Lisbon and Yes! Hostel: Amaze-balls!!!

First:  Milestone!  Blogger tells me that My Journey Westward will soon (as in three hits from now) pass 11,111 page views!  That's pretty cool to me.  A great big digital hug to all my readers, wherever you may be.

Now, where were we?  I have let this thing rather lag, haven't I?  Currently sitting in Valencia, Spain, feeling like the oldest person in the hostel (this is very possibly accurate) because it's 9:00 and I am already in my pajamas.  I would almost certainly curled up with my kindle for the Earliest Night Ever if not for this increasing guilt that I really should catch this thing up a little.

So... Lisbon!  I do have to say, I love when epic travel days can be interspersed with easy, simple, short travel days.  Like the train from Porto to Lisbon, for example.  Once off the train, I followed my hostel's very excellent directions and found them without a hitch.  Getting better at this!

Yes! Hostel in Lisbon is, hands-down, the absolute best hostel I have ever stayed in.  These guys are incredible.  Every member of the staff were just so friendly, helpful and efficient.  The dorms had sturdy wooden bunks with privacy curtains, and each bunk had its own reading light, small shelf, and outlet.  There were huge lockers that fit under the bunks.  They had this great idea and put the electronic key fobs for the rooms on brightly colored rubber bracelets.  I slept with mine on and never had to worry about finding my key when I woke up in the middle of the night and had to pee.

Downstairs, they had a full bar with very cheap drinks, and a huge clean bright common area with couches and bean bag chairs.  There was a lift!  A washer and dryer!  Strictly amazing.  They let me check in half an hour early, and I signed up for a tour out to Sintra the next day.  I also signed up for the hostel dinner, which was piri-piri chicken, a traditional Portuguese dish.  The hostel dinner turned out to be an absolute gem.  I chatted with the chef, a lovely girl named Isabel.  For 10 euros, you get a small appetizer, soup, main entree with salad and side, dessert, and four free drinks!!  Holy cow.  I ended up eating at the hostel for three out of my four nights in Lisbon.

Fun folks from around the world.

After I checked in, I decided to go out and find the Castelo S. Jorge.  But holy crap, Lisbon is one confusing city!!  I got lost.  Really lost.  Eventually I gave up and just got a glass of wine and some small tapas at a cute sidewalk cafe.  My glass of wine was two euros, which I thought was not bad until I saw a bottle of the same wine listed on the menu for 2.30 euros.  Oh well.  The tapas were good, if tiny.

I followed the river to get home, and stopped to get a look at the water as the sun was setting.

Back home, the hostel dinner was incredible.  I had a lot of fun chatting with folks.  At 11:30 every night the hostel does a free shot!!  Could this place be any more amazing?  I wanted to get some computer work done after dinner but ended up just hanging out.  Happens sometimes.

The next day, I got up in time to do Yes!'s free walking tour, which of course was great.  I met and started hanging out with a very cool guy, Jeremy, who's from Baltimore but has been traveling the world for close to a year.  He'll see Antarctica before he's done!  Little jealous.  We talked about hockey.  :)

Lisbon is an incredible city.  A little rougher around the edges than the other European cities I've been to so far.  But the people are incredibly friendly.  I loved the winding, un-navigable streets and the narrow back alleys that seemed to be at least half stairs!

After the walking tour, I grabbed a quick sandwich and then hung out in the hostel's common room waiting for the tour to Sintra.  I wasn't sure what to expect; sometimes these tours can be real letdowns, but a good friend who'd recently been to Lisbon had strongly urged that I see Sintra, and I figured this would be easier than trying to get a bus on my own.  There were eight of us on the tour, which is all the minibus would hold.

It didn't take long at all to drive to Sintra; we all piled out and headed to this apparently famous pastry shop. On the way we passed a wine shop advertising dark chocolate cups filled with ginja, a Portuguese cherry brandy, so a few girls and I ran in and had a taste.

The pastry shop was a little bit of a madhouse, but eventually we all did get our sugar fix.  The Portuguese are extremely proud of their pastries, which are indeed very tasty!  (Some are too eggy for me though.)  But then it was just right back on the bus again!  I was kind of really disappointed  this was pretty much exactly what I was afraid of -- a tour where you don't actually see anything!  I would have loved some actual time to wander around the town on my own, but oh well.  I didn't realize we were rushing on because there was a LOT more to see before the end of the day.

We drove to the Quinta da Regaleira.  I'd been getting along pretty well with two Australian girls, so we stuck together as we started to explore the grounds.  I had no idea what we were there to see and neither did my companions, but very quickly we realized that we were in veritably the coolest giant playground on the entire planet.

