Portuguese times

hi all!

This past week was really great. My parents and I started out our "grand tour" in Óbidos, a really cute medieval walled town.

Next we went to see two monasteries, Alcobaça and Batalha, which I have named as my two favorite monasteries in the world. They are absolutely beautiful and not swarmed with tourists like in Paris. It was wonderful. We stayed the night in Alcobaça (with a view of the monastery out of our hotel window) then continued to Coimbra, Portugal's university city.
Before arriving in Coimbra we stopped at Conímbriga, an ancient Roman city. Yes, there are Roman ruins in Portugal, and they're pretty awesome! Conímbriga had a lot of really wonderful mosaics.

The University of Coimbra was founded in the 1200s, so it's kinda old. The third oldest in Europe, actually. We took a tour of the university, seeing the ornate rooms they still sometimes use for ceremonies and things, and also seeing some of the first years dressed in traditional robes, which is something one never sees in the US.

After Coimbra we drove up to a hotel on the beach near Aveiro, a town on the coast of Portugal, famous for the cute little fishing boats all around. We took walks on the beach and watched people looking for clams. Our hotel was quite nice, though instead of finding it empty, like we expected, we discovered that there was a Red Bull convention going on, and there were therefore 8 red bull cars in the parking lot (they had huge cans of red bull on them). Quite funny.

The next day with walked around Aveiro for a bit--it's a really cute town with canals and salt marshes--then drove a couple hours town to the Alentejo in the south of Portugal. There we went to Évora, one of my favorite Portuguese cities. We stayed in an old convent right next to the ruins of a Roman temple... it was awesome! Évora has some cool Roman ruins as well as a chapel decorated all with bones.... creepy.

Friday night we came back to Lisbon, and yesterday we celebrated my birthday! 19 years, I can't believe it.
I started out the day by going to my favorite pastry shop in Lisbon (Careca--it means bald) for some wonderful croissants and other portuguese pastries. My parents and I then wandered around Belém where we climbed around the Tower of Belém, a really cool 500 year old tower that protected the Tagus river and was "the first and last thing the Portuguese explorers saw when the went on their voyages around the world." We also saw the monument to the discoveries, which is right on the river edge as well.

Around lunch time I left my parents and went to meet my friends Inês, Inês and Mariana. We had lunch in Pão Pão Queijo Queijo, my favorite falafel & sandwich shop (it means bread bread cheese cheese) then went into central Lisbon to walk around a bit. In the main square of central Lisbon we came across a huge demonstration by public school teachers from all over Portugal. About 800 bus loads of teachers! It was crazy... certainly an experience. I think they were protesting some change in the law, but I'm not sure.

Later we went back to my host family's house for my birthday dinner--a bunch of the relatives came (and by a bunch I mean a lot--my host family is huge!) and al in all it was really nice. The food was wonderful (Graça is an amazing cook!) and it was really nice to see a lot of my host relatives again. Knowing I have a sweet tooth, we had merangues, palmiers, cake, a different kind of cake, apple pie and chocolate mousse for dessert. It was ridiculous! (but so good!)

Today we continued our touring around Lisbon--went to see the Castelo São Jorge (Saint George Castle) and then strolled around Lisbon a bit. Now we're back in my parents hotel, taking a break before going out to a Fado restaurant (fado is traditional portuguese music) for dinner.

Speaking of food, the food this week was amazing! and for the most part, insanely cheap. I love portuguese food :-D.


Many beijinhos!