Last Minute Sightseeing

Hey everyone!

I am currently sitting in the foyer to my hotel because the internet in my room somehow got worse overnight. Yes, I am that dedicated to updating this blog.

Well, ok.. really I'm just bored. I went out for a bit yesterday but I'm not feeling great and I'm trying to rest up so that I can be 100% in Spain. So, I've been avoiding going out in the cold as much as possible. I keep waking up feeling like my tonsils are still there because it hurts to swallow. After having a couple cups of tea it feels better. But where was I...ah yes, the blog! I wanted to share with you all some pictures from this past Saturday! As I told you the other day I went to the Catacombs and two museums. The number of pictures I can put up will depend on how slow the internet is down here.

First of all, I should explain what the Catacombs are. I'm just going to say what I can remember from reading a few signs while we were there, and from what I saw for myself. The Catacombs is really one thing, so I'm going to use "is" instead of "are." The Catacombs is a series of underground tunnels that was built a few centuries ago by quarry diggers in France. Because of some incident, all of the bodies buried in the cemetery of innocents had to be dug up and placed somewhere else. There was either a flood..or overcrowding..or something. They started burying all the dead people in these underground tunnels, and families were allowed to visit them. As the burial site for each dead person began to look like it had not been visited for years, the skeletons were moved to the piles of skeletons already under there. So eventually what they had was 8,000 skeletons down there, their bones are piled along the walls in huge stacks, and the skulls rest on top of the piles.

We arrived at the entrance and were confronted with a sales lady who refused to accept my 20 Euro bill, saying she didn't have change. The ticket price was 4 euro for youth (16-25 yrs). Well, I didn't have change, and I sure wasn't going to just hand over 16 extra Euro. Besides, I knew there was no way that she didn't have ANY change. I mean where are we, Bolivia?! She stared at me until I said I'd pay for Hira too, and she handed me back 12 Euro. So off we went down the stairs to reach the underground cemetery. I was immediately nervous. The winding staircase we descended was so tightly wound that there wasn't that hole in the middle that you can look down to see how far you have to go. We just had to descend blindly for what seemed like hours, I kept looking for the moment when the wall would stop curving and we'd be there, but it took a very long time. I started getting nauseous. Once down there we walked through several dimly lit tunnels.

The ground was dirt and the walls were stone and mud brick. Initially I was like "this is so cool, this is JUST like Harry Potter!" Then I noticed that the ceiling was maybe 5 foot 7 inches high. And then I started thinking about how I would escape if I needed to, and I started to feel slightly claustrophobic. The only escape that we knew of was that hellish winding staircase and we were walking farther and farther away from it. There were supposed to be phones down there to call up to someone in case of trouble, but the only one I saw was out of order.

I made myself ignore that fact and that feeling went away. In one area of the tunnel there was a replica of what looked like a roman palace carved into the wall. Apparently the same guy dug them when he was prisoner down there and then he died from a cave in. After walking for 20 minutes through these tunnels, we reached the entrance to the cemetery.

This says "ARRÊTE! C'EST ICI L'EMPIRE DE LA MORT," this translates to "STOP! HERE IS THE EMPIRE OF DEATH."

It smelled funny in there. It wasn't as gross as I'd expected because they weren't whole skeletons, it was just piles of the same looking bone in neat stacks with skulls on top. Hira said she saw a hip bone, but all I saw was what looked like femurs and skulls.

There was a really cool skull and cross bones built into a couple of the piles, but because we weren't allowed to use flash, the picture didn't come out great. As we walked through the cemetery part of the tunnels, we noticed that the ceilings here were dripping every now and then, creating pools of dirty water on the ground. The last thing I wanted to do was get dripped on with what I decided was death juice in a cold underground cemetery from which there was no escape.

At the end of the cemetery there was another winding staircase to return to the land of the living. At this staircase there was a sign that told us exactly how many steps it would be until we reached the top (87). Thank goodness for that sign, or else I think Hira and I might've lost it.

After this we headed over to Musée d'Orsay to see some art. Hira said we should get in free by showing our long stay visas and our Sciences-Po student IDs. We walked over to what we thought was the appropriate entrance (out of like 5 entrances) and Hira, who is in Intermediate French but decided that since she was 2 days from being home she no longer needed to speak french, asked the doorman in english if he spoke english. He shook his head and said "Français, Español, et Italiano." Hira looked at me and said "spanish!" so I hastily switched to spanish mode and said:

"Hablas español?"

"Sí."

"Ok..uhm..somos estudiantes..y.." (we are students..and..)

Then he broke off in French and said something and pointed to the door, motioning for us to enter. After saying what he'd said in french, for some reason unbeknownst to me he switched to italian! The only word I caught was "Inglese." I very bewilderedly entered the revolving door, and behind me Hira, also obviously confused, tried to enter too but she walked straight into the glass. It was priceless.

I really liked this museum, it seemed overwhelmingly large when we first walked in, but after an hour and a half we'd walked through almost 2/3 of it. I don't have pictures from this because they weren't allowed. All of the Monet (which this museum is famous for) was gone for the Monet exhibit at the Grand Palais, but we saw Manet, Van Gogh, and some other guys. It was 4:30 and the last museum we wanted to visit, Musée de l'Orangerie, which is in the middle of the Tuileries Gardens in front of the Louvre, closed at 6pm. We walked across the Seine and through the gardens to wait in line for our free youth tickets.

I absolutely love Musée de l'Orangerie!! I hadn't been before. It is TINY and so it is extremely doable. It is known for the two oval-shaped rooms of Monet panoramic paintings that wrap around the entire room, creating the feeling that you are in his gardens. Those rooms were pretty sweet, but all the seating space was taken so we stood staring for a bit and continued downstairs.

All of the paintings downstairs (we saw Matisse, Renoir, Picasso, and some other people I can't remember), were very beautiful paintings. I really can't appreciate most modern art, but this kind of art I can truly enjoy. And pictures were allowed! (As long as you turned off your flash). So I have a few pictures of paintings that I especially enjoyed. I would put pictures up of these but the internet connection is like Crabbe and Goyle: almost too slow to function.

Of course at this point we needed nourishment.

We chose to descend the walkway in front of the museum to Place de la Concorde (where the end of the Christmas market on the Champs Élysées and the end of the Tuileries Gardens meet) to get it in the form of waffles covered in melted Nutella. For dinner we met Yomna and walked to our Indian restaurant, only to find it closed. It looked like it was undergoing construction. After walking up and down Montparnasse looking for other ethnic food and failing, we settled on Pasta Papa.

Thus ends my last night with the people on my program. That night I was up late, being awoken by tipsy people saying goodbye, someone wanting me to return a library book they forgot about, my roommate getting the handheld luggage weigher she'd borrowed from a girl she doesn't like stuck to her bag, and the 20 minutes that ensued with a parade of people stopping in our room trying to help get it unstuck. Of course, I was glad for these nightly interruptions. Anything to extend my time with new friends. Not to mention, at 3 am all of these events were experienced with a healthy dose of hilarity. I've really enjoyed my time here. I am so grateful that I was able to be a part of this program.

That's all for now. I'm off to pick up some lunch. I may decide to update again later today.

Love,

H.

My New Digs

Bon soir,

After a late night of goodbyes and conflicting emotions about the end of my study abroad experience, I moved into my hotel this afternoon.

The first thing I did of course, was take pictures of the room to share with all of you! Then, I checked my internet access and had to go back downstairs to sign in to the network. After the internet connection had been secured, thus securing my connection to the outside world, I tore into my lunch and watched most of You've Got Mail on my laptop. I fell asleep 10 minutes before the end but woke up and finished it before taking a shower. I decided that it would be a good idea to turn on the TV while I ate dinner, but found that the only channels in english were CNN, BBC world news, and some snoozetastic weather channel. While I love the BBC I didn't feel like watching news so I rented Inception from iTunes. But alas, the download began and it said it should be done downloading in 18 hours. I accepted that I'd just watch it tomorrow when it finished downloading, and I popped in Away We Go. Let me just say, I love all of John Krasinski's roles. This is him if you don't know who I'm talking about. (From It's Complicated, The Office, Away We Go, etc..):

Here are the pictures from my hotel room:

P.S. I started writing this around 7:30 and it is now 10:52. That's how long it took to upload these pictures.