One of the dozens of climbable towers.

Quinta da Regaleira is just... incredible.  They call it a "garden" but that doesn't do the place justice by a long shot.  The grounds are huge, and just dotted with all of these amazing towers, grottoes, waterfalls, and caves complete with secret passages.  It's so incredibly beautiful, and SO much fun.  Our awesome driver from Yes!, Luis, gave us an hour here but said to text him if we wanted an extra half hour.  We texted him.  I wish I had four hours!!!

I think I had one of the most breathless 90-minute chunks of my life here, sprinting around with Trish and Helena, trying to see as much as we could in the time we had.  In fact, we did not see everything; I personally am crazy disappointed that we didn't see the Labyrinthic Grotto or get to go down into the Unfinished Well, but we saw a lot.  One of the highlights was definitely the Initiation Well, which we found by going into a cave that turned into a passage leading straight into the hillside.

At the end of the tunnel, we found we were at the bottom of the Initiation Well.

From the bottom.

Because I like to climb up things, I immediately headed all the way up to the top, and found the entrance up there was camouflaged into the hill, complete with bonafide secret door.

From the top!

I lost Trish and Helena in all this excitement, but was able to find them again as our sprint through the grounds got more and more frenetic the more we realized how absolutely incredible this place was.

At the entrance to another cave.

Portal of the Guardians.  Because it's just that awesome.

We knew we hadn't seen the best part yet, which was the actual house.  A house that looked like THIS:

An enchanted castle if ever there was one.

They let you go inside, but sadly the inside did not live up to the exterior!  It was mostly exhibits explaining the history of the place (in Portuguese), rather than a reconstructed facsimile of how the house would have looked when it was being lived in.  Oh well.  We went back outside and took more photos before sprinting to meet the bus!

Luis asked us how we liked the palace, and Trish responded with an enthusiastic "aMAZE-balls!!" which apparently means something is really good in Australian. :)

Luis asked us then if we wanted to see another castle not on the itinerary.  Um, YES.  So he drove us all the way to the top of the ridge to visit the Castelo Dos Mouros, or Moorish Castle.  He said:  "You won't need more than an hour here."  LIES.  Turns out this castle spans kind of what felt like the entire mountainside   I tried to buy a ticket for just the "chalet and garden" because it was cheaper, and was politely informed that the chalet was an hour walk away.  Riiight.  So Trish, Helena, and I just got the cheap tickets for the palace grounds, and proceeded promptly to hump it uphill and immediately find the very historical cafe for food and beer, because we were starving and dehydrated.  Did have a good view though.

It's "literally" a pink candy castle!!

Post meal, we had exactly five minutes to see the actual castle.  We sprinted inside just started taking pictures of everything we saw.  But nothing prepared us for this view.

Best view of the Eurotrip so far.  Hands down.

We freaking sprinted down this mountain to get back to the bus on time.  Booked it.  And arrived breathless at the gate, at 6:00 sharp... only to find no bus, no Luis, and no other tour group people.  No, no panic at all.  Why?

We actually didn't worry at first.  But then it got on to 6:15, and started to wonder if we'd maybe misunderstood the meeting time... I mean, it was pretty weird for no one to be there.  "No way they would leave us", we kept reassuring each other, while in my head I began to wonder how exactly I would begin to go about hitch hiking from this stupid mountain back into Lisbon.

But then, we spied three others from our group!! I gave one of them a hug.  Truly I did, I was so relieved.  Now of course there really wasn't any way they'd leave 6 of 8 of us behind, so we just hung out and before the long the bus did roll up, on perfect spot-on Portuguese time, which I was learning very quickly is a whole lot like Georgian Maybe Time.

I forgave Luis almost immediately, because he tacked on another stop to our tour and took us out to this gorgeous overlook just as the sun was starting to set.

Luis and I in Portuguese Paradise

Then it was back on the bus and out to Cabo da Roca, the furthest western point in Europe, just as the sun was going down.

I can almost see hockey and Tabasco. (Well, they're behind me.)

It was a bit of a longer drive home, but we arrived in time for the 9:00 hostel dinner that I had eagerly signed up for after last night's success.  Tonight it was pork ribs (aMAZE-balls), and I had a great time chatting with my table-mates.  Did the free shot (natch) and hung out some more before calling it a night.  Have I mentioned that I loved loved LOVED this hostel??

Lots more to tell about Lisbon, but this post is the size of a freaking novel already, so gonna leave this here.  More Amaze-balls Lisbon to come!