Lisboa: A Diamond in the Rough

The famous elevator. Basically its a hilly place and the people are lazy so the wealthy installed an elevator which turns out to be a gift from Mr. Eiffel himself. So he has given this and the Eiffel tower as gifts.. he must have been loaded. Anyway you can see the resemblence in the architecture.
Lobby of cool Arab place
We went to this really cool Arab place where you can play poker, have a drink, have a confernence and stuff. It looked like a dump on the outside but the inside was amazing. I guess do not judge a book by its cover.
Another cool church. The pink you see is the renovated roof in the 1950s
Tom the Austrailian and his Dad and Antonio at the wine tasting. The others were tasting port we did the red wine
I guess in June or July every neighboorhood is decorated like this for some huge festival
The castel had a lot of these peacocks







Cool church

Trolleys everywhere
The bar I went to with Antonio. You can see the cup light shades and the straw chandalers. But cool atmosphere nonetheless
The dinner at the hostel for the first night.. Antonio is the front right
Entrance to the city from the River
In front of the city entrance... The person had some trouble taking this one.
A cool monument. I did not like it at first but it grew on me.

Its going global
Monestary
Monestary
I have a ton of good ones of the bridge here are a few


The river is on the other side of the statue. It acts as like the entrance to the city


Lisboa:

Lisbon is one of the cooler cities I have visited. I am surprised it is not talked more about as a place to visit in Europe. Their culture is amazing. It is possibly the friendliest and most welcoming culture I have come to know. They also have the best food that I have had so far. They specialize is meat like pork or steak and fish. They also have amazing wine and cheese. There is a joke slash play on words that if you only eat pork and cheese you must be Portuguese.

My trip started coming into the airport and surprisingly I could read most of the Portuguese since it is similar to Spanish. However, listening and speaking Portuguese is a whole different story. The pronunciation is off the wall. I took the city bus to Placa Rossio, which is right downtown. I stepped off the bus and it seemed liked I was approached by six different Northern African looking people offering me drugs probably because I looked like such a tourist with my bags and all. I quickly saw a hotel and went in there to get away and make sure I knew exactly where I was going. I stayed at a really cool Hostel, which was rated the Best in Europe called Living Lounge. It is an awesome place and feels very homey.

I went to bed and woke up the next morning to our free breakfast. I had cereal and a lot of bread and Nuetella. The forecast said rain all weekend but it did not rain that much and that morning it was sunny. Thus, I went and rented a bike thinking this would be the only day I could be outside. I rode up and down the coast of the Tagus River and checked out some of their monuments, including a Monastery. I also passed a bridge which looked exactly like the Golden Gate Bridge and rightfully so since it was the same architect. The biking was very hard in one direction because of the wind and in the other direction I barely needed to pedal. After the bike I took a long nap and signed up for a dinner in the hostel for only 8 euro (wine a food are cheap in Portugal). We had a typical cod style dish from Portugal. All the wine we could have, salad, bread, and soup. I ate with people from Korea, Amsterdam, Wales, Canary Islands, Portugal, and Switzerland. It was a good mix. Then the chef, Antonio, asked us if we wanted to go out for a drink. I said yes and he took us to the Barrio Alto, which is the place to go out at night. This place is very very cool. There are no names on the bars. This is because even though Lisbon is a big city it is still like one big neighborhood where everyone knows each other and the bars too. So there is no need to advertise, people just know. They do have numbers though but that is just for the postal service. We started the night out with their famous ginger desert drinks. It is served like a shot so I took it like a shot… turns out you sip on it. Oh well. Then we were actually served a shot and I sipped that… turn out you take it like a shot. Haha I was not on my game. The bar we were in was really cool. All the bars are small and have different atmospheres. Antonio told me that people will only spend 400 Euro to decorate the place. It looked like they spent 10 times that. Although they did have light shades made out of cups and chandlers made from straws, but it looked cool nonetheless. I met some of his friends who were nice and one was a Photographer. We talked a little then the bar closed and I went home to get some sleep.

The next day I did the free walking tour from the Hostel. Antonio was the tour guide. He knows everything and everyone. So we went to many churches, the castle, the elevator, and a few cool spots within Lisbon that I would never have found by my self. We also got to eat a typical cake/pastry from Portugal, had a typical Portuguese lunch, a wine tasting, and went to see some Fado, which is the typical music from Portugal. I met some interesting people on the tour and we all ended up having dinner again at the hostel and had some more amazing food. This night I ate with some Australians, an Irish surfer, a girl from Japan, and these guys who are getting certified in Paragliding. A very fun dinner. I am now facebook friends with Tom the Australian And Yuko the Japanese girl.

