Portugal: Lisbon, Cascais,Sitra, Obidos, Batalla

So where did I leave off….Portugal was it? Overall Portugal was a super cool country and, despite its proximity to Spain and Salamanca in general, it was a very different place. I would say on the whole, Lisbon was the best city we visited on any of the Emory excursions.

After stopping off at our hotel, Maica gave us the obligatory three-hour tour of the downtown commercial district called the Baixa right off the water. After the tour, which ended mercifully with a beautiful view over the city from the Barrio Alto, we had some free time to ourselves. Michael, Mark and I had a great time walking around and eating some great Italian food but the combination of heavy rain and the most brazen and irritating drug peddlers (sketchy guys who come up to you with drugs on the street) forced us to hop on the metro and head to our hotel. With crappy weather and travel fatigue, we nixed going out in favor of an expedition to Wok to Walk. It was quite the journey and Michael lost 10 euro in what turned out to be an incorrect change debacle but ultimately we were satisfied and enjoyed relaxing in our super large hotel rooms.

Day Two in Lisbon turned out to be one of the best on record: Little touring, lots of free time, and one of the best nights out of the semester to top it off. After an early wake-up, we headed to an old castle on a hill called La Alfama in the heart of the downtown district by the Rio Tejo (River Targus in English.) Again it rained but we made the most of our time and its great views of the city. Having seen the castle and cathedral, we climbed back into the Barrio Alto for a traditional Portuguese lunch that was by far and away the best meal we ate as a group. The first course was a large salad and tuna dish I didn't eat much of but everyone else seemed to enjoy. The 2nd course was a phenomenal shellfish stew laden with mussels, oysters, prawns, shrimps and clams. In anticipation of not liking our main course, the cod, I ate tons of the stew. The cod, or bacalao¸ as they say in both Spanish and Portuguese, was actually decent and it was one of the few fish dining experiences I've really enjoyed. To top it all off, everyone got a dessert (I had the chocolate mousse) and coffee.

A view from La Alfama

Maica (center) with the group, having fun despite the rain

The weather cleared up so with more free time the group split up. While the majority of people headed to the famous aquarium, Me, Mark, Sydney, Michael, Amanda and Pierce explored the Barrio Alto for nearly four hours before heading back to the hotel to nap. As our wake-up wasn't too bad the next day, we knew we'd have to take advantage and hit the town hard that night. After purchasing some Portuguese green wine (it's similar to white with a greenish tint) we drank at the hotel with some music before catching the metro to the Barrio Alto. We had heard from people that this was the best area for going out and we were not disappointed. Barrio Alto is a hilly neighborhood filled with maybe 100 bars and clubs packed into a five block radius. What makes it so unique is that the police tolerate drinking in the streets so throngs of inebriated twenty-somethings walk from bar to bar, beer in hand, cavorting and yelling like it was New Years Eve. But the best part of all, and this is true of all of Portugal, is how cheap everything is. The night's highlight was Michael passing out in a club while we dragged him from bar to bar.

The Castle at Sitra
The next day was easily our most exhaustive day of touring. We hopped on our bus to the historic Belém district and saw the famous Mosteiro dos Jeronimos constructed in the typical Portuguese Manueline style of architecture. After Belém we drove 30 minutes to the beach resort town of Cascais where we ate their famous local delicacy, a spicy chicken dish called Piri-Piri. After lunch, we drove another 30 minutes to the jaw dropping town of Sintra set into a set of steep cliffs. The roads were so narrow and windy, out tour bus literally could not get to the top so we had to get off and take the public transport to the castle. Despite the increasingly cold weather and inevitable rain, the castle at the top of Sintra was the most beautiful place I we visited this semester with 360 degree views that included the entire town, the nearby river and the ocean.

