Portugal!!!!!!!!!

So this weekend I was off to Portugal on a trip with my school. We left Thursday morning and took a bus to Portugal, which was about a 4-hour or so drive away. The country is actually an hour behind us, though, which was a pain when  we were all starving and had to wait a while to get food. 

After we arrived in Lisboa, the capital, we dropped our stuff off at our hostel and then took a tour of the city. It was interesting because our tour guide, who was Portuguese, had only studied Spanish for two years but was still basically fluent (all trips with the school are done in Spanish, hence why she didn't speak English, although she knew that as well). 

After we got out to walk for a bit, our driver was supposed to meet us at a point later on, but he got really really lost so we ended up having to wait a while for him to find us. But after he took us back to the hostel, we split up and a bunch of us went out for a traditional Portuguese dinner of codfish. 

On Friday we went to a nearby town, Sintra, and explored this humongous castle, and then we went to the farthest west point of Europe and then a beach. I put my feet in the water and walked through the sand barefoot, but it was still a bit cold. Although not too much. We had a lot of free time during the night, so we wondered around a lot through Lisboa and walked through some of the shopping districts and stuff like that. 

Saturday we went to another castle and then had the entire day free, so Laura, me, and some other people went to the aquarium, which was AWESOME!!! It was funny because I felt like such a child there, 1. because I was at an aquarium, and 2. I got lost within 10 minutes of starting the tour and had to go through the entire aquarium to find my group. But anyway, the otters and penguins were ADORABLE, and I was so happy because I found Nemo!!!

For dinner we were mainly concerned with saving money, so we went to an Italian restaurant and I got really good veggie lasagna. It was funny because I'm pretty sure the waiter there gave me his number, but I'm not quite sure because it was very confusing. He was talking to us about his sister that lived in the United States, and then after we paid he gave me two business cards with a number scribbled on both. He rattled off something in some language that I'm not quite sure about, so I don't know what exactly the number was for he gave me. Because it'd be pretty weird to give two business cards with your number to someone. So I'm not quite sure ...

But anyway, then we left on Sunday and went to a Spanish town on the way back that had a cool cave. And I guess that was it for the weekend.

Oh yea, and whoever said Portuguese sounds like Spanish lies. I couldn't understand almost all of what Portuguese people said. I could read it pretty decently, but it definitely sounds more French than anything.