I Love Portuguese Ducklings

Hi again! Shall we go back to Lisbon?

On Sunday afternoon I went to Belém to meet my friend Mariana for a picnic in the gardens there. It was wonderful to see her, spend an afternoon catching up, and wandering around beautiful Belém. I had walked from my host family's house to Belém and after a nice afternoon, walked back (about an hour each way--keeps transportation prices down!).
For dinner my host family and I went to Alfama, the old, moorish part of Lisbon. The next Saturday was the festival of Santo António, one of the biggest festivals in Lisbon, so Alfama was full of people, music, decorations and stands selling sardines, beer and ginja (portuguese cherry liqueur). We had sardines at a cute little restaurant across from a church (in a residential area--during the festivals the people who live in Alfama just give up their front stoops to the celebration). It was a lot of fun and very, very portuguese.
I spent a relaxing Monday afternoon at the Tropical Garden in Lisbon (also in Belém--one of my favorite areas), admiring tropical plants and cute families strolling around. At one point I found a cute little stream full of ten ducklings and spent the next 45 minutes staring at them and taking videos of them. I was absolutely in love.
That evening I met up again with Mariana and another friend, Inês, and went with them to their latin dances class. It was great to spend time with them, and I got a free dance class on top of that! After dance I went back to my host family's house for dinner with my host grandparents, which was fun--always nice to reconnect with the rest of the family.
The next day I reconnected with the other side of the family--I had lunch at my host grandfather's house. It was just like old times; I used to go to his house at least a few times a week for lunch, and each time various aunts and uncles and cousins would come and eat with us. After lunch I headed into Lisbon to Santa Apolónia train station to check about train tickets, which involved a lot of walking around construction zones, but it was fine. Afterwards I had some time to explore Lisbon, so I decided to check out the "University City" part of town and the national library. That was a sort of funny afternoon, because there's really not much to see. The library is nice enough, but I looked quite creepy walking around upstairs to areas where there were just offices or random exhibits that I didn't have much interest in. The rest of the university area was mostly big blocky buildings and busy streets.
The next day was much more exciting--my friends Jackie and Becky arrived! I met them at the airport, then after lunch and a quick rest at my host family's house we walked around Belém (again!) where we saw the Jerónimos Monastery (absolutely beautiful manueline architecture, and it houses the tombs of Vasco de Gama and Luís de Camões) and had a snack. We missed out on the Tower of Belém because it closed early, but nearby we stumbled upon a funny TV program that was being filmed outside in the gardens. It was quite hard to tell what was going on, but it was still fun to see.
That evening we got a beautiful view of Lisbon at a miradouro (viewpoint) and went back to my host family's house for dinner and an early-to-bed for my jetlagged friends (who thus far had done an amazing job with the jetlag!).

Well I do have much more to write but I figure it has been so long since I posted that even this little bit is good enough. I'll try to get caught up to Oslo, but you may just have to wait until I'm back in the states to hear about my norwegian adventures. Sorry!