We then went out to Barrio Alto (me, the Australian, the Irish surfer, and the Japanese girl). Since it was a Friday the streets were packed and you can drink on the streets. So instead of going in the bars we would just buy beers and drink on the streets and meet people. It was an awesome time. (Paco said this is how the Bojrn area by the Cathedral in Barcelona was like about 20 years ago. He also said it is very typical of the culture of the Mediterranean, which reminds me that Antonio said Portugal’s cultural is like a sponge. They are very open to change and take the best of each culture they have contact with, an example is the word for thank you Abrigado which is very similar to the Japanese word Abrigato. They picked this up through trading with the Japanese). Then we went to this club, which I guess is owned by John Malcovich called LUX. It was cool and a good time. We made sure the reserved Japanese girl let loose haha. I went home early to get some sleep. Now I am hanging in the hostel studying waiting until I will get my bus to go back to Barcelona. I have a final on Monday and then school is out for summer! I hope I can find something good this summer in Atlanta. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

All in all a great trip and I am glad I did it alone. I also got to experience the Hostel culture at its finest. Great city, great hostel, great time!

Semana Santa '09

The Crew's departing photo




This is Sloopy
Other two bedrooms
My bedroom shared with John
The Crew
Becoming a true sailor

Cambrils at Sunrise

Cambrills right before Sunrise
Dinner at Sunset John, Michelle, Me, and Vic


In the Port of Cambrils
Where I took a nap on our one good day of weather
Malcolm making our pizzas in the cabin

Tarragona with the increibly royal blue water (no editing in this one... that was the real color)
Tarragona again
I guess these are some famous railings.. This is me Vic and Michelle in the moonlight
The creepy procession. Imagine a warlike beat on drums and these KKK looking hooded men swaying to the beat... It was strange and intense
A tradition in Spain where they build human towers.. this is a commerative statue
Tarragona's Amphitheater
Marina in the Ferris Wheel




Waterland place

The foto where I tried to replicate Van Gogh's style

Bad picture but if you can tell the house is leaning left and the white poll on the top middle (explination in blog)
Highest Point in Amsterdam (1 meter above sea level)

Vondelpark


Amsterdam:
My Semana Santa will be one to never forget. It started with me drinking a beer and then getting a facebook message that a ten page paper for my class was due before Friday (It was Wednesday night). So I finnished that before I had to be on a plane to Amsterdam at 8 am on Thursday. I went with Marina a friend of mine from the Architectural Program with CIEE. We took a plane that was so cold that people were rubbing their hands together, seeing their breath, and basically just plain freezing. It seemed the stewardesses did not feel this as they would walk by without jackets completely content. I on the other hand just wanted to sleep and did not say anything. Anyway enough about the plane. We arrived in Amsterdam and went to our Hostel in Vondelpark. The hostel was called Stay OK. All in all our stay was ok… I guess they met our expectations. When we arrived our room was not open so we put our stuff in a locker and hit the town on a beautiful day. We walked around and got lost. I did not realize how many canals there actually are. We stumbled upon a great place for some of their famous pancakes. You would be surprised how well they go with other foods from ice cream to meet to vegetables. We killed time until we could move into our room. It was a four person room, but we did not have roommates until the second night (we never ended up meeting them cause we never got up or went to bed at the same time). That night we walked around, went to the Heineken Experience, went to a bar after, and got some wok to walk (a great noodles restaurant) in Leidensplein (the area of the city we were in).  The Heineken Experience was really fun.  We learned about beer, drank some beer, and met the funniest tour guide/bar tender.  We were in a group that spoke some English some Spanish and some other languages.  The guy would make these really dirty and crude jokes that basically only native speakers would pick up on.  It was funny cause literally it was only Marina and I cracking up, while everyone else was looking confused because to them it sounded normal.  These jokes would accompany the description of the beer.  We can all use your imagination of the types of jokes he made especially with the white foam head of the beer.