The Mosteiro dos Jeronimos

A waterside monument in Belem

The beach town of Cascais

After returning to the hotel that evening around 7 pm, nobody was in the mood to go out again so we watched a movie and prepared for another early wake-up. The next morning we checked out and began to the return to Salamanca with two stops on the way. The first was the tiny town of Obidos which really had nothing to offer except for giving us the sense of what a medieval Portuguese village would've been like. We were there for maybe an hour, took pictures, and hopped back on the bus . Our next stop, around noon, was a bigger town called Batalla which, unsurprisingly had a famous monastery and a memorial tomb for dead Portuguese soldiers but not much else. It was certainly nice to see but the rain, followed by intense heat, made the cathedral tour a little less bearable than usual. Afterwards, Zach, Mark, Brandon, Laurie and I enjoyed a very nice lunch of ribs, rice and chicken that nearly made us miss the bus home. (Maica has a super-strict don't be late policy. She always threatened she would leave us somewhere if we were to miss a deadline with the bus. Though it didn't happen this semester (Mark and Pierce almost got left on the 3rd morning), apparently, last semester, someone had to take a train from Salamanca to Granada to meet the group after missing a 7 am bus pickup.)

From the Obidos ramparts

The Cathedral at Batalla
Despite the brevity of this post I want to reiterate that Portugal was a great trip. As a city, Lisbon is clean with great public transportation, low cost for entertainment and plenty of historic sites to satisfy your cultural needs. The Portuguese are very friendly (much more than the Spanish) and are known in Europe for being great with languages. As a result, everyone everywhere spoke English and as we learned, actually got offended if you tried to speak to them in Spanish. It's not that they couldn't speak it (in fact, most did) but they didn't like being confused with Spaniards and would therefore choose to respond in English when we would try speaking Spanish. Besides that, Lisbon is big but very manageable with a superb and easily navigable subway system. After the trip, many people were talking about learning some Portuguese since it has a similar feel to Spanish interspersed with some French sounds.

I'm racing to finish the remaining posts before my parents come to Spain on Sunday. Hopefully I'll in the next day or two I'll finish the group's final trip in Madrid so I can write about Barcelona (maybe) and Switzerland. Hasta luego mis lectores leales.

-Corey

Portuguese Word of the Day:
Obrigado- Thank you

Una Refleccion Espanol Sobre Todo Este Semestre

Como se he prometido, aqui es mi final suma de mi tiempo aqui. Disculpame si no puedes leer Espanol, pero esta entrada es para mi tanto como es para ti.

Técnicamente todavía no he terminado mi programa, pero bueno, estoy a punto de salir Salamanca y por eso pienso que es el mejor tiempo para escribir mi último blog. Soy consciente de que no he escrito sobre Portugal, Madrid, Barcelona y Suiza pero si escribo sobre todos, es posible que los vengan después de que hayan regresado a los Estados Unidos. Y discúlpame para mi gramática, no es perfecto (si hay lectores españoles sea obvio que no soy un nativo) pero es mejor que nada.

Looking down on Salamanca's Plaza Anaya from the cathedral's ramparts

Este semestre, los cinco meses que he vivido aquí, habían sido los mejores de mi vida. Ojala que todo el mundo tenga la misma experiencia que yo. He conocido a muchas personas nuevas y aprendido muchísimo, tanto como dentro de mis clases que fuera. Pero un gran parte que ha contribuido es suerte con mi programa, el grupo y mi familia. Mis clases no eran difíciles y todos los profesores eran simpáticos y geniales. Nuestro grupo de Emory llevamos muy bien con nosotros a pesar del hecho que nadie vinieran aquí con sus mejor amigos. Y finalmente mi familia aquí pues…. me encanta. Un gran parte de la experiencia aquí depende en la suerte del sorteo.

The cathedral in the distance from my side of the Puente Romano. My basic walk into town.

Salamanca es único porque es una ciudad muy pequeño con el sentido de una ciudad más grande porque hay una población de estudiantes desproporcionalmente grande debido a la Universidad. Por eso, hay muchas sitios muy divertidos con una buena mezcla de locales y extranjeros depende si queréis. De hecho, Salamanca, segundo solo a Bilbao, tiene la segunda cantidad de barres per cápita en España. Además de los casi 200.000 personas aquí, parece que hay solo jóvenes o viejos pero nada en el medio. Por lo tanto, cada noche, hay cosas para hacer y cada noche que he ido de marcha ha sido una noche enrollado.

