Day 7: Barcelona

Well, it's 11:30pm, we just got back to the room, and I haven't written one thing today. I don't even know where to start now! Short version for now: (will update details later)

I woke up and had to go to the bathroom. Decided to just check my phone to see what time it was. Our room was pitch black still and I thought it was the middle of the night. Nope. 10:20am, haha! Our curtain worked really well at blocking out every once of light, and we both had our white noise apps running on our phones to block out any sound. Worked like a charm apparently. 

We both could of went back to sleep, but there was this free walking tour thing that started at 11am that we wanted to do. 2.5 hours of free history on and walking around with a local in Barcelona? I'm in. 

So we jumped up - literally - and were out the door by 10:40. Matt showered and all I heard was, "God bless it!" and some banging around. I was dying laughing. That shower is literally so small you can't turn around and it's near impossible to wash anything. The Europeans really need help with their bathrooms!

Anyways, we grabbed some snacks and set off, race walking for the square to meet the tour. We hadn't been to that square before and we weren't exactly sure where it was. We got there with about two minutes to spare. And we were sweating. 

The red umbrella was our tour!

All we had to do was grab a free ticket and give them our email addresses. Since we still had time, we ran to the closet bakery and got water and a croissant to hold us over. 

Bakeries on every corner on this city

I don't even remember where we started on the tour, but we went all over the place. There is so much cool history in this city - and I don't even like history! One of our first stops was a set of stairs that Christopher Columbus walked up and declared he had found the estados unidos (United States)! Just wild to think about how many people had walked over those same spots over the past hundreds of years... The Romans were brutal and tortured and killed so many Catalonians. I could go on for awhile about what I learned, but its probably not that interesting unless you can see everything with it (ancient cathedrals and roman pillars, etc). 

We snuck off the tour a couple of times and ran in to a cathedral that wasn't on the tour... Or in to a grocery store to get some water. We always caught up and didn't miss much. 

One exciting thing that we did see was a Catalonian protest! They want their independence from Spain. The first time we saw them matching and chanting and waiving their Catalonian flags, it was pretty peaceful. The video of it should be on my youTube page. About an hour later though, we heard a very loud boom, and we weren't quite sure what it was. We were very near the government building square, so our guide went to look first to me us know if it was safe. That was the next stop on our tour. He said it looked okay, so we went to one corner, he talked for about 30 seconds, and there were more super loud books. They were throwing firecrackers (big loud ones) at the government building and the police were there! So exciting! But we had to leave right away. 

Inside the cathedral we snuck in to without paying...

After the tour - which was 2.5 hours of non-stop walking, we walked the rest of the day. No joke. We didn't stop until we got back to the room until after 8pm. Needless to say, we were tired and I'm counting that as my workout. 

Wait, backing up, our tour guide told us that this was the best weekend to go to Ibiza (opening weekend) and the big party we booked a ticket to is the best club (according to him). He's a big parties and told us some things to do, etc. so excited to go tomorrow!

Okay, after the tour, we walked along the water back to Las Ramblas, snuck in the museum bathroom again, walked through El Rival to a funicular that took us up to a mountain. From there, we were going to take a gondola up to the castle, but it was 14 euros for a 5 minute ride. So we walked. All the way up. Not only did we walk, I made my own shortcuts off the road - through some trees. It was interesting, haha. The castle was pretty cool with great views. Walked from there down (shortcuts were harder going down than up) to the Olympic stadium and the big art museum (more great views), took outside escalators down, took the subway over to the Olympic village on the beach, grabbed a snack because I was hungry and grumpy, but it was awful.  Walked back by the zoo and through the Gothic area, got some coconut gelato, shopped some. I got new straps for my sandals, found some granola bars at an athletic store, got more snacks and water at a grocery store, then found Matt some new shoes to go with his new jacket from yesterday!

Making my own way

From the castle

From the art museum 

New straps for my sandals 

Matt's new shoes / jacket

Got back to the room around 8:30 (feet were FILTHY) and started doing some research for dinner that night. Finally settled on one from lonely planet and called for reservations. Neither one of us brought many nice outfits, so we wore the same things we did last night. 

