*WARNING: This post is extremely long; read at your own risk (or at your own leisure; you might need some breaks).*
St. Thomas Aquinas, the patron saint of Catholic schools, colleges, schools, and students, had his feast day on January 28, but the university decided to give us the 31st (Friday) off instead, i.e. 3-day weekend!! Therefore, a Thursday night flight was perfect for me and my fellow travelers +Kristen , +Aman , +Kelsey , Kelly, & +Danicole. Four hours before we needed to be at the airport, +Mary and I decided to go to the nearest ATM to take out some cash for our weekend trips (she went to France).
We happily frolicked over to our Metro stop to its ATM, excited for our first trips out of the country! Well, long story short: my card went in, nothing came out. No money, no card, no NUTHIN'! The metro people tried to help, but all they could do was provide me with the phone number to call the ATM company that owned the machine. Now Mary and I frantically walked back home to explain the situation to Gabi and Roberto. Roberto sat me down in his office as he used the phone to call the ATM number and talk on my behalf. That conversation got us nowhere, so he called an international number for Visa, who eventually put me in contact with my bank. Card was canceled and a new one was ordered (which is now on its way here!). "No te preocupes, cariña," Gabi kept saying. She and Roberto, being the wonderful and generous people that they are, both offered to give me cash if I needed it. Fortunately I still had ~80 Euros with me, so I politely declined the kind offer.We got from the metro to the airport in good time, and our plane landed in Portugal on time at 10:45 pm and without any problems. Now all we had to do was take the airport metro to the Blue line, take the Blue line towards Santa Apolónia, walk up a big hill and arrive at Equity Point Lisbon Hostel. Apparently the chaos of losing my debit card wasn't thrilling enough for my life, so I had to step it up. The Blue line metro, which was all of about 3 cars, made a quick 10-second stop to allow everyone a chance at getting on 1 of the 3 already-crowded metro cars. "Come on guys, we got this!" I yelled to my group as I asserted my way onto the train. My arm got slammed by the closing door, but I made it on! Woo! I thought Danicole was right next to me, but it turned out he wasn't. I looked out the window to see Kelly still standing on the platform. "Ah, bummer" I thought to myself. It was then that I realized EVERYONE ELSE was still on the platform as well; I was the only one who had made it onto the metro. I helplessly smiled at my group as the metro left.
I should have just gotten off at the next stop, waited for the next train (which most likely contained my friends), and re-grouped with them there, but I thought "Okay, I remember Kristen saying we had to take this toward Santa Apolónia, so I'll just ride it to the end and wait for them there". Simple enough, right? So I stayed on the train for the next 7 stops until the end of the line. I got off and sat on a bench and prepared myself to wait for my friends. 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes.... it was 12:30 a.m. and they still weren't there. I didn't know this then, but it turned out I had neglected one tiny detail: our actual metro stop was Restauradores, 3 stops before Santa Apolónia. Whoops! Oh well :) When I finally realized that I was clearly at the wrong stop, I 1) laughed out loud to myself (because really, when does this ever happen in real life??!), 2) had a quick convo with God about the situation (he loves to do this stuff to me, he's a pretty funny guy), and 3) prepared myself to venture out into the Portuguese world.
All in all, I ended up wondering around Lisbon for a solid 45 minutes-1 hour. I asked directions from a guy in the metro; a metro security guard; an english-speaking taxi driver outside of the metro; a bar "bouncer" & his friends; a (different) hostel lady; a woman on her way home. All I had was the name of the hostel, which wasn't very helpful, but everyone I encountered was so incredibly kind and they all tried their best to help me find my way. The funny thing was that I was lost, alone in a completely foreign country at 1 a.m., but I wasn't worried. I have God, St. Christopher and my guardian angels to thank for that :) At one point though, I was just so tired and wanted to see my friends (who were more worried than I was!), so I stopped by a police station and decided that if I had to sleep anywhere, that was probably the safest place. I walked in on 3 Portuguese-speaking cops standing around talking, and in perfect spanglish I asked "Hablas inglés?" Spanish and Portuguese (and not to mention english!) are completely different languages; (there are similarities, but for the most part they're very different) however, one officer understood me and shook his hand as if to say "I kinda know English". He helped me look up the address of the hostel, wrote it down on a piece of scratch paper, pointed it out to me on the computer, and directed me back towards the taxis outside of the metro. I found my English-speaking buddy again, and he directed me to the taxi that was next in line.