Y mientras los echo de menos los Estados Unidos, mis amigos y my familia no estoy listo para regresar a mi país. Después de cinco meses, siento que solo he empezado a descubrir y entender todos los facetes de la vida cotidiana aquí. Al principio, cada cosa fue diferente hasta, después de un rato, empezó a ser lo normal. Hay cosas-como los dos besitos en cada mejilla cuando se conozca una chica nueva- que quiero traer cuando salga. Intento a regresar cuanto antes a una ciudad más caloroso como Sevilla o Valencia para hacerme hablar Castellano con fluidez.

Pero bueno. Gracias a todos para leer mis pensamientos estos meses y ojala que continúe leerlos después de que haya regresado. Gracias a mis padres muchísimos para animarme venir aquí y apoyando me cuando quería viajar. Y ya está. Estoy hecho polvo con lo poco tiempo restante en esta ciudad maravillosa me he cansado entre hacer fiestas y estudiar para mi última examen. Y pues…..nada.

-Corey

Spanish Phrase of the Day

Andar como burro sin mecate - To be wild (literally: To walk like a donkey without a leash)

The Long Overdue Finale of (the not so exciting) Spring Break Series (Part 4 of 4): Prague (and Paris for 12-hours)

The first thing I did in Prague was walk into a pole.

We were leaving the train station and with my head turned to talk to the group, I didn't see the large sign directly in my path. According to my journal (which has served as an indispensable travel companion), "It was quite embarrassing."

After stopping to pick up some liquor, we arrived at the Czech-Inn Hostel (nice wordplay right?) but due to some planning conflicts we were a bit spread out: Me, Mark, Amanda and Evelyn were in one room, Jon and Brandon were upstairs in different rooms, and Maddy and Karen were in a hostel across town.

ASIDE: The hostel was great except for two small flaws which were more inconveniences than anything. 1) As a security precaution, you had to use your keycard to access your floor via elevator. As a result, it was difficult and required luck and timing with the elevators for Brandon and Jon to be able to access our rooms. Without phones it might have been impossible

2) I'm not sure what the reason for this one was, but the showers operated on a system that required your press a button every 8-12 seconds or it would shut off the water. I understand the need to conserve water and save the environment, but 8-12 seconds is unacceptable when you are trying to apply soap and shampoo. 30 seconds fine, but this was a joke. Sorry, it got me really angry.

Some cool art in the hostel's bar

After pre-gaming in our room for a while and hitting the cool hostel bar downstairs, we made plans to meet my friends Jesse and Danny. Jesse is studying in Barcelona this semester (I actually just stayed at his apartment there for five days) and left the city yesterday 5/13. Danny is living in Prague this semester and was prepared to show me around the city and take me and my friends out for the five days we were there. He did not disappoint.

We met them at the I.P. Pavolva tram stop and, upon seeing me, Jesse ran across the street and, in an attempt to give me a hug, but ended up lifting me too high and we both tumbled to the concrete. Warning: Alcohol impairs your judgment. That could have been our motto for Prague.

Danny took us to this club called Radost which really surprised us since we were all underdressed in anticipation of a more relaxed bar scene. Wrong. This place had three dance floors, wall to wall bars, the works. It definitely set the tone for what the rest of Prague would be like. Everyone had a great time, we danced, drank, talked introduced, and met some new friends. After the club we went back to Danny's apartment and hung out. At some point everyone left except me and Jon who stayed to watch the most recent Lost episode.

We decided to take the tram home (since we were pretty sure we knew how to get back) but as it turned out we got lost and ended up having to take a cab anyway. We were a little upset we had spent the 80 crowns on it (about 3.5 euro) but Mark Amanda and Brandon (who left before us) got lost as well and spent around 400 crowns to get back. They were ripped off by the cab driver for sure and we learned the next day it is a common occurrence when the traveler(s) is obviously a tourist.

Day two. Jon moved into our room and by 1 pm we were out the door meeting Danny and Jesse at a restaurant for some typical Czech gourmet food (I had a delicious beef goulash with vegetables and a strange spongy Czech bread.) After lunch, Danny took us on a tour of the city starting with the palace and Cathedral on the other side of the river. By this point there were 13 of us (Danny's roommate from school, Andrew Hames, and his two friends Greg and Karen were visiting as well from Istanbul) so it took a while to navigate the uber-crowded Charles Bridge. The cathedral and palace were beautiful and afforded us some of the best views of the city.