Got lost on the walk there. The streets / allies are so ridiculous here. Had to call for directions after we had walked right past it. Almost left once we sat down because no one looked at us for 10 minutes and we didn't know what the heck was on the menu. Food ended up being really good though (traditional Catalonian food)

The restaurant we walked past

After dinner we really wanted some sangria so we set out to find Barcelona's first restaurant. About the time we found it - after numerous map attempts and walking in circles - it closed in two minutes. 

Walked to Las Ramblas and had more coconut gelato and sat on a bench. The Indian guys walk around here non-stop asking if you want to buy beer from them. Had to snap a picture of one.  (It's legal to walk around with alcohol here.)

"NO, dude!  I do NOT want any beer!"

Back to the room to pack up for IBIZA tomorrow! 

Sorry this is such a crappy update - just haven't had any time to write today! Too much to do and see in Barcelona! 

Day 6: Lisbon, Portugal to Barcelona, Spain

The alarm went off waaaay too early this morning. 6:30am. We were still up after midnight again last night. But it was a quiet night and we both slept well! (Couldn't get yesterday's blog post to upload for anything!)

Quick showers and packing and we were out the door by 7:05. There was a line of taxis right at our corner of Rossio, so that was nice. The aerobus didn't start running until 8am. 

There was some lady at the front of the line who waived at us. Way too eager to get our business, and I don't particularly trust women, haha. But we got in anyways. Of course as soon as we got in she jacked the price up in her little meter...adding on surcharges or something like that. Ridiculous. I would of said something if I wasn't so tired. She drove crazy. And fast. Pretty sure we got air going over one of the hills. I mean, she would floor it right up to the red light (which you could see blocks away) and then slam on the brake. Crazy women drivers... At least it was fast and only 10 Euros. 

Got to the airport about 7:20 and it was busy. The check-in process is a little different, and it took us a couple of minutes to figure out where to go. We had to look on a board to find our flight and then it told us which gate to go check in at. So we went that way...and it was a zoo. Hundreds of people in a giant line that zig zagged back and forth. Ugh. I started to freak out. But ours was on the other side!! I didn't even look over there at first because there wasn't one person over there. But sure enough, that was our check-in!

This line went on forever, the entire length of the check in desks. 

Our line. (And that lady came after us!)

Since this flight wasn't a big international flight, we were going to have to pay to check bags. The website said they had a strict one carry-on bag policy. But the guy behind the desk didn't really seem to mind that we had two. They just had to fit in the little wire thing that was supposed to be the size of the bins on the airplane. I was determine to make mine fit.  Matt said I was being "slightly ridiculous" and the guy was giving me weird looks as I was stomping on my bag and stretching the bin, haha. It was just catching on a shoe, and I knew it was going to fit!! It eventually did. Persistence pays off, the guy tagged it for carry-on!

Matt's bag is a little bigger than mine. He walked it over there, held I up, and said no way. So I took it, sat on it, jumped on it, zipped it up smaller (it has a zipper that lets it expand) and shoved it in. Success! The guy knew I wasn't giving up and was almost laughing by that point. But hey, we saved 60 Euros! And we don't have to wait at baggage claim in Barcelona!

It fits!!

From there we went through security. Somehow I managed to set off the metal detector - no idea how because I didn't have anything on, but I got body searched. It was a little invasive, haha. 

When Matt started putting his toiletries back in his bag (that they made him move from a gallon size Baggie to several quart sized ones), I saw his sunblock. He forgot to put it on again today, so I grabbed it and put some on my hand before he could out it away. He looked at me quite annoyed and said, "Is this really the best time for that?!" As he was trying to get all his turf and get out of the security area.  He thought I was going to make him stand there blocking the line while I put sunblock on him, but I just wanted to get some on my hand while it was out for when we got to the gates! And then I lathered him up. :)

Found a cute little bakery for some breakfast. I had strawberry yogurt and Matt had banana, which tasted exactly like a banana laffy taffy! We shared a ham and cheese croissant and some fresh squeezed oj. 

Airport breakfast. 