After a 10 minute taxi drive, we found the hostel. I walked up the stairs and buzzed in. The door opened, and I turn to find the hostel desk worker. My mind raced with what to say/how to explain myself, so I started with "Um, I..." but he cut me off, smiling and saying "Are you Erin?" Thank the Lord!
"Yes, that's me! Are my friends here?!" A huge smile of relief appeared on my face before he could answer.
"Yes, they've been pretty worried about you. Here, come in and take your bag off, I'll give them a call. Would you like a glass of water?" I chatted with Tiko (the kind desk worker) about the crazy mishap and my wondering of the streets as I filled out the hostel paperwork and waited for my friends. He gave me a map of Lisbon and pointed out all the touristy things along with some good local restaurants, bars, and clubs that we would have never found on our own. My friends arrived shortly after and embraced me with cries of relief. They brought me up to our 6-bedroom room (a free-of-charge upgrade, thanks to Tiko), showed me the bathrooms and showers, and then we all got ready for bed.
Night 1 in Lisbon: Done :)
Friday morning, my friend +Grace Daly met me at my hostel, and we ate a quick breakfast before we ventured to our bus to Fátima. We asked Tiko for directions to the bus station and he gave us another map to point out the correct metro stop. On our way there, we had to ask for directions from a man on the street (for the metro); a metro security guard (for the bus station); a couple on the street (for the right direction
to the bus station); and bus ticket vendors (to the correct bus). We made it to our bus station with 15 minutes to spare, and we met up with +Hannah and Joe and got on our bus.
The countryside on the way from Lisbon to Fátima was gorgeous! There was a light fog, but the mountains and greenery and little houses still looked awesome. When we arrived in Fátima, the bus ticket lady there directed us to the shrine, and we walked a couple more blocks up the street. It was a dreary, cloudy day, but even that couldn't take away from the beauty and magic of Fátima. We walked through the huge open square, passed the statue of (soon-to-be-Saint) John Paul II and the High Cross. We toured through the Esplanade that branched out from the front of the Basilica, adorned with the Stations of the Cross in "polychrome ceramic designs". |
| Some of the Stations of the Cross in "polychrome ceramic designs" |
We stopped by the Monument to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which stands tall in the middle of the square over a spring, "its waters being the instrument of many graces". So we took a sip and ungracefully splashed our faces with some graceful water.
Then we went to The Chapel of Apparitions, where there is a beautiful yet humble statue of Mary standing on a pillar over the exact spot in which the apparitions of Our Lady occurred. I knew as soon as I walked through the threshold of the Chapel that it was an extremely holy place and that it was the actual place of Mary's apparitions to the children. Grace and I prayed a Rosary, and I couldn't keep my gaze fixed on anything other than the statue of Mary. What a powerful experience.
After spending a good amount of time in the Chapel, I headed over to this covered wall that had a bunch of burning candles: some skinny, some fat; some were 2 feet tall, and some were little nubs of wax; some were newly lit, some were burning through their last inch of wick. I gathered that they were all Intention Candles, candles lit for loved ones, special intentions and prayers, etc. I bought a skinny 9-inch candle, lit it from the flame of another, and placed it in the holder. I said a few quick prayers for my special intentions and left it to burn with its fellow prayer candles.