I was thinking I'd post about the Catacombs, but I think I'll do that tomorrow downstairs in case the internet is better down there.

-H.

Walking to Bon Marché con mi Camera in the Snow

Second post of the day-

After I wrote to you about the snow this morning I layered up and ventured outside to get some food. The closest thing I have to boots here are my Hunters and they have been my best friend since the colder temps have arrived. I pulled on my thickest socks, put on my boots, grabbed my camera, and headed out the door!

Here are some pictures of the snow:

Outside my building:

Outside Bon Marché:
I walked around Bon Marché mostly for fun and the energy in there was great! I love shopping during the holidays. All the decorations have been up since Thanksgiving and the place was packed with families shopping. People were everywhere!! Jingle bells was even playing outside. I'm not kidding.

I bought some gloves and the lady at the register asked me in english if I wanted to pay in Euro or Japanese money.

??

I was about to ignore her mistake but she caught herself and blushed but her english wasn't good enough for a quick recovery. I successfully told a saleslady "no, merci" when I understood that she was asking if I needed help! Then I went back to her and asked her the price of something. In french. Boo-yah!

I'm going to download a Christmas movie.

-Hillary out.

Harry Potter and the Visit from Mom and Mo

Hi friends!

Happy Belated Thanksgiving!!! I know, I know, I haven't update the blog in a while.. but I have a good excuse!!! Last Saturday Mom and Morgan came to visit me!! They came in on Saturday morning and I returned from London that afternoon after having seen Harry Potter the night before in Londontown.

Sidenote: Harry Potter was EPIC. I think it might be my favorite movie so far. It was the closest to the book, and we all know how much I hate it when the stray from the plot. (AHEM pathetically pitiful ministry battle scene at the end of Order of the Phoenix, I'm talking to you). I also had a fabulous time with Yomna and Hira walking around the city and spending all day shopping at Topshop in Soho. The best part of the trip was easily the collective gasp in the theater as the movie started. Priceless. Here's some pics from London:

Moving on, Mom and Mo leave very early tomorrow morning. We had a fun time hanging out and I really loved showing them around. Here are a few highlights from the visit.

Monday through Wednesday I had class all day long so Mom and Mo went to Musée D'Orsay (which was inexplicably closed but where they met a very charming older British lady), shopped at Galleries Lafayette, and saw Harry Potter (for Mo it was the second time).

This is the Christmas Tree at Galleries Lafayette.

The Sunday before all of my classes I took the afternoon to show them around the Opéra Garnier. Instead of paying extra for a guided tour, I did the tour from memory. I was so excited when we found a door on the 2nd floor that was open for people to view the theater with the lights on.
Thursday I took Mom and Morgan shopping around my neighborhood. We went to Bon Marché (a large upscale Harrods-like department store) in the morning, stopped by Repetto for some shoes for Morgan in the afternoon, looked in the windows at Manoush, ate some late lunch, stopped by Aigle where Mom bought rain boots and children's riding boots, got crêpes on the side of the road, and picked up some macarons at Ladurée! It was a long day of shopping. The picture below is the three of us sitting in front of a mirror while Mom was trying on shoes at Aigle. I took the picture because I thought each of us was sitting in a way that completely reflected our personalities.

If you start on the left with mom, you'll see that she's sitting in a very proper and composed manner. Morgan is in the middle, sitting like she doesn't care what that position does to her posture at all, and then there's me on the right, just looking awkward.

After leaving Aigle and getting some macarons (to go) it started pouring, so we ran to the nearest metro and stopped near Galleries Lafayette to shop at Mango. All of the huge department stores are decorated for the holidays and it's really pretty.