The next day we woke up and went on a free walking tour. We learned a ton about the city including that the whole city is below sea level except the highest point of the city which is one meter above sea level and its on top of a bridge. They are screwed with global warming. I also learned that why the houses are all crooked is because there is so much water in the soil that it warps the structures of the buildings. They also have the world’s narrowest stairs so to get larger things into the higher floors they would tie a rope around the a pole at the top of the building and hoist up whatever they needed to. Well imagine hoisting up a large object. It would sway and hit other buildings, so the next best design was to lean the houses forward. Then almost 200 years later an architect extended the pole on the top and wha la no more houses were built leaning forward. I also learned that back in the day the Netherlands needed more land. Usually that meant to go and conquer it. Instead of doing that they used engineering techniques and with the help of the wind mills they pushed the water back into the sea. I am not sure really how this works but by pushing their shore line into the sea the created a country twice as large. I also learned that Amsterdam had the longest lasting non-Jewish Ghetto during the time of Hitler. Well Hitler got to them in the end, obviously because of Ann Frank, but this place was luxury for Jews at the time. I also learned about their law of discreetness. Basically you can do whatever you want as long as its discrete and does not harm anyone. This could been seen when Catholicism was banned and a rich merchant created his penthouse into a boarded up Church. Police would get calls about Catholic songs coming from the house into the street. They would pull up to see just a normal house and not think any thing of it. Obviously after multiple calls they knew what was going on, but hey it was discrete and not really hurting anyone soooo it was legal… pretty cool huh?  The most famous example of this is the coffee shops and the red light district. Although those are all going to be gone in 12 years said our tour guide. The new mayor does not like the stigmatism of such things, since the country and city have so much else to offer, which they do! He also made a law allowing the fashion industry to rent the windows women would rent. Lastly, I learned that when the French or Germans (I forget) occupied the city they made everyone register and give the new rulers their names.  Well a lot of people found it funny to give fake names because the people running the program could not speak Dutch.  So they gave names for example, George Pulldownmypants.  What is even funnier is that those were the names that legally stayed so you literally have people whose last name is something like pulldownmypants.  There is also a big building named after the the guy who built/owns it and its a huge sign of pulldownmypants.  (pulldownmypants is just an example, the real ones are along those lines though)

That night we went to a special viewing of Van Gogh’s work. We really liked it and we each bought prints of a piece of his work. His older stuff was much better than his younger stuff. In fact I did not care much for his younger stuff. His older works such as a Starry Night included these thick painted short or long strokes which gave the pieces more character and depth. I tried to capture it in a photo of a boat where we were sitting by having a beer after the museum. Check it out.. not perfect but hey I am no Van Gogh and I am not painting. Then next day we rented bikes and biked outside the city. Quick note there seemed to be more bikes in Amsterdam then people. Marina and I would constantly find ourselves in the way of bikers and in the biking lanes since they look like sidewalks. They have a saying there “If you hear the bell, run like hell.” This is true because they rarely stop. Anyway, riding a bike outside the city was my favorite event of the weekend. It was way too cool and completely flat so easy riding. It really looked like stereo typical Holland. There was this one town that I forget the name but it was basically like waterland. And that is what it was. Houses lined the water like a dock next to what seemed like easily floodable land. We almost got lost a few times since we went out on our own. Luckily everyone knows English and every time we asked if someone did they responded with of course. After that we went to the Ann Frank Museum. Waist of time. Not really emotionally evoking, and I know it was a horrible situation and absolutely inhumane, but compared to what her book made it seem like and to other things I have seen/hear/learned about, she was living in a luxury apartment. We were tired from the bike ride and the day and after dinner saw a movie and then went to bed. The next day we saw the red light district. It was a lot more normal than I thought it would be. It ranges from some of the most beautiful women I have ever seen to literally what looked like African slaves who were grandmas just sitting on a stool waiting for someone to be interested (not sure who would be though). The hot ones were hard to spot because they were taken so quickly even during the day. The red-light district surrounds this church which no longer is open. But back in the day the sailors would port come and get wasted do their thing with the girls and when they had to leave (since it was not uncommon to die at sea) they would run to the church and confess all their sins to the priests and that way they could go to heaven if they died since they confessed. Anyway we killed the day by enjoying yet another beautiful day walking around and eating more pancakes. We went to the Airport and slept there till our flight in the morning (the airport is really really nice). I also went on a Ferris Wheel one day but I am not sure which day it was, just an fyi.


Sailing:
I got home and was so tired. I could not make it to Pals. On Wednesday I went to Tarragona to go sailing I went with John Clark, Victoria, and Michelle. Vic and Michelle are from Lehigh and are friends with John Clark through the Residencia. We arrived at Tarragona and met our skipper/captain named Malcolm Hughes. He is Welsh and has traveled all around the world working in the sailing industry. His boat’s name is Sloopy (I know horrible name but he bought it that way and he said its really bad luck to change the name of a boat). In Tarragona we arrived on the boat with all our groceries and realized the boat is smaller than expected (but by the end it was home). We went for our first ride out into the Med (short for Mediterranean). The boat felt a little rocky as we would sway back and forth. John Clark and I helped Malcolm with the smaller chores but nothing much more than that. Once the sails were up the boat felt a lot smoother and it is surprising how quite a boat can be without a motor. The whole trip we averaged about 5 knots which is not that much but if you keep sailing for hours and hours you do get to places.

