Aquarium

February 27:

Today started slowly. I woke up early after a fairly late night the night before. I watched some tv before I decided to get up for breakfast. After some pancakes I made my way to the lounge and put on some Archer as I drifted in and out of consciousness for a couple hours. Soon Pat got going and we decided to go to the aquarium with a guy Zack who had checked in that morning. The aquarium was really interesting.

They have the fish all separated into different climatic regions so you could see how the populations change by geographic region.

After our visit to the aquarium we headed back to the hostel where I got a few hours sleep to compensate for my lack the previous night. I set my alarm for 9pm so I would be up for dinner. Dinner was some delicious pasta and wine. After dinner I was feeling a bit under the weather so I went to a corner store to pick up an orange to snack on later and bummed some tea off a roommate. After some scotch and tea to ease my cold I hung out with the group before we decided to head to the bars. We went to the same first bar as we had the night before and shots were a euro. The night went well. 

Thieves Market

February 26:

Today I woke up early and watched tv until breakfast. After we ate we realized we still didn’t have a plan to get out of Portugal yet. Our main issue was that to get out of Portugal we would likely have to use 2 of our travel days and be backtracking to boot. We decided to fly to rome since we were able to find tickets for 70 Euros on Saturday. Flight booked we headed out to the Thieves Market, a big flea market held on Tuesdays and Saturdays. We took the bus there and walked around for a few hours before walking home. On our way home we stopped at a place we ate a few days ago where I had had an amazing burger but when we ordered they gave us a completely different burger. It was strange. We headed back the hostel grabbing snacks along the way. We got back around 2 and I was pretty knackered from the early morning and walking so I lay down for an hour before getting up and watching tv with the others in the common room. We watched tv until dinner. Dinner was pasta and wine. After dinner we played a game of beer pong against the Australians until it became too tedious and we started playing kings cup. Soon enough a good contingent of us were well and good to go to the bars. People from the hostel took us on a tour of a few bars which was a lot of fun. 

We Hate Tourism Tours

February 25:

Today I woke up a bit worse for wear. We had been recommended going on a tour with the company We Hate Tourism Tours and so that was our plan for the day. The tour cost 40 Euros for the day but was worth every dime (or 10 cent euro coin…). The tour ran from 9am to 6pm and took us around to many marvelous places around Lisbon that we may have never heard about let alone visited if it weren’t for the tour, including famous pastry shops and an actual magic castle called Quinta da Regaleira.

The tour was a must for anyone in the Lisbon area. I would love to expound on all the things we did today but they were so numerous it has somewhat blurred in my memory already. We did see the westernmost point in Europe though.

After the tour we went back to the hostel grabbing some snacks along the way. I helped one of the staff make a carrot cake that we later burned by miss setting the oven. We watched The Inbetweeners for a while before dinner. Dinner was pasta and cheezy bread. After dinner we chilled as a group and played drinking games till the wee hours. 

Lisbon

February 24:

We didn’t sleep well. Part of this was that it is generally hard to get a good sleep on a train but a larger portion of this was that they woke us up at 2:30am to check our passports and again at 3:30 to check our tickets. Irritating. Due to lack of quality sleep I was woken up by Pat as we were already in the train station. The train was pretty deserted so we might have been there waiting for a while. It was easy to get to the hostel. We took one metro line a few stops to this monument and then it was just in one street and up. As we checked in the staff was outgoingly friendly and made us feel right at home. Everyone was asleep at the hostel but they checked us in and got some breakfast going. I ate a bunch of pancakes covered with a hazelnut spread since they had no maple syrup. They were really good. At breakfast I at first talked to the staff that was there but as the guests slowly woke up I talked to them too. Pat was pretty tired still from the train so he crawled into bed once we got there and joined us at breakfast later.

After breakfast we chilled and read for a bit before gathering the energy to leave. We walked down to the waterfront and walked along the water before grabbing lunch in a waterfront square.

The meal consisted of one of the best burgers I have ever had. After lunch we walked up to a large park near our hostel to read till the sun was near the horizon.

Once we got back to the hostel we hung out and watched the Jonny Depp movie Blow. I may have failed to mention previously that the hostel has a collection of thousands of movies on a hard drive linked to the tv in the common room. Pat and I drank the wine we had bought for the train and ate the snacks we had bought too. We failed to consume these earlier because we had been quite tired on the train and went to sleep before we could get to them. After the movie we gathered in the kitchen for some kings cup and set out to go bowling. Regrettably the bowling alley, the hostel’s Sunday night tradition, had been closed permanently over the hostels hiatus (the hostel had only opened for it’s second year two days prior.) We went back to the hostel for some more beer and beer pong. It was a fun night. 

Leaving Madrid

February 23:

Today was our last day in Madrid. I was up at 9:30 and after doing some emails I packed up my stuff. This took considerably less time then it had in Barcelona because I had unpacked to a much lesser extent. By 10:30 my big bag was all packed and my carryon bag was ready to get packed. Checkout was at 11:30 so I watched some tv as Pat got ready.

We checked out and stored out bags at the hostel as we went out for food. We were considering Wok to Walk but neither it nor its clone restaurant were open so we headed to McDonalds. I had some random McSpanish sandwich. It wasn’t very good. We got back to the hostel by 12:30pm, in time for the free walking tour. After some waiting the two and a half hour tour began. It was pretty good and a nice way to see the city before we left. It was a cold, windy day but was at least sunny.

After the tour we headed to a place for food and a drink with the guide before heading back to the hostel to chill in the common room for a while. We chilled and I read until we were ready for some dinner. We had decided on heading back to El Tirge because all the other bars were you got free tapas with your drinks were considerably further away. Unfortunately it was around 8, the Spanish dinner hour, and El Tigre was packed. We decided on a Tex-Mex place nearby called Tako-Away. It was surprisingly good. We headed to a super market to buy snacks for the train before heading back to the hostel to collect our bags. Though our train left at 9:50pm we left the hostel as soon as we got back because there was no point waiting around the hostel when we could be doing the same at the train station. We got there and after a bit of waiting, boarded without any issues. After we watched tv for a bit we were both tired enough to sleep.