Lisbon has a pretty big airport, and nice once you get through the check-in madness. We found our gate from breakfast, and some comfy chairs that reclined and had foot rests. 

Waited about 20 minutes until we started boarding. Europe doesn't seem to have figured out the whole jet-bridge thing. Or maybe it just depends who you fly with. We were on SATA last time and Vueling this time, and neither used them. We had to take buses to and from the terminal to the plane out on the runway and then walk up stairs from there. 

2 hour flight in to Barcelona wasn't bad. It wasn't a full plane and we had no problems with our luggage. We both slept a little, too, so that was nice. 

Of course, since I just bashed Europe for not having bridges to the airport, that flight did. Big, nice airport in Barcelona. Since we got to skip baggage claim, we went straight for an exit. We got on an escalator down, but quickly realized it was only to the taxi stand. So we turned around - mid escalator - and ran back up as it was going down, laughing the whole way. No one was behind us obviously. Oh the adventures...

Bought two bottles of water at a little shop inside (still not risking the tap water) and realized how much easier Spanish is for us vs Portuguese. I know two words of Portoguese, hello and thank you. Not too helpful. We do pretty well with Spanish. 

Anyways, on to the buses we saw. We found the aerobus - and the giant line behind it. I waited in line while Matt went to get tickets from a machine. But it noticed that if you had a ticket ahead of time, there was a girl at the back letting people on.  Everyone else was trying to buy a ticket on the bus at the front. So when he got back, we a snuck up to the lady and hopped right on - avoiding the whole line! And we even got two of the last seats.

 4 stops later, we were at Catalunya plaza. Our hostel was within a couple of blocks from there. 

Our bus

The plaza where we got off 

I pulled out my directions, which pretty much sucked, so we had to turn data on on Matt's phone to get walking directions to Hostal Campi just off Las Ramblas down an alley. They buzzed us in. 

Stairs. More stairs. I swear, there are stairs everywhere in Europe! All the buildings are so old, and elevators probably didn't exist then. 

The check in desk was on the second floor. And then our room was two more flights of stairs up. Ugh. Not cool with a backpack and suitcase. (Not cool with or without bags actually.)

Our room was small again, but not as small as the one in Lisbon. I mean, we could walk around the bed this time. And we paid extra to upgrade to a room with a private bathroom. No more sharing. We have a tiny little toilet and ridiculously small shower in our room. 

I personally liked the place in Lisbon better. It had more character, haha. This is like a super run down hotel kind of. But it is nicer I guess. I has a tv and a tiny balcony, too! Living the high life here, haha. 

We were in the rooming enough to drop our stuff off, change in to running clothes, and figure out where we were on the map. Our room is literally half a block off Las Ramblas, kind of the main tourist run in Barcelona. So we went straight there to find some food. 

Las Ramblas. Perfect weather. 

Ended up at a little pizza place again after looking at a few other places. We shared a salad and pizza, both of which were pretty good!

Continued the walk down Las Ramblas amidst the sea of people. I had no idea Barcelona was such a big and packed city. Reminds me of NYC. Nuts. 

I wanted to stop and look at every single thing. Take it all in. Matt reminded me we would never make it to the end of las Ramblas if I kept that up. 

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Okay, it's 12:53am and we just for back to the room. Slightly behind on writing today! Quick highlights for now (so I know what to go back and write about):

Fruit juice - strawberry coconut

Meat and fruit market

Soccer jersey and new scarf #1

Stumbled upon another square

Found a bathroom in Starbucks

Cathedral in gothic area

Back to Las Ramblas to make it to the end

Street performers 

Snuck in to museum to find a bathroom

Walked along water

Ran to park and through it - only 2.8 miles (we're tired from stairs!)

Took break on park bench and ordered waters in perfect Spanish!

Walked to sagrada de familia 

Stopped at grocery store along the way for snacks 

Long line at familia 

Subway back to near Catalunya

Bought scarf #2 on way back to Hostal

Showered and went out for dinner

Lonely planet recommendation not far away: Pla

Stopped in mango shop along the way - Matt bought blazer

Pla packed - could come back at 10:30 for dinner

Walked around, ate banana gelato, sat on fountain in square while waiting 

Sat at bar while waiting for table

Saw Grizzly Bear (band) and said hi

Got table at 10:45 and place was still packed 

Tomato soup, shaved ham with tomato bread, lamb shoulder with licorice and honey sauce, filet for Matt, creme brûlée for dessert

Clean silver wear after every course

Glass bottle of water - barely pour any in glass

Best. Meal. Ever. 