A view over Prague

When we were waiting on line to enter the cathedral, a woman approached Jon and asked if she could bring her tour in. For whatever reason she thought he was the security guard for the line so he played along for a minute before admitting he was waiting as well. The woman was embarrassed, especially when Jon, Brandon and I wouldn't stop laughing.

The royal palace

Inside the Cathedral

After the Cathedral, we visited the John Lennon wall which was one of the my favorite, albeit quick stops in all of Prague. The wall, despite it being heavily graffitied, was beautifully decorated and filled with Beatles quotes, sagacious epithets and short words of wisdom including this gem I picked out: "Time you enjoyed wasting, was not wasted." I had to think about that one for a while.

The group in front of the Lennon Wall

After the wall we walked through the Old Town Square and decided that Prague had the best street food of the any of the cities we had visited. The square was beautiful and crowded, filled with all sorts of vendors selling food and useless knick-knacks. Shocker right?

That night after drinking in our room, we met Danny and Jesse along with Caroline Fires from Emory at a 80s/90s club called Lucerna. In many ways Lucerna was the embodiment of everything I had imagined about the European club scene. Loud and fun music, huge dancefloor and stage, and multi-tiered bars spread over two floors. Needless to say we had a great great time. Danny was very blackout and I lost him after maybe 15 minutes. Amanda was at the bar buying shots for the girls, knowing she'd have to take them when they refused. We didn't get back to our room until nearly 6:30 as the sun was coming up.

The next day, without much of a plan, we headed to Prague's main street, an area called Wenceslas Square and ate lunch at the vendors which had much of the same food as in Old Town. With the weather hot and sunny, we walked around for a while and wound up at the Patagonia Outlet. No one bought anything, but next door I found a great portable speaker which was, looking back on the trip, easily the best purchase I made while travelling. We were then going to go to the National Museum but we decided we would rather aprovechar el tiempo (take advantage of the weather in Spanish) and we walked through the Old Jewish Quarter. I kept feeling like I wasn't get my cultural fill in Prague but the nights were honestly too much fun to complain.

Jon, chowing down in Wenceslas Square

Another view of Wenceslas

The girls were too tired from the excessive partying but me, Mark, Brandon and John couldn't justify staying in a night so we decided to meet Danny and his other visitors at an underground, labyrinth like bar called Usudu right near the club from the previous night.

After drinking for a bit there, Danny took us to the fabled 5-story club called Karlovy Lazne right on the Vltava river. Knowing we would get lost and separated, we set a time to meet back outside which worked out surprisingly well. The club itself was fun, each floor was separated by the style of music with the top floor being a more relaxed lounge space. I wandered around for a while, collected my one free overpriced drink, and watched my friends dance like fools on the main floor before heading back outside to talk to these Portuguese girls in Spanish which they did not speak, but understood very well. We didn't get back to the hostel until close to six after watching some NCAA basketball in Danny's room.

On the morning of the 4th, the girls woke up energized (after not having gone out) and decided to take a day-trip to an ancient village with a castle 45 minutes outside the city. As we were all hung over and tired, we decided to sleep some more and ended up with me Brandon and Jon going to the zoo. It took a tram to subway to bus ride to get there but we all agreed it was worth and had a great day looking at all the animals. Not sure what more can be said here except zoos are definitely the same everywhere. Maybe a few different animals here and there but the same basics: monkeys, giraffes, zebras (that one might've been new actually) polar bears, wolves etc…

Yes, that's a sloth

And a giraffe

We got back to the hostel around the same time as the girls and they surprised me with my birthday present: A bottle of liquor (I really couldn't tell you what kind) that tasted like a pumpkin spiced holiday beverage. After finishing about 1/3-1/2 of the bottle in the room, we brought the party to Danny who was making plans for my birthday celebration that night.