We arrived back in the port and walked around Tarragona (the old Roman Capital of Spain and the second largest city in Cataluña). Here we saw the old Roman Amphitheater, the old part of town with a Cathedral, their main street, and an Easter Procession/parade that was bigger than anything I have seen before. With drums and people looking like KKK members it was kind of freaky. We ate dinner in Tarragona and then headed back to the boat to get ready. The boat did not have a good restroom or water system so #2 and showers had to be taken in the Port bathrooms which was not a bad tradeoff because they were always super clean. We went out to the port’s bars/clubs and no one was there except in this one club where we ended up getting a lot of free shots, sparkers (like from 4th of July), and we ended up having a good night.  We woke up the next day to our best day of weather for the trip. We sailed to South Cambrils, a small resort town. The Med was a Royal Blue. It is cool to see the Ocean a different color than what I am used to. Once we docked we got off, explored the city, and rented bikes to bike up and down the beach. Then we relaxed and had dinner on the boat as the sun was setting. The view was spectacular since Spain is basically a Mountainous country with the majority of the population living in these costal towns. So you get all the joys of a small costal town but with the view of mountains as well. That night we took a night bus to Salu which is nearest place with a night life. Turns out its one of the biggest in Spain. This night bus was more of a party bus, and it is different not being in a big city such as Tarragona or Barcelona because Americans are not as frequent. Someone told us we were special (bad English but we got the point) and it was true because a lot of people were staring at us and listening to every word we said. Also not many people speak English so it was a great way to practice Spanish. Also since we were still in Cataluña, Catalan was a lot more prevalent in these places and surprisingly I could read and understand a lot. Speaking it is a different story. Anyway the club was a lot cooler than we expected and we had a blast. We came back and stayed up for the sunrise since the beach and sky looked so cool. When we came back, Malcolm was waking up for the day, he cooked us a pizza and then we went to bed. We usually ate pizzas or sandwiches for lunch. A storm rolled in about an hour later so we were docked all day which was good so we slept most of the next day.

There was a break in the storm and we explored Cambrils some more, especially the shopping areas. Pretty cool, but nothing was bought. That night same thing in Salu without staying up till sunrise. The next day we sailed to Hospitalet. A much smaller and relaxed costal town than Cambrils. Oh I also am getting the hang of what to do on the boat. In Hospitalet we explored the small city bought some groceries and the girls bought some beads. On the boat we had Paella for dinner and the girls made bracelets for us. That night we went out at a port bar and met some real random people. It was an okay night. The next day we sailed in bad weather all the way back to Tarragona. The weather was so bad we had to use the motor the last hour just to get in the port. However, I spotted in the distance some consistent looking white caps and some suspiciously close looking figures of fins. Then, to my surprise, about 10-12 dolphins full bodies came up from the water. It was at a distance, but still, one of the cooler things I saw. Then that night, we had spaghetti Bolognese and a lot of wine, our skipper even got drunk. We went out to the same place as last time in Tarragona but called it an early night since we were so tired. We awoke the next morning and tried to go to Port Aventura (an Epcot/amusement park thing), but there were too many complications with the trains and we just went back to Barcelona. I slept for 6 hours that day woke up really refreshed had dinner with Paco and went to Nasty Mondays. Then next day I woke up and did some administrative work for myself, and then rented bikes with Matt and Chris Varga. We went really far out of the city where we have never been before. Definitely a different vibe, but cool nonetheless. I ran home from the beach and called it a night. The next day I got ready for Lisbon, went to my class, took off for Lisbon, and now I am at the Living Lounge which is rated the best Hostel in Europe. I am alone here so it will be a relaxing and culture filled trip! Next blog entry will cover what I did! I missed my family a lot on Easter as I knew they were all together in Atlanta!

How to sail a boat:
Besides the preparatory steps like running the engine for awhile, making sure all the ropes are not tied to anything, click the main sail to the heliad (sp?) rope, reversing out with the motor, slowly moving out of the port letting the wind help us, here is how you do it in a basic description. You turn the boat facing the wind (if you do this the boat will stop completely). Then you raise the main sail. Once that is done you point in the direction of your course. Then when you want to put the smaller sail up you can either face the wind again (easier) and unwind it or you adjust the main sail so it continues to catch the wind but the front sail is facing the wind. Once it is out, you adjust how tight you close it depending where the wind is. If it is behind you, you want the sail wide and if it is somewhat in front of you want it in close. Also we did tacking a lot which is when you have to basically zigzag to our location because the wind is right in our way. Also be careful of any headlands. They tend to screw up the water, the wind, and the weather no matter how small they are. After the sails are up it usually is just smooth sailing. You can put it on autopilot if you want and just chill all day or you can steer and try and get the boat in its grove (hard to explain but you feel it)! Anyway I think I could sail on a good day if I needed to. I will never forget the experience and I am so grateful for all the experiences I have been able to do so far! Love you all who keep reading this!

Shout out to Moira: HAPPY BIRTHDAY (I know it was on March 20th and I did leave a message. Sorry it did not save on your phone, but I did try calling you. If I remember correctly Sheila was visiting you too! Anyway I just want to let you know I did not forget and I was thinking about you all day even if you don’t have my phone message to prove it)