Portugal - Day 1

Portugal - A country of discoverers

Arriving in Portugal was incredible. Regardless of the architecture, the history, the language, and the lifestyle, we were just excited to finally be back on land again! Our first day in each port is a free day, and we took complete advantage of this! A group of us headed out to be modern discoverers in this country which had seen so many before us. We took the metro to the city center and began our exciting, and exhausting exploration.

(Left to Right:) Josh (our onboard cameraman), Adriano (Brazil), Me!, Hannah Lena (Germany)

???, Natalia (Brazil), Mareike (Germany)

Some Portuguese graffiti. The graffiti in this city was incredible - even better than in Greece. All of it was very deliberate and meaningful (even if the meanings are sometimes a bit controversial). Note the bottom righthand image of a Nike symbol out of which a plane is flying into two towers. Up close these towers say "Lisbon Towers". Next to it was more graffiti which I have recently been told said "We Want Tragedy" in Portuguese

A group of boys were strategically placed through the city center playing accordians while their little dogs held small buckets in their mouths to collect change. One of the dogs even howled (sang!) along with it's owner as he played. They stuck to the city center in order to increase the amount of income they could make from tourists.

This man was the owner of a small shop selling fresh fruits, vegetables, drinks, etc. on a small sidestreet in Lisbon. We bought our lunch from him that day - Only 2.60Euros for about 6 pieces of fruit, 2 small loaves of bread, and a humungous bottle of water! It was one of the best meals I have ever had.

Some interesting parts of Lisbon were it's cable cars (remeniscient of those in San Francisco), it's cemetary (which contained not only these interesting graves with wooden crosses, but also above ground mausoleums which had glass doors so that visitors could actually look in and see the coffins), the age of the buildings and doorways, and the appearance of the roads. Most of them were narrow, cobblestone, winding, and extremely steep. The doorways were always interesting shaped - some tall and extremely narrow, others short and fat, almost always looking as though they had extended their welcoming hand to years and years worth of visitors and residents.

Sometimes we just need to have a little fun!

I like these two images for the main reason that both of these students, Natalia and Adriano, are from Brazil. For those of you that know a bit about world history, Brazil was conquered by the Portuguese hundreds of years ago, hence Portuguese being the Brazilian national language. If you look into the sunglasses of each of these two you will see the city of Lison and a national monument reflected (respectively). To explore the country of Portugal through the eyes of someone who had been conquered and had their history changed drastically is something I could not possibly begin to comprehend or imagine.