¡Viva la vida Española!: Lisbon & Sintra, Portugal

This weekend our program took us to the capital of Portugal! Which is Lisbon, but Lisboa in spanish && lissshboa is how to say it in their language. I really loved it there. It was more coastal than Sevilla and I hadn't really realized how much I really missed grass! It felt more like home to me there, because of the ocean and the trees (although no evergreens) and it was drizzly out for most of the trip.

So Lisbon is the capital housing about 6 million people. During the 1800's there was a terrible earthquake that pretty much destroyed everything. So it is a more urban city because it has old things that lasted, newer things that were still pretty old, and new new things.

Some of you may have seen a picture of this in Brazil. It is "Christ the King" monument, this one is smaller than in Brazil.

The aqueducts here are 40 meters long, which is suppose to be one of the largest in Europe but is no longer in use.

This one is for Geee!

The "San Fransico" Bridge

Maggie && I

Peacocks! There were a lot

This is the "castelo de Sao Jorge" Castle

Kristin & I

We should em how to shoot!

During the day...

during the night...

This is one of the oldest Café's in Lisbon. It was opened in the 17th century It housed many famous poets, artists, and royalty. It was restored and redone multiple times but was kept to look the same as it did when it was built, but in the 1940's, a new more modern look came to it. We ate there for dinner one night.

Yes, they MADE me wear a bib! The specialty dish in Portugal is Cod fish done in different styles, fried with french fries or mixed with other things. I'm not a seafoody person so i didn't want to order it in case I didn't like it. But I tried the ladies dishes and it was all good. I had some beef steak in a 3 pepper sauce....OMG it was amazing!

A military monument that displays 10,000 men who fell during a war. I want to say WWI, Portugal didn't play in WWII, but I'm not sure.

This is the monument of the plan that was first flown to India.

This is the "Torre de Belém". Just another really cool castle. It looks like a SANDCASTLE right?!

The "San Fran" Bridge again.

My first time at the Atlantic Ocean!!!!

Sara && I

Sara, Katie & I looking all angel-esk :)

These are our program directors, some of them. Had to sneak a picture when I could!

Sara, Juan & QuiQue.

In the streets of Lisboa

Left: Kristin, Me, Rachel, Sara & Maggie

Portugal doesn't have a separate special Cathedral like Spain does. It's just whatever is the first church somewhere is also the cathedral. This would be it.

The Naval Museum.

Inside the Cathedral...

I'm SURE you should click on these & make them bigger, it's really unique and cool. The cathedral isn't complete. Some of the walls are completely bare which is REALLY rare in Europe. But this is mostly because of the earthquake I believe. But here you can see the scratches in the walls for the design of the wall. Pretty neat.

This is the Monastery that is attached to the Cathedral/church but is no longer in use for that.

You can tell that this is "gothic" style architecture versus "renaissance" because the gargoyles in renaissance style are just for show whereas in the gothic style, they are actually used for a gutter system as you can see!

Our directors taking a group picture, look at Juan and his hott pink camera!

The Train Station. We had some free time on Saturday to do as pleased, and most of the people went to the aquarium which is like the 2nd largest in the world or something, but me and some gals went and had an even more amazing adventure ourselves.

We took a train 40 minutes out of Lisbon to this small town called Sintra. We went there because they have castles and one is suppose to look like Cinderella's castle. When we got there, it was closing but the man in the tourism office told us about this other place called "Quinta da Regaleria" which was bascially a fortress for royalty. Oh man it was BEAUTIFUL!! You'll see :)

The Main House

The Tower

The tower & the main house

Me in the tower

The castles we could see from where we were

Above & below

The awesome view we had

Oh this place was SWEET! It's calles Lake 1 waterfall, but there was no waterfall, probably because it's not travel season. But you can see above a bridge & a stone walkway. The BRIGHT GREEN is actually WATER!!?!?! Isn't that sweet, it was beautiful.

Pretending to fall in the nasty water

So we walked these stones into some CAVES!

This is the "unfinished well" It was really cool but we didn't know the surprise yet to come...

This is the "Initiatic Well" The pictures just can't do justice for it. It was HUGE!!! and it had a stairwell on the inside spiraling all the way to the top! There was beautiful moss && everything! And it was raining a little but didn't stop us.