lisbon, portugal

ur friend Sara back home has a sister living in Portugal, and we had made earlier arrangements with her to come meet us at the station in Lisbon when we arrived. Vera showed us how to get to our hostel, and spent the whole day showing us around. She was so awesome! Oh yea, and I forgot to mention that she has worked as a tour guide! We got a great intro to Portugal, and it was so much easier to communicate when you have someone who speaks Portuguese.. hahaha.. We also tried things that we normally wouldn't have at restaurants because we now knew what they meant. After walking around the city and touring the Castle, we went for lunch. This is where we discovered Bifanas, aka the most delicious snack ever. It's just fried pork in a bun, but MAN is it tasty! That day we also took the short train ride to Belem, where we saw the Monument to the Discoveries (Vasco de Gama was Portuguese) and the Monastery. Before heading back we went to this cafe where they make the famous Pasteis de Belem, these delicious little tart pastries. They sell these tarts in bakeries all over Portugal, but apparently this is THE place to get them. During the Spanish Inquisition religious people were persecuted, so there was this Priest who opened a bakery and called that his profession. The recipe has been in existence since then, and is heavily guarded. Employees there are not even allowed in the kitchen until they have worked there for 10 years. You can't know the recipe until you have worked there for 25 years. They were sooooo good! They were warm and we sprinkled icing sugar and cinnamon on top. MmmMmm!!

Vera works as a flight attendant, and was going to be in Lisbon again on the Friday, two days later. We made plans with her to meet at night and take the bus with her back up to her town, Santo Antonio, and spend the night there. She warned us that it was a really small town of 800 people (more people went to my highschool! haha), but we didn't mind at all. We wanted to see small towns just as much as big towns on this trip. Santo Antonio is also really close to the town of Fatima, where Our Lady appeared, and I thought it would be cool to go there as well. It got even better, because Vera had a friend named Jenny who lived in Fatima (also a tour guide!) who we could stay with for a night. We were totally getting the hook up in Portugal!

The next day we wanted to take a day trip to Cascais and Sintra, but it was raining so we decided to hang out at the hostel for the morning. Our hostel was so awesome! It was fairly new, and was really just an apartment with a whole bunch of rooms. It was alll done in Ikea style and very chill. They even had free internet! It further inspired us with our plans to open up a hostel of our own, hehehe.. It cleared up in the afternoon and we went for a walk. Mike got his camera cleaned and I did a little shopping. Vera is going to Vancouver on Nov. 2nd and offered to take any shopping I did home with her. It worked out great, and I gave her my new jacket and purse to take home with her.