Friday afternoon we took a cooking class. The company that offers the cooking classes in english is owned by a woman from Hyde Park (who used to be a banker for citi group) and her french husband. We made french onion soup, spinach souflée, and chocolate fondant. It was so much fun!! And it was delicious. Chopping onions in the beginning was a bit of a nightmare as 11 people were chopping them, but looking back it was pretty funny.

After eating we walked over to Oysho for some loungewear and then crossed to street to go into BHV for Morgan to get a hat but we ended up walking out with a lot more than that hat. I had wanted to take them to Le Marais to get falafel but we were too stuffed and tired so we called it a day and headed back to the hotel. Today we took it easy. We met Hira and Yomna at Angelinas for some famous hot chocolate. I ordered a pecan brioche to make dad happy. (Happy dad?) Somehow sleeping in and drinking hot chocolate exhausted Mo, and this is what she looked like before we ordered room service for dinner.

I bid them farewell and headed back to my dorm to get some work done and let them get to bed early before their flight tomorrow. I can't wait to see them again in Spain in a few weeks. But for now, it's working time. This week I have 3 finals, 2 of which are two hour essays, and a 100 page yet-unwritten group research paper to turn in. It's going to be a marathon.

H.

Portugal ch. 4: Leaving Lisbon for Lagos

WARNING: This post is very long. You have my permission to read it in pieces.

And now, for the final chapter of my week in Portugal!!!

We left off on Sunday late afternoon in fairy tale land in Sintra.

That evening once we'd returned to Lisbon on the train we decided to take it easy because we'd had a long day of walking/hiking. We ate dinner and relaxed at a coffee shop called Brown's Coffee to eat and read. It was like a large starbucks. We just camped out and didn't move for a couple of hours until it was time to return to the hostel to shower and sleep.

Monday:

Apparently in Portugal Monday is the day that nothing is open. We had been informed of this the previous day by our breakfast friends (whom I forgot to mention we ran into at the moorish castle in Sintra). We decided to wander around the areas known as Barrio Alto and Alfama. They were in opposite directions so we began with Barrio Alto. To reach this neighborhood involved a lot of uphill climbing but we passed by a plaza that I later recognized to be the same plaza where Ali and Roberto took pictures. Most things were closed because it was still before 11am. We found a really book store where I spent some time leafing through books. It was a pretty cool area.

Afterwards we returned to our neighborhood and sat by water for a half an hour, I was reading To Kill A Mockingbird and was almost done with it so I was trying to slow down so I'd have something to read on the train ride to Lagos.

We walked to Alfama, considered Lisbon's old town, caught lunch, and walked over to another castle. Outside of the castle a rasta guy was selling something. As I passed him he said to me "Eres Española?" (Are you Spanish?) I shook my head and half smiled in delight and then he said "Oh! Eres Italiana!" (Oh! You are Italian!). I grinned, so happy to be presumed anything other than American, and he gave me a high five. The next two pictures are from Alfama:

We walked back to our neighborhood and found ourselves on a major shopping street, so naturally we spent a few hours popping in and out of stores. We bought some pastries and returned to Brown's to relax. Once we were ready for dinner we headed over to the local mall and ate in the food court. We each got huge salads and then to balance that out we ordered chocolate cake.

Tuesday:

Tuesday morning we had a 10:20 train to Lagos (pronounced "Lagosh"). We arrived at the train station around 9:40 and couldn't find our train time on the monitors. In horror I looked down at my ticket and realized that our train station was the Lisboã-Oriente station, the one in the suburbs about 10 minutes before Lisbon. I had noticed this a couple of days earlier but we figured that didn't make any sense and that it would just stop in the main station on it's way down to Lagos. There were no teller windows in that entrance and I frantically ran across the street to what seemed like some kind of train building as well. I showed the woman our tickets and asked her if that meant we were at the wrong station. She kept telling me I had to cross the street and look at the monitors to find my train platform. We were losing precious time! Finally she listened to what we were asking and she confirmed it and told us to find a taxi. We happened to be in the one city where taxi drivers do not wait in or around their taxi when they are in a line up. We found 15 taxis and none of them had drivers. We crossed the street again to the main drop off point for the station and hopped in a cab as soon as some woman got out. He didn't speak english so I broke out my rusty spanish. "Tenemos prisa!" I told him (we're in a hurry!).

