"I don't want the Chinese girls looking up my pants!"

Hey everyone! Kyla is off to sleep, so I'm filling you in on our day!
June 29th began as comfortably as possible. We let ourselves sleep in and we took our time getting up and getting ready for the day. Our plan was to find a specific railway station and take a side trip to the town of Sintra. Sintra supposedly was a beautiful place with castles and from there you could catch an easy bus ride out to the westernmost point in mainland Europe, Cabo da Roca.
So, I studied our map of Lisbon to find the train station we were looking for, and turns out it was only a few blocks over from us! So, we grabbed our purses and headed out the door! We only made it a block before I realized I had left our map back in the hostel. Oops. But I told Kyla that I had studied the map enough and knew where to go. Plus, I saw that there was a tourist information office nearby the train station, so if we couldn't find the train station, we knew we could probably find that. Welllllll, as most things go on our trip, it wasn't that easy. We ended up walking for far longer than I thought we needed to, and we couldn't find the train station or the tourist office. We were however next to a metro (subway) line, so we just looked at their map and that began to get us on the right track. After backtracking, we happily stumbled upon the tourist office and they directed us towards the train station. We found the station and we were easily able to buy tickets and get on the train.
The train ride took about 40 minutes, which is a very quick train ride compared to what we are used to! We arrived in Sintra and sadly, the tourist office in the train station was closed! We were not able to get a map, but they had a map posted in the window. So we just studied that, and figured out how to get into the center of town where another tourist office was where we could ask a few questions and get a map. We then began our quite lovely stroll towards the center of town.
Sintra is BEAUTIFUