The long road...

Chapter Two-
The Flight to England or GET ME OFF THIS DAMN PLANE!!

Well with the help of Simon, I managed to get a ticket for a decent price with Ryanair to London. I'm glad he was there to give me advice though, that company is ridiculous. In order to buy a ticket you first have to pay for your baggage, pay for paying with a card, pay for everything. But I expected that, what I didn't expect was having to go through the slough of advertisements just to find the "pay now" button on the bottom of the page! Then Simon reminds me that I have to check in online right away (which I don't see the point of) and go through the entire process again!! Ah well, I figured it out, got a good seat, and made it to London at Stanstead okay by around 9am. I feel a bit silly, but I spent a good chunk of that day looking for a shower! However I still got to see a fair bit. I checked out Trafalgar, Buckingham, Victoria, the Thames, what I thought was a cathedral but was actually House of Commons or something...I had a pretty nice little walk.

And here's ol Stumpy himself!

And someone who I'm not entirely proud of being distantly related to...

Ollie Ironsides Cromwell, a crazy ol fool whom the Royalists tried, hung in chains, and beheaded. All after he had been dead for two years.

Showin our colours! And the road to Buckingham.

And that was my day in London. Pretty fun actually, and it seems everytime I show up in the Capital its bleeding hot! Lucky me I guess!

After my sightseeing and a beer, I made my way back to Victoria Coach Station to take yet another bus to my final destination, Edinburgh. This bus wasn't too long, only about 9 hours...*sighs* and I opted for the cheaper bus because I figured I could sleep on it. Well, wasn't I surprised when I found this!!

What a wild ride....

Well hello there everyone, I didn't forget about you all back home, honestly! However this past week and a bit (I just realized I haven't posted since July 11th) has been probably one of the hardest times in my life. I'm probably just saying that because I'm still in the midst of this crazy period, but I'll look back in a couple weeks and think "what the heck was all that about?" So a profound apology for the lack of updates coming in.
But enough of that, you'll probably want to be seeing some keen stuff, right? Well there's a fair bit to show so I'll have to do it in chapters, for it's more story than pictures (though there is a fair bit of that as well.)

Chapter 1-
The Road to Porto or GET ME OFF THIS DAMN BUS!!!!

Actually the bus wasn't bad at all, compared to the Barcelona-Lisbon expedition it was quite dreamy and relaxed partly due to my night-before-induced comatose state. Leaving Lisbon was hard, I met a ton of good people there that I still keep in touch with and I was quite sad to see them go. The road to Porto was pretty interesting though, quite a bit of vineyards and some nice scenery as we were fairly close to the ocean most of the way. Having booked my ticket in advance I got the best seat at the very front of the bus with no one beside me! And Portuguese buses are really nice too, brand new leather, free WiFi, and climate controlled.
It was a pretty short trip, one quick stop in Fatima where I ran out of the bus and bought a rosary just to say I did, then next stop Porto! However, you'd think with such a small distance between these two cities the climates would be the same: not true. Lisbon was a scorching 43 degrees where as Porto was a mild foggy 25 or so. It wasn't just the temperature that was colder either, Porto is a depressing place. I hate to say it, but it was not my favorite. Not to say it didn't have good things about it, but the people there walked around like everyone's firstborn had died! I think the poor economic state of Portugal was most prominent here, but it seemed like the corruption was just accepted unlike Lisbon's subtle political tension. But I'll show you a picture to get the idea.

Just a shabby lookin place in general, and without the colourful banners and such. Lots of big, black stone official looking buildings too. But now that I've torn this city to shreds, I have to say it has some of the coolest views I've seen yet! These next photos were taken at the far end of a cathedral parking lot.

And this is the aforementioned cathedral!

And I did meet one really cool person here as well, an Awesome Aussie named Simon. Soon after I arrived we hit it off pretty well and decided to go find some dinner. We opted to try the local cuisine, the famous Francesinha. This thing puts the Denny's Slamburger to shame! Wikipedia describes it perfectly:

Francesinha is a Portuguese sandwich originally from Porto, made with bread, wet-cured ham, linguiça, fresh sausage like chipolata, steak or roast meat and covered with melted cheese and a hot thick tomato and beer sauce served with french fries.

I rest my case. It was good, but once-in-your-lifetime good. Over the next couple days I did venture out of my hostel/cave a couple times and did manage to find some really interesting sights.

Now you can really see the rawness of this country. I shouldn't really give it that hard a time in retrospect, for in a way it was good to see an honest city.
But that was pretty much it for Porto, on the last day Simon and I decided to check out the beach. We got horribly lost cuz Porto is the only city I visited where multiple train lines use the same tracks. I think we ended up taking two wrong trams and finding the beach about two hours later than we had hoped. This worked out okay though, when we found it there wasn't much to see at all, and the massive shipping harbour right next to the beach was a little unattractive. We decided to head home and cook dinner, and bought a bottle of....guess!

Port. The next day (or same day depending on how you look at it) at about 5am I hopped on the bus to the airport way too early for my first adventure with Ryanair. And indeed, the first flight I've taken since I landed in Gatwick over months ago!

To be continued....

The soul of Europe.

First off, I have to apologize for the insane amount of pictures in this post, but once you see them you'll understand why I just couldn't leave them out! This is only a fraction of the photos I took, I might add.

So last time I posted I had just arrived in Lisbon, the oldest capital city in western Europe. It actually predates Paris and Rome by a couple hundred years! I have to say, my first impression of the city wasn't the greatest, but that serves me right for continuously showing up in towns on a Sunday! In Europe, you should never judge a town on a Sunday, you'll think no one lives there except drug dealers and bums. I checked in to the Goodnight hostel at 7am-ish, had a shower, chilled for a bit, then did my typical 'roam the town' trick, but all I really found was a nearly empty square, a bunch of run-down buildings, and a French aircraft carrier in the harbour. I still have no idea what that was all about...

By the way, I rediscovered the panorama function on my phone camera, and Portugal has the most amazing views so you're gonna see a lot of those. So I got a little lost as usual, found my way back to the hostel, and looked up some sights in town. I found online a little chapel/museum that had free entry till 2, so I hopped up and rushed over. Sorry for the quality of the photos, I forgot my camera and had to use the phone.

Apparently the Portuguese really liked taking the bones of saints and putting them in glass cases or sculptures. I'm pretty sure that's a skull on the bottom. And I gotta say, those statues have kind of a creepy blank look to them!

Some neat artifacts from the museum. Those robes are threaded with gold! But that's nothing, check this out.

That right there is the most expensive chapel in Europe, the chapel of São João Baptista. Apparently we know where all that Brazillian gold went! And take a closer look at those "paintings." They aren't paintings, they're mosaics! How long would one of those take, eh!
After that I went back to the hostel to get some laundry done, only to find that they didn't have the facilities, but their sister hostel, Good Morning, did, and it was only a seven minute walk. On the way I found a newer part of town, some live jazz in a park, and some chill time.

So I got all that done, and by this time it was dinner, so I went back to my hostel once again. I'm going to keep most of the text pretty short just because there's so many photos, but I'll try not to leave anything out! At the hostel there was some new people hanging around so I got to know a few of them, notably James and Emma from New Zealand. I also got to know a bit of the staff too. I gotta say, and I know I already said Tossa had the best hostel, but the Goodnight Hostel of Lisbon was perfect. The hostel itself was very charming, clean, quiet, but it was the staff that made it. Vicente, Sofia, João (there were three,) Magda, the list goes on. Young awesome people who seem to genuinely love what they did, and were excellent at it. I felt more like I was in their house than a hostel!
Anyhow, I rant again. A few of us decided to take the walking castle tour in the morning. We got up, had our pancakes, which were awesome, met up with a crew from the other hostel, and headed out. This tour was conducted by more members of the hostels, Manuela and....João. There's a lot of those here... I've never enjoyed a tour quite that much, those two spent most of the time laughing and poking fun at each other, but still managed to load us up with info. Here's the castle with some views and panoramas from the top.

One of the towers of the castle had been converted into a really neat periscope tour.

And there was a museum with a ton of pottery and ol' clay pipes.

Random dude on a typical Alfama district street.

Here's one thing that blew my mind.

Just like apples back home! During this little tour I got to know a few other people pretty good. Barb from San Fran, and Lauren from Florida who was staying in the other hostel. Barb, James, Emma, and I decided after the tour to grab some Pastel De Nata (famous Portuguese custard tarts) and head to the Belèm district to the West, which houses the Royal Palace and numerous Museums.

This little tower is really cool. See those little portholes on the bottom? There's a matching tower on the other side of the river and when enemy boats would sail through, those cannons would tear them apart at water level from both sides.

The Portuguese Military Museum. That guard had a pretty intense dislike of the Spanish. That night the four of us got some dinner at a place recommended to us by Sofia from the hostel called Santa Rita, then ventured in search of Fado music! We never did find the typical dark cave-like House of Fado I had pictured in my mind, but we did find a little outdoor place and the singers were quite good, so we had success. That night after everyone else went to bed I had some good talks with Vicente and a couple other staff, but turned in early as we had some good plans the next day!
After breakfast, I met up with Barb, Lauren, and Ivana from Italy, and we headed to the train station to embark on a day trip to Sintra. We had a bit of trouble with the ticket machines, but it all worked out in the end. Now before I force this mass of photos down your throat, I'll give you a quick background on Sintra.
Back in the day, all the wealthy nobles and royalty of Lisbon and surrounding areas started building a bunch of summer homes about 16 miles from Lisbon city. Summer homes is putting it just a tad mild I think. Observe:

Sintra is basically a real-life disneyland. This little palace and courtyard had the most stunning network of caves and tunnels you could exlpore! I was in heaven...

And the architecture was state-of-the-art as well.

So that's the first palace. The next, Palacio do Pena, was even bigger. Not quite as many caves, but some unreal gardens and lakes with the odd altar and chapel thrown in.

I wouldn't mind a dinner set like that! Here's an early shower.

And a very early toilet.

And take a close look at the carvings on these walls...

That's all painted! There's talent for ya. More photos of amazingness...

Don't worry, that's it for the photos. As I mentioned before though, you just can't explain that kind of experience with words.

Feeling pretty burnt out from all the walking in 40° weather we found our way back to the train station, then back to the hostels to get ready for dinner. This was a pretty wicked night that really showed how awesome these hostels were. Every Tuesday the staff from the hostels gets anyone willing together and takes them out for dinner. Ten euros, all you can eat (at Santa Rita again) all the beer and sangria you can drink, amazing food and amazing company. During dinner I met yet again another person from Toulouse! After dinner we all headed to a little hole in the wall bar (literaly little more than a whole in a wall) to try the local liqueur, Ginjhina, a cherry based drink sometimes served in chocolate cups. Then to another bar down an alley alive with people and live music.

Then to a club where they played almost exclusively 80's rock. Due to the fact that smoking is allowed indoors still, a few of us headed back up the crazy street to find more music, then headed home. Wild night topped off with another good chat with Vicente. The next morning I said my goodbyes, made it to the bus station without much trouble, and boarded my bus to Porto. That's pretty much it for now, other than to say it's freakin COLD here! But I suppose it's good preparation for my inevitable journey to Scotland...
This time I will leave you with...a face. Good bye!