After that, we walked around the outskirts of the shrine and grabbed some lunch. There were well over 20 Fátima souvenir shops, all right next to each other, all selling pretty much the same stuff (I don't know how any of them make money). We re-entered the shrine to look at the piece of the Berlin Wall that was there. "This segment was offered by means of Virgilio Casimiro Ferreira, a Portuguese emigrant to Germany and is here placed as a grateful memorial of God's intervention for the fall of Communism as promised at Fatima. This segment weighs 5,732 lbs. and measures 11'9'' high by 3' wide."
We started to walk back to the bus station to try to change our tickets: originally we planned to stay until the 6:30 bus, but we were done touring by 2:30. For Joe, Grace, and Helen, it was no trouble, a simple change in the system and a new printed ticket. However, when Hannah and I attempted to switch our tickets, there was a problem. "No internet, no change" said the ticket man in his broken English. We realized that because we bought the tickets online, he was unable to change them. And, because I was without the credit card used to pay for said ticket, he REALLY could not change it. Hannah even tried approaching the bus driver to explain that we had the paid ticket, we just wanted an earlier bus. A nice Portuguese stranger tried to help the situation by being her translator, but the bus driver wouldn't let us on. So we said bye to the other 3 and prepared to wait for 3 hours until our bus. The 3 pm bus left with our 3 friends, and 3:15 bus stopped by the station next. All of a sudden the Portuguese translator man from before comes inside and starts excitedly speaking to Hannah and me. "Bus 50, here, it is your bus" he tried to explain to us. He saw that our tickets said 'Bus 50', and the one that had just pulled into the station was also 'Bus 50'; therefore it was our bus, just a different time. "Thank you! Gracias! Obrigado!" we told him as we walked toward the bus. The bus driver had his back to us, so he didn't see our tickets, so Hannah and I "sneaked" onto the bus (with our pre-paid tickets!) and headed back to Lisbon.
Joe and Hannah needed directions to their hostel, so I brought them back to mine (only after asking for directions from 2 guys on the street). The desk worker gave them directions and we parted ways. I then took a much-needed 2 hour nap :) We decided to check out a local restaurant called "Casa de India" (recommended by Tiko) for dinner. It was a loonngg wait for a table of 6 to open up at one of the most popular restaurants, but it ended up being soooo worth it. The chicken, which they're known for, was pretty good, but what made it worth it were the friends we made during our meal. In most of Europe, when you go out to eat, you are just placed at any table that your party fits in, and if there's seating available right next to you, you eat with a complete stranger sitting right next to you. *Culture shock!* After only being seated for about 5 minutes, the young lady next to me turned and asked, in English, "So where are you guys from?" We explained to her that we were students from America, studying abroad in Madrid, Spain and traveling through Portugal for the weekend. Sophia and I quickly became friends as we asked each other questions about each others' lives, our cultures, and the truth or invalidity of the stereotypes about the U.S. What an incredible experience! There was a seat open across from Sophia, and within 10 minutes or so, a random French man named Phillip sat down there. Sophia and Phillip started bonding as they both spoke in their mutual language: English! Why isn't the U.S. this cultured?! A French man and a Portuguese woman converse in English while they share a dinner as strangers next to a table full of American study abroad students from Spain: SO. COOL.
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| Dinner at Casa de India Restaurant in Lisbon, Portugal, with our new friends Sophia and Phillip! |
Night 2: Done.
The next morning I had a tour at 9 am with "We Hate Tourism Tours"; it sounds crazy, but it was such an interesting concept! Instead of sitting in a big coach bus, driving to big historical monuments and museums and such, we got a personalized tour by 1 of 4 local guides who drove us around all day in big 9-person vans. Our tour guide was Johanna, a spunky 27-year-old who really knew her Portugal history and enjoyed her job! They took us to Sintra, a town within the Lisbon region where old royalty used to take "vacations", where we saw many beautiful old palaces built into the mountainside or on top of hills, including the Quinta da Regaleira. We sampled some of Portugal's classic queijadas (it was kind of like a crunchy little cinnamon cupcake with a rice-pudding-like filling) and ginja (a sweet liquor made with sour ginja berries).
