Lisbon? Lisboring...

Well, I am less impressed with Lisbon as I was with Porto. Porto was a slice of heaven... I cannot say the same about Portugal's largest and most recognizable city. Our intorduction to the city was less than impressive. After stepping out of the train station into an obviously less than affluent neighbourhood, we went to a cafe where I was berated by a homeless man, and he had to be removed from the restaurant by the owner. After finding our hostel, we were told it was overbooked and we were walked to another hostel/guest house, back in the bad area, where we proceeding to have language difficulties with the owner over how to pay. No one speaks English in Lisbon, and our Portuguese has had to improve dramatically just to get by. Not that there is anything wrong with that, as we should be speaking their language as a respect to the culture, but when you speak english here, you are perceived to be American and treated poorly from the onset. What a lovely city.

We settled into the guest house, which turned out to be fine, and went out to the 'party neighbourhood', an area called Barrio Alto that was recommended in our travel book. While their was myriad bar selection, once again, no one spoke english. The only people we met that spoke english was a triage of drunk Australian girls whom we were less than impressed with. We drank a bit, walked around and tried to embrace the city, but the language difficulties were too difficult.

We went home, slept and went sightseeing yesterday. We went to this lovely museum that displayed a collection previously owned by a wealthy socialite, which featured classic art, antiquity, tapestry and other doodads. The art was fantastic; original Rembrants, Monet's, Manet's, Rodin's and others. The museum was split in two, so went for Lunch in between, which proceeded to make Kowski sick, so our trip to the second part of the museum was flawed by indigestion, which prompted a return to the hostel. After that we decided to try something new, and took the ferry to some random place called Barreira, which was recommended by the train ticket-taking guy. It turned out to be no more than a poor suburb where we had cheap beer, looked at the lack of sites and went home. Following that, we went for dinner because thankfully, we found a Chinese restaurant that served veggies and went to sleep.

One last thing, Portugal has never heard of vegetarianism. When you say you are a vegetarian here, you are greeted with laughter and sarcasm, and treated like cattle (I betcha cattle are treated better). The only thing available to me here has been cheese sandwiches, or sandes queijo, and I am getting sick of eating nothing but white bread, butter and cheese. Today will include a trip to the grocer, where I can fill up on veggies. The only silver lining came when we found an organic/natural smoothie/salad restaurant, but while enjoying my fruit salad, another bum came in and berated me. Three cheers for Lisbon.

Today we are taking a day trip to a beach town called Ericidea. It is supposedly gorgeous. The overnight train for Madrid leaves tonight at 10PM, and we are excited. I will throw up a bunch of pictures then, as Portugal is gorgeous, but lacks USB adapters in cyber cafes.

Till then, dommo obrigado Mr. Oporto.

much love.

Shain