Walked back (got a little turned around)

Street cleaners

Sleeping in tomorrow and more sightseeing in Barcelona!

Day 5: Sintra

We didn't go to sleep until after midnight last night. Didn't matter, because we slept in. I woke up at 8:40 (the bathrooms right across the hall are kind of loud) and felt pretty good, but Matt was still sleeping. I didn't have a hard time sleeping more, and we were both woken by the cleaning lady shaking rugs at 10am. That's some serious sleeping in for us and i slept great!  I don't usually like to sleep in too much on vacation because there is always so much to do and see, but we definitely needed some sleep. 

I opened the window in our room and it was just a gorgeous day. Perfect temp and not a cloud in the sky. Hooray! Also, last night we were reading about how to get to Sintra, and we found out that Tuesday is the best day to go because some of the things are closed on Mondays and Wednesdays. Totally lucked out with that one!

I hopped up to shower first. As I was getting my stuff together, Matt said, "Sorry, I would get up with you, but there isn't anywhere for me to stand!" Ha, he was right. This room is so small! But that's how it should be in my opinion! No reason to be in the room except to sleep. Get out and explore!!

The shower was quite interesting. I used the other one today (there are two on our floor) and the shower head was broken. So water squirted out in two spots - one being straight up from the crack on the top. Pointed the head down and towards the wall so the other stream didn't shoot straight out of the shower. But there was a little ledge in the shower so the water from the head hit that at shot straight back out to my stomach. Three water streams to manage, haha. Kind of hard to explain, but it was a challenge. :) Oh, and the water liked to go from scalding hot to ice cold in .5 seconds - probably whenever someone flushed a toilet or something. Can't complain too much though. Like I said yesterday, it was cheap, it's clean (minus the hairs - not ours - that Matt found in the bed) and its warm water!

I had emailed this hostel once we booked to make sure they had hair dryers. They said they did and I could just borrow it from the front desk. So I went down to grab it...and it was gone! He said someone had already borrowed it and he didn't remember who. Not cool. I had heard a hair dryer this morning when I first woke up, and then saw a girl who had clearly just dried hers. So when I saw her walk down the hallway I asked if she had one. She did, and it was the one she borrowed dell the hotel! Score!

We were all set and ready to take off for the day when the guy at the front desk asked if we were going to have the free breakfast. We though we were too late for that! Of course we aren't going to pass up anything free! It was such a cool space.  Little cushions and pillows on the floor, music playing from an old old radio, and all sorts of good food: bread, numerous jams, ham, cheese, cereals, room temp milk (still trying to by used to that), orange juice, coffee, fresh fruits. And all for free! I had a roll with jam, a bowl of granola, a banana, and a kiwi. The fruit is all so good here!

Matt had quite the time trying to sit on the floor and squeeze under the little table. Haha. He's not very flexible and sore from running, so we had a good laugh. 

After breakfast, we walked to the train station, which was just on the other side of the theater, which is right by our hostel. Just above the Starbucks we were at last night actually! Snapped some pictures of the gorgeous day on our two minute walk there...

Looking down to Rossio square from our hostel 

"Ghana" - our hostel is on the far corner

Rossio square from the other side of the theater

Starbucks on the bottom, train station up top

We had just missed the 11:53 train when we walked in, so we bought our round trip ticket for a whopping 9 Euros, bought a bottle of water from a little cafe, and hopped on the 12:08 train. 

Excited to be on a train in Portugal!

Matt read up on Sintra from my Lonely Planet book, and I got in trouble from the train ticket checked guy for having my feet up on the seat. :)

40 minute ride to Sintra, and not much to look at along the way. 