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| Hannah, Theresa and I trying a small shot of ginja in an edible chocolate shot cup (tiny, but delicious!) |
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| Joe, Hannah and I eating the queijadas - soooo good! :) |
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| The palace of Quinta da Regaleira |
Hannah walking on water!^<Here's me posing with some nice rocks :)
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| From the bottom of the Unfinished Well, looking up |
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| From the top of the Unfinished Well, looking down |
Our next adventure was a drive to The Most Western Point in Europe. I wish I could express the beauty of the ocean and cliffs that I saw there, but words just cannot do it justice. Even these pictures only contain a fraction of nature's true beauty:
(It was insanely windy while we were there, too, which made it that much better for pictures, ex: crazy hair^
Luckily I had a small washcloth in my backpack that I used to scrub most of the sand off my feet, but it did nothing to dry my pants. Fortunately it was pretty sunny that day (although windy, too), so my pants (kinda) dried eventually. Another drive in our van brought us to the "rich, posh" part of Lisbon, as described by Johanna. We stopped for some amazing gelato (I got milk chocolate and caramel) and then we were on our way to the famous Belém Tower (pronounced like "Beh-LIME"). Honestly, I had never heard about this tower before that day, but apparently it's a well-known icon of Portugal that "is proof you were actually in Portugal. Otherwise, people aren't going to believe you" said Johanna.
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| The Tower of Belém! |
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| This is an example of a Pastel de Nata; it has a buttery crust and is filled with a thick, sweet cream. You usually sprinkle some powdered sugar and cinnamon on these as well! |
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| My W.H.T.T group with our awesome guide Johanna (third from right)! |
After dinner we decided to stop by the park that Tiko had suggested. All he had said was "It's pretty cool because you can pretty much see the whole city from there." With that being said, we pictured some trees and a swing set on top of a huge hill in the middle of the city. However, it turned out that "The Parque" was a parking garage, which you climbed to the top to see the view. And on top of it there was a cute, chic little restaurant & bar, complete with inside and outside seating, a stereo system, and small fire pits outside. If that wasn't cool enough, the view definitely was: the lights of various buildings and houses could be seen for miles, as well as the April 25th bridge (built just like the San Francisco bridge) that touched the ocean. It seriously took our breath away; we had to sit down in silence for a good 5 minutes to attempt to take it all in. Even with the lights of the city, we could still see numerous stars in the sky, including the Big Dipper. We didn't want to leave the Parque, much less Lisbon in general. (It brings back bittersweet memories even now as I type this, but I knew it couldn't last forever.) We stayed a bit longer, trying our very best to soak in as much of the view as our eyes and memories would allow us, and then we departed.
We met up with Miguel, another tour guide from W.H.T.T. who Kristen, Aman, and Danicole had as their guide, and he told us how to get to the Pink Road (it's a street in the young, hipster part of town that is literally painted pink!). We made our trek through the busy streets of Portugal, crowded with groups of young people hanging out or on their ways to the bars/clubs. We passed many streets that were filled with people who were just standing around, right outside the bars, drinking and socializing, completely calm and peaceful. Why can't this happen in the U.S.??! If we tried this at all, 1) people would get arrested for walking around with alcohol in public, 2) the immature teen/young adult population would probably do what they do best and get hammered/wasted/smashed, and 3) the aforementioned idiots would undoubtedly cause numerous scenes of embarrassing stupor or violence and thus ruin it for the rest of us. *Sigh* Oh well. It will just have to remain another aspect of Europe that makes it so much more interesting and mature than The States. Regardless, we eventually arrived at The Pink Road, took an obligatory "Look, we're tourists!" selfie with the road in the background, and headed back home to Equity Point.
Our plane left the Lisbon airport at 7:45 a.m. Sunday morning, which meant we had to be in a taxi around 5:30 a.m., which meant we all got about 2.5 hours of sleep. But hey, that's the traveler's life :)
Obrigada por tudo, Portugal!
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