He flew and got us there in ten minutes and I gave him a tip and thanked him. At the station the monitor had out train time but a different city other than Lagos was listed. I asked this older British couple and they said our tickets indicated a transfer at that other city, then on to Lagos. We sat down, relieved, and waited for the train to come. The British couple took us under their wing (I'm SURE they were grandparents by the way they took care of us) and made sure we got on the right train car and everything. We knew how to board a train but I just smiled and let them help us with whatever they wanted to. On the train I instantly wanted them there to tell us when to get off and transfer, but they were far away in another train car. The ride got prettier and prettier the more south we got. We looked out the window at the sea and at miles of orange bush things (they had oranges on them but it didn't look anything like a tree). After our transfer I looked out the window and saw several geckos crawling around by the tracks.

We reached Lagos around 2:45 pm.

Once again, we followed the crowd and then we got directions from a rent-a-car place to our hostel. They also gave us a handy map of the town. Lagos is known for it's beaches and is quickly becoming a vacation spot for lots of British who are buying up properties. I can tell it is still a city in development (it looked like a poor man's Huntington Beach) but in a few years I could see the prices rising and the tourism business becoming more professional. As we were asking for directions everyone kept telling us to walk past the big statue of the person, the statue that no one really knows what it is:

After checking into our hostel, which felt liked it too belonged in southern california, we found lunch and walked around. The town is really tiny. This was late October, but I bet that in the summer it is over-run with families and college kids doing beach stuff and clogging up the restaurants. I'd love to return in the summer. As it was, there were already tons of Brits there when we were there. Really, it was a town of British people. We found dinner at this hippy place where we ate on a couch because the mexican place we'd wanted to eat at was empty. The food was delicious and we enjoyed the vibe.

Wednesday:

We ate breakfast at a tiny place called the Odeon café, owned by a middle-aged British man who also serves as the cook, and his daughter (who was around my age and was on facebook on the computer everytime we walked in) was the waitress. It had a tv and the menu was full of cheap american/english breakfast food like pancakes, hash browns, eggs on toast, beans on toast, and juices. The atmosphere was very friendly. When the daughter would take our order she'd sit down next to us at our table and write everything down. They also had free internet. We returned each morning for the rest of our time in Lagos.

That afternoon we spent a few hours at the beach because it was about 80 degrees and Jennie wanted to tan. I am done with tanning on purpose, I'm hella afraid of getting sun spots and premature wrinkles..not to mention skin cancer. So I put sunscreen on constantly. And I still got tan, woohoo!

There was this dog on the beach that was about..twice as big as tiger and asia and had black curly hair. It spent all afternoon harassing beach goers with it's incessant barking. It barked at everyone who went near the water. It barked at me as i was halfway in the water but eventually switched to barking at a group of British college-aged boys. Every sound was amplified because of the rocks and at one point, as I was reading "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" (a book I'd picked up the day before because I'd finished my other one), I heard one of the guys yell "F*ck he's after me!!!" British accent and all. I looked over, along with every single other person on the beach, and watched as this kid tried to swim away from the dog, only for the dog to follow him into the water.

As the sun went down it got chilly and we stopped for tea and "read" a couple of Portuguese magazines.

We ate dinner next to an American/Canadian couple at an otherwise empty restaurant. They were acting oddly formally and politely but we couldn't figure out what they would be doing in Portugal on a first date. I decided they must've come with a big group of friends, and everyone else was not interested in dinner quite yet, but they were and they decided to eat by themselves and they didn't know each other before the trip hence the awkwardness. Afterwards we got hot drinks at a café called Xpreîtaqui. They played coffee shop music and we chilled there and chatted for awhile before hitting the sack.