Once we got off, I needed a bathroom. And Matt needed sunscreen, since he didn't put any on back at the hostel. So we went in a little pharmacy right across the street from the train station. The nice lady working got us some SPF 30 sunscreen, but tried to convince us we needed the 50+. She also told us about some sort of panoramic small car to tour the sights in. We were sold. 

The bakery next door didn't have a bathroom, but of course the Pizza Hut across the street did! From there we went to find these little cars...

Just down the street on the corner was one spaceship looking car. It turned out to basically be a souped up golf cart made street legal. It was so awesome. 45 Euros to take it around for 2.5 hours. Done. 

It was obvious by that point that our plan of walking wasn't going to work. We should of done a little more research before hand. I though Sintra was just that one castle. It's actually a whole town with lots of castles and parks spread out. We disk know that until we were already on the bus, so our shoe choice wasn't the best for the day of hiking ahead of us. 

Definitely one of the cooler things I've done. It was like we were famous! Everyone stopped and pointed at us as we drove by. I have a few honks, too, haha. 

We cruised through the hills of Sintra, stopping along the way at Moorish castle and then Pena palace, which was the picture I found of Sintra that made is want to come here. 

Moorish Castle was awesome. It might of been my favorite of the day. I'll update late with more details and history, but just a few pictures for now...

 Walking up and down all those steps was my workout for the day. 

From there, we hopped back in our cool car and drove up hill a little further to Pena palace. It was a 10-15 minute walk straight up hill to the palace from the road. We were both still sweating from the castle, so the 2 euros each to take the tram up was well worth it. 

The Palace was pretty awesome. SO old and more great views. Again, I'm just going to stick with pictures for now...

We couldn't have had a more perfect weather day for my first visit to a real castle! It was 70 and sunny all day. 

Once we had finished walking all through the Palace, it was time to return the car. Aaaaand we got lost. There was a GPS thing programmed to take us on the loop to the spots, but somewhere we must of taken a wrong turn. And when we tried to turn around, it was a one way, ha. It didn't actually take us too long to eventually find out way back. The place was right by the train station so it was easy enough. 

We were both hungry by then - almost 4pm - so we started walking to find food. We turned on data on the phone and found a restaurant near by, but once we got in and sat down, nothing on the menu looked good. So we got up and started walking again. We had seen lots of cute cafes and restaurants up around the river when we were driving so that's where we decided to head. Of course we found a nice little cafe with good sandwiches and an outside patio with a guy playing guitar. It was perfect. 

The dessert was a traditional pastry from Sintra. 

Funny story: our nice waiter asked us where we were from. When we said Kansas, he said in his very thick accent and not so perfect English, "Oh I love Royals!" Ha, what are the odds. A Cuban waiter at a street side cafe in Sintra knows Greinke and some other Cuban player. Crazy!

He was super nice and told us the walk up to Quinta da Regaleira (a "Don't Miss" in my lonely planet book) was just 10 minutes up the main road. Thinking it was maybe further and that they possibly closed soon, we tried to track down a taxi. And the guy wouldn't take us! He was much more interested in smoking his cigarette and chatting with the other drivers. He waives us on and said it was just five minutes further. Ha, don't think Ive ever been turned down for a cab ride. He was right though. It wasn't very far at all. We had actually driven past it earlier. 

The place was a little weird. Palaces and underground tunnels, chapels and waterfalls. Just kind of weird. Fun to explore though! I made Matt follow me through some off the beaten path trails. He yelled the whole way, "No, Terri! NO!" But kept on following me "through the jungle" as he put it, haha. (See last pic in this section)

I'll write more about this place when I get back. For now, some pics...

This is what I made him follow me through. Then we found stairs 10 feet away, haha. He's going to kill me one of these days for the crap I drag him through... ;)

Once we had had enough stairs, we decided to leave and walk all the way back to the train station. Stopped in some shops along the way but didn't find any must-haves. Made it back to the station with seven minutes to spare before the next train departed. Just enough time to go grab another bottle of water from a cafe across the street. 

We didn't last long on the train ride back. Walking all afternoon (LOTS of stairs) wore us out. In fact, we didn't even realize we were back in Rossio. Everyone just got off and we started looking around thing to quickly figure out where we were. Sure enough - we asked a guy and he said Rossio. Oops! Should pay better attention next time I guess. 