Sometime after midnight, and many whiskey rounds later, the group set out for a club called Duplex. By this point I have very few clear memories of the night. The rest of what happened is cobbled together from my few moments of clarity plus the eyewitness accounts of everyone else. The walk to the club is a blur, but the one thing I do remember is asking to spin Evelyn around (she's the size of a large American Girl Doll) and nearly having us both tumble to the ground.

Apparently, Duplex was charging a cover but conveniently enough, located in the same building, was a strip club called Hot Peppers which inexplicably did not charge us to enter. I have very few memories of actually entering or being inside the place but one memory stands out clearly. As I walked around looking for my friends, a blonde stripper approached me, pointing to a chair, and said, "Sit down."

At first I thought I was getting kicked out for doing something stupid, but when I looked I saw all my friends sitting around a table and an empty chair for me. It took me until the next day to figure it out that my best friend Jon had bought me a lap dance. At some point in the night, I got separated from the group again until Brandon found me, water bottle in hand with my head down on a bar talking to a stripper seated next to me (this is what I was told the next day.) Afterwards, Danny prudently decided I was too drunk and put me in a cab to go to the hostel. Like our friends the first night, I think I was grossly overcharged for the trip home.

I'm going to gloss over some things a bit to get to the few remaining highlights of the trip. The next day we checked out, the girls left for Budapest and I moved my stuff to Danny's where I would be staying my last night in Prague. The day was uneventful, more of a recuperation from the night before, but at night we met Mark's friend Spencer Levy and his girlfriend Megan Waters (whom we saw in Amsterdam) and went to a phenomenal blues club across the river. Not only was the food and music amazing, but the coolest part was that between set breaks the lead guitarist, a 59-year-old Scotsman named Stan (of Stan the Man and the Bohemian Blues Band) would go outside the club and talk to us as he smoked a joint. We had a great time talking to him about music and Prague as we hung out outside.

During the 2nd set break, Brandon Danny and began talking to a trio of Czech girls, only one of whom knew English and was able to communicate with us. We decided to skip some of the 3rd set and grabbed drinks with them at the bar upstairs as Megan, Mark and Spencer watched the show downstairs. One of the Czech girls, who did not speak any English, sat on a barstool listening to our conversation and looking very drunk and bored. Either to alleviate her boredom or just get our attention, she turned to her purse and pulled out a butterfly knife. We continued our conversation with the English speaking one, her name was Helena, while we watched the girl with the knife out of the corner of our eyes. Suddenly, and right as our friends came upstairs from the show, the girl takes the knife and slashes it across her wrist, leaving a bright red ribbon of blood. It's hard to remember our reaction because it was a jumble of shock, fright and amazement. Immediately her friend wrestled the knife from her while we began yelling and looking around like we couldn't believe what we just witnessed. Ultimately the other friend helped the girl bandage the wound and as far as I know she was ok.

That incident was the figurative event that signaled we needed to get out of this city. The next day we packed up our stuff, thanked Danny for everything, and headed to airport to catch a flight to Paris where we would have a 12-hour layover before flying back to Madrid. Upon arriving in Paris, we had a decision to make, hang out at the airport until 6 am (because there was no where we could store our luggage) or take a 40 minute train ride into the city, hang out with Brandon's friends all night, and take a cab back at 4 am. What do you think we did?

By 9:00 pm we had made into the city and found Brian Hughes' (Brandon's friend from Emory) apartment where we left our stuff. Overall the night was uneventful, but we had a great time walking around the deserted Paris streets drinking and seeing some the city despite everything being closed.

The airport was painless but slow and once we cleared security there were neither stores nor bathrooms. The only thing they did have, in fact, was a Playstation 3 with video games which managed to stave off our hunger and tiredness until we boarded the plane.

And that everyone, was our spring break in painstaking detail. Thank you readers for sticking with this series and trusting in me to keep the blog alive (Amanda wrote an Amsterdam entry but decided she didn't like it and deleted the whole thing. Maybe by July we'll both be finished chronicling our time here.) Look for Portugal next when I get back from Switzerland on the 17th. And as the Spaniards say, "ya esta."

-Corey

Spanish phrase of the day:

Let me sleep on it- Dejame consultarlo con la almohada (literally: let me consult it with the pillow)