Thursday:

We had breakfast at odeon café again. Then at noon we went kayaking!! The kayaks were doubles, and it was us two, a strangely quiet Australian couple, and two very tan, small-ish, and muscular guides. The journey was a 3 hour trip to see the rock formations along the shores and to visit the grottos. Jennie and I pulled up the rear the whole time, but it was a great work-out and I was glad for the exercise. The guides kept pointing out rock formations and saying "this one is an elephant, this one is a face, this one is a toilet seat.." Once he said the toilet seat one I started to wonder if he and the other guide have fun by pulling out random nouns every time they hit the water and hearing the tourists go "Oh, I see it!" Jennie and I started doing it too. I would look at a rock and be like "This one looks like a teapot! That one looks like a table!" The guides started laughing and judging by their reaction I have a feeling I'm right about them making it up sometimes.

After the kayaking we sat on the beach so Jennie could tan some more. It wasn't as warm as the day before but it was still somewhere in the 70s. After an hour on the beach I tried to find the slave market. According to our map I had passed by that plaza a dozen times already. Our map wasn't totally accurate as we'd figured out during our time in Lagos (another thing that will improve in the next couple of years). It told me it was located in one corner, but it absolutely was not that corner since that corner held a bikini store and a restaurant. I think it was this:

On the sides of the broken platform were iron rungs. Also, why else would they keep this broken slab of cement around? This is on the side of the church in the lower picture.

We showered, tried and failed to get the hostel cat out of our room and had to get help from the manager, then read for a bit and ate an early dinner. After dessert we walked around and ended up back at our café with the weird name.

Friday:

We grabbed breakfast at the odeon café. Our train wasn't scheduled until 4pm so we sat down in another café while we watched a tropical storm try to blow everyone over. We had a ten minute walk to get to the train station and there was no sign of the storm letting up. We changed into our board shorts and I put my scarf over my head and we hurried in the rain over to the station. We spent about 20 minutes in the bathroom drying ourselves off along with our luggage/shoes/purses.

Once I was done I saw a sign that said the next train wasn't until 5:20. I have a suspicion that the train time on our ticket was for our transfer stop, not from the Lagos station. Which meant we were going to miss our train. We hastily changed our tickets to the 5:20 and later called the hostel to let them know we wouldn't be arriving until sometime after 1 am. The train ride was long and we had a couple of transfers, but I survived by reading my book and eating trail mix. Except for the stuffiness I was quite content. Jennie had less patience for the train ride, and I realized that Bolivia really helped me to see transportation in a new light. After being on a 10-hour freezing cold and bumpy ride to Sucre and back, several cold 7 hour bus rides to La Paz with one bathroom stop, and taking a 12 hour train to Tupiza in freezing temperatures with unsanitary bathrooms and warm but gross blankets and alpaca socks on my feet, 6 hours through Portugal was a piece of cake.

We returned to the same cool cinema hostel in Porto that we stayed at when we arrived in Portugal. We had to return to Porto because the only flights to Paris left from Porto. I was in bed by 2:10 am and woke up a little after 8 to grab a relaxed breakfast at the hostel before leaving at 9:15 am for the metro to the airport. We arrived with plenty of time and witnessed a strange scene. The picture below is my sneaky no-flash shot of what we saw. We walked much closer but I didn't think taking a picture of a possibly dead woman would make the police very happy. In front of the police was a person on the ground covered with a medical sheet. There was no medical professional around, and the police weren't even paying attention to the body. I looked around for mourners and saw one lady facing the opposite direction on a bench and a man who was putting his arm around her. I can't even be sure she was related to the incident at all. There was an arm and a foot sticking out from under the blanket. She was there for at least half an hour with nothing going on around her except some police standing a ways away chatting. There was no rope or barrier around, I mean literally someone could've walked up and uncovered her before the police noticed. Eventually some paramedics carried her away in no hurry and put her in the back of a van that could've been an ambulance but I couldn't see it that well. I didn't hear any sirens.

Anywho, I bought a National Geographic and we boarded the plane back to Paris!!!

That's the end of my trip to Portugal! We leave for Geneva tomorrow morning for a public health field trip to MSF headquarters and WHO headquarters. We also get fondue.

-H.

Portugal Ch.2: Lazing in Lisbon

Hola Lovers!!

