. A young guy of a bout 23 gave us the wine tasting in the back, an he spoke a good amount of English (or at least for wine vocab). We tested 4 Porto red wines: a ruby, a tawny, and one aged 10 yrs and another aged 20 yrs. My favorite, surprisingly was the tawny. I learned that it has brandy in it...I liked the cinnamoniness of it. After the brief tasting we talked to the dude a bit, asking him about the Portuguese language. He told us about pronunciation and stuff...it's confusing. Basically, Portuguese sounds like this weird amalgamation of French, German, Russian, Spanish, and a dash of English. It's weird. But I was really growing to love Portugal, despite the rain, and I have been officially inspired to learn Portuguese. I'm really considering taking a Port. class next semester, no lie. After the tasting we decided that it would be in bad taste to leave without buying anything, and we did want to buy something since the wine was so good. We both bought mini samplers of a ruby, a white, and a 10 yr. Then we decided to head back to the hostel since we were very wet and cold. On the way a bus drove by and splashed us with water...just like in the movies, haha. Yeah, it was definitely time to go back. Our arrival at the hostel was quite silly. We got the key to our room which was in a double door with an image of stick figures have sex next to the door. Oh man. Then we entered. Now, when I booked a double private room I thought that that meant 2 single beds. I was greatly mistaken. It was one double bed. Not only that, above the bed was this lit up picture of a man and a woman in the middle of a "passionate moment". Oh man again. Before heading to Portugal we had joked about how since it was just the two of us we were having a romantic getaway...we didn't mean to take it this far, though. Hahaha. And so it goes. What was nice about the room was our own closet, big window, sink, aaaaand the bed was extremely comfortable despite the weirdness of it all. We also got a space heater and plenty of extra blankets. Nice. So we put our clothes up to dry and took a nice, long, well-deserved nap in our warm, comfy bed. At around 7 we woke up and started to get ready for the night. We had looked through many travel books to figure out how to take advantage of our nights in Lisboa. The books spoke of a traditional music performed at night called Fado with a deep, rich tradition (like Flamenco in Spain). We decided that perhaps we could check out one of the Fado cafes or something, but the first matter was finding dinner. We went out into the main room and met up with some of the other people staying in the hostel. I had never stayed in a hostel before and therefore hadn't realized how one can build up a small community in a matter of minutes. We decided to go to dinner with a couple girls, one Japanese the other Jamaican (but lived in America for around 5ish years each) who were studying abroad in Madrid, one girl from NYC who goes to UNC and is studying abroad in Granada, a guy bumming around Portugal and taking language courses who's from London, and a 19-year-old girl who just finished up being an oper in Madrid (w/o even knowing Spanish!) for a few months and was just traveling on her own. She was super cool, her name is Marie. Can you imagine graduating high school and going to a foreign country to be an oper? She said that it's pretty standard in Finland to take a year off after graduation and just get out and see the world. Pretty awesome. I should go be an oper in Europe! We walked around in search of a reasonable restaurant that had vegetarian options (I think Marie is veg.) which took awhile (hence why I gave up the vegetarianism here). We finally settled on a cute Indian place called Calcuta which worried both Courtney and myself since Courtney is not an adventurous eater by any means and Indian food is hard for me since it's typically spicy. Well, we both decided to give it a go. Courtney and I coincidentally ordered the same thing (the menu was huge and amazing!) which was a chicken dish with coconut milk and other spices, maybe tomato? With it we got nan, which is a typical Indian flatbread that comes in many varieties (it's similar to roti prata at Flattop). I got veggie, Courtney got cheese, and the Japanese girl got garlic. When the nan came the 3 of us did trades so we all got to try each others'. We also ordered sides of aromatic basmati rice and a bottle of white wine. The nan, the chicken, and rice were all AMAZING. I kid you not, this turned out to be one of the best meals I had eaten in a looooong time. It beat out the meal I had with Katie's mom! It was so good, and so filling. I tasted the British guy's dish, some pork thing and it was unbelievably delicious. Then I tried the girl from NYC's dish, a bariani rice dish which was equally delicious. OMG, everything was SO GOOD! Who knew? It was without a doubt the best Indian food that I had ever had, and Courtney loved it, too (and she's a pickier eater)!!! Parents, if we head over to Lisboa at all we're going there! At dinner Courtney and I sat near the British guy and he told us about all of the places he had traveled to in his lifetime. Crazy--he has been basically everywhere. Fascinating. He just gets up and travels on his own. After being in the hostel I've realized how easy it is to travel alone, you just meet so many people in the process so easily. He's been all over Asia, Africa, he's even been to Papua New Guinea. Good for him, my lord. Inspiring, I tell ya. There are so many people in this world doing cool things and they are my age...Courtney and I felt so boring! I gotta do something cool with myself one of these days, haha. After dinner we all decided to check out one of the Fado bar/cafes (they're all located in one area in Bairro Alto--the bairro that we were eating in which is conveniently close to our hostel). I forgot to say; the rain had stopped! No rain the whole night, nice. We went up to Bar Luso, one of the most famous Fado bars in Lisboa (I had read about it, hehe). It had a 15euro purchase minimum. We checked out some others and it was the same case. I mean, although it's pricey, it makes sense cuz you're seeing a show. So we decided to just check out a regular bar. We walked into a Cuban bar that seemed pretty cool. We noticed that cocktails were 5euro each, and Courtney and I decided that no matter where we went we'd end up spending close to 15 euro, and why pass up the chance to see some awesome Fado. So we separated and went to Bar Luso. What an awesome decision that turned out to be. We walked in and the maitre de told us to wait and he'd seat us. It was pretty packed, so we didn't know what to expect. The bar is actually a restaurant/bar/cafe. It's quite large and quaint; it has low, cave-like ceilings, dark, ambient lighting and drip candles at each table. It's actually one of the oldest standing buildings in Lisboa, you can definitely feel the tradition there. Then they seated us...right in the front row! We couldn't believe it. We ordered a bottle of white wine and a fruit salad (which was 6euros worth of sliced oranges, haha) and joked about how it really was like a romantic weekend. Haha, oh Portugal. The night consisted of many different Fado singers, men and women of many ages, who performed a 5-10 minute set each every 10 minutes. Omg, I cannot even begin to tell you how amazing it was. Fado is awesome. It's a very dramatic music, but it's virtuosic, the singers are amazingly talented. It beats out Flamenco tenfold. Flamenco singing is kind of chanty and yelly, Fado is beautiful and lyrical. The background music is awesome, really low-keyed. It's 3 men, one plays the laud, one the cello bass, and another a typical accoustic guitar, but the laud holds the melody while the singer sings all of these rifs and melismas. It's stunning, and relaxing! It's like primitive blues/jazz/jamband. Hehe. Gotta love it. During the performance there was a professional video camera set up with a elegantly, yet professionally dressed woman holding a microphone. I had read that some of the most famous Fado singers perform at Luso, so I guess that this meant that that night's performers were kind of a big deal. Huh. Seriously, we lucked out. Front row, amazing music, a bottle of Portuguese wine, priceless. The restaurant slowly cleared out until we were some of the last ones there. Finally, a little before 2 we left. We were sad to leave, there were performances still going on! But it had died down so much, and we were a bit drunk and very tired, and we had a lot to do the next day, lots to see. So we walked home and were asleep around 2:45am. It was an amazing night. I was so in love with Portugal already.