From there, we walked straight to H&M for some new gray tights for me. Somehow I managed to get a hole in the leg of mine. Matt found a nice new shirt too! 

The gelato had been calling our name the whole time we had been salmon around is Lisbon, so we broke down and had dessert before dinner. Coconut gelato is legit. 

Oh, and we got asked to buy drugs three times in less than 30 minutes. Right in the middle of the city center. I mean, it must be legal because there are cops around and they are so obvious about it. It's not as exciting anymore when they ask. Just annoying. Do we really look like druggies?! Come on. Neither one of us ever have (or ever will) done any drugs. We've never even smoked a cigarette for goodness sake. Cocaine is going to be a tough sell on us, haha. 

Anyways, We decided to take our gelato with us for a can ride up to St Jorge's castle that overlooks Lisbon. A different view on the other side from where we were last night. 

We had to buy a ticket to get in (along with every single place we went to in Sintra). They charge for everything here. Even bathrooms. And no place takes credit cards. Get with the program, Portugal!

The castle was pretty awesome. It would have been more awesome I we hadn't just got back from the coolest castles ever in Sintra (seriously, that place is a must-do), but still a neat place to visit. If nothing else then for the view alone. 

We stayed until the sun set and then went in search of food. We couldn't decide if we should try the touristy Clubbe de Fado in Alfama or find somewhere better. We wanted good food and good fado music - not necessarily at the same place. We had read reviews that Clubbe de Fado was awful food, expensive drinks, but good fado. We were convinced to go when we stumbled upon a cute little restaurant that looked too good to pass up. We Trip Advisored it real quick, and decided to go in. Good choice. Tiny little restaurant with seven small tables. I had vegetable soup, then grilled veggies with cheese. Matt had some sort of chicks. Both were so so good. Our favorite meal of the trip. The chef really took pride in his food and was watching as we took our first bites to see our reaction.  I was like fine dining at regular prices. 

We were just too stuffed for dessert which really bummed me out, because it looked amazing too. Ended up asking the guy behind the bar where to go for fado, and he immediately said NOT Clubbe de Fado. He told us about some street full of fado bars, and wrote down he name of one bar to go to. He gave us some directions that we kind of understood, so we set off - not really sure which way to go. We walked a couple of blocks, then decided to put the street name in Matt's phone and follow it. 

Freaking iPhone. The night went down hill from there on. It took us down small alley ways in the shadiest neighborhoods late at night. I mean, we're both pretty chill people, but we see both uncomfortable where we were going. And to top it off, the street he named off had like two open bars on it. I don't know if it was because it was Tuesday or because we weren't quite in the exact right area, but it was not good. And we had completely lost our sense of direction in the windy, hilly neighborhoods. We were both so pissed we were about to just find a cab to take us back to the hostel - not that there were any around. But we asked one more guy for directions - who again told us not to go to Clubbe de Fado, but we already had out minds made up at that point to just go there. We would take touristy over the Alfama part of town we were in. We walked and walked and walked. And finally we saw the sign. Thank goodness.

We had come this far, and it was our last night in Lisbon, so we went in the packed full of white people restaurant. Got a pretty good seat close to where the fado would be performed, and about two minutes after we sat down, the guy started singing. He was good. I don't know what I was expecting, but I wouldn't of wanted to stay there all night. We sat for three or four songs (one set) and left after that. 

Video of the performance on YouTube. Click on my page from the icon on the right side of the page. 

We were tired and there's no sleeping in tomorrow. Still no exactly sure how to get back to a main road for a cab, we just started walking one direction, and luckily saw a ton of people walking out of a fado bar and towards a street. We followed, and sure enough, there was a cab right there who took us right to Rossio. We weren't far away and could of walked, but we had done plenty of that today already. 

Before going back up to the room for the night, we had to try the famous cherry liquor called Ginjinha we heard about last night. There was a line for it again! I just had a sip of Matt's, but he really liked it. 

 

Back to the room - more freaking stairs! - and packing up again. Leaving here at 7am in the morning for our 9am flight to Barcelona, Spain!