Or should I say, "Bonjour!" This is chapter 2 of my trip to Portugal.

I left something out of my last post about Porto! After dinner and ice cream, we returned to our hostel and got ready for bed. We were staying in a room of 4 but so far we hadn't seen our roommates. We'd guessed that it was a guy and a girl because one of the beds was not made and sort of messy, and the other one was made and rather neat. As we were journaling, our roomies came in. It was in fact a guy and a girl. After a brief introduction I realized that we had made the wrong conclusion. They were both very talkative and outgoing, but I decided we were wrong based on two things.

A) The girl was put together and even had a cardigan on, but in a devil-may-care way. She talked about only getting 2 hours of sleep before her flight that morning because she'd been out until 6 am in Barcelona (where she's studying abroad).

B) The guy was gay. And I'm not stereotyping here. He was very put together in a neat way and a tad more polite. (Not that she was rude! She just abandoned the formalities in meeting new people..which was actually really refreshing.)

We chatted with them for awhile. Both are juniors at Middlebury in Vermont. When I heard this I almost jumped up and shouted with joy. You see, Middlebury is the birthplace of college quidditch. They started it a few years ago and college quidditch has grown immensly. Maybe I'll do a post on college quidditch sometime soon and explain how it works. Anyway, to me they might as well have told me they went to Hogwarts. I didn't hesitate to convey to them the sheer joy of being in their presence. They agreed with me and thought the quidditch team at Middlebury was really cool. We talked with them for awhile until they left to find a bar or a club. Before they walked out we asked which bed belonged to which person, and I was right. He had the neat bed and she had the messy one.

The next morning we caught a 3 and a half our train to Lisbon. We almost got off at the wrong stop in some random little town because we couldn't understand the announcements for each station and there was no schedule or list of stops to reference. Eventually a middle aged man picked up on our panic and he told us the Lisbon stop was next, but we wanted the second Lisbon stop because it was in the city center.

The tourism office at the train station was closed. I called the hostel to find out where to go, and he told us to take a bus. We found the right bus and thankfully got off at the right stop (there was no sign to indicate which stop it was) and eventually found our hostel. Our hostel was SWEET. When we got there an older couple was trying to make a reservation, but there were no vacancies. It's always weird when people over 30 are in a hostel, but they are always there. I don't want to be in hostels after 30, let me tell you. But they are fun now! There are always tons of people my age, and lots of solo travelers doing the "around the world" vacation that so many 28 year olds do after their "I'm done with grad school/my job sucks" crisis. These people are anxious to meet others and plan activities during the time that their itineraries overlap. Also, lots of hostels are really cool looking and most of the ones I've stayed in are very clean, super trendy, and have a very helpful staff. I took some pictures of this one. I forgot to take a picture of the lounge, but there was a huge tv in the wall playing CNN and below it was a queen size bed with a sign that read: "Make Love, Not War."

On the wall in the staircase (each floor had a different graphic):

On the wall on my floor between the showers and the rooms:
My room. Notice that there are 3 bunk beds lined up in a row, and the bottom beds have a curtain for privacy:
The key for this hostel looked like a coiled key-chain that goes around your wrist, and it had a tiny circle, the shape of a watch face that was an electronic key. That circle opened the front door, the room door, and your specific under-bed drawer by placing it on an electronic sensor. The under-bed drawers were big enough to fit my suitcase and still have extra space. So cool!!

Each bed had its own reading light, a tiny shelf, and an outlet. The only main light in the room was the backlight to the gray cityscape on the wall. So turning on the light doesn't disturb everyone because it isn't a strong light.

Peep this bathroom sign:
After checking out the hostel we wandered through a market at the main plaza and then sat by the sea shore for awhile.

This mass of fish was very mysterious. They were all swimming toward a lowered wall and not making much progress. Seagulls were dipping down attempting to pick one up but these fish were way too big for them. A friend from Northwestern who saw my this picture on my facebook told me that the fish were doing the same thing when he was in Lisbon last year...

Thus ends chapter 2!

To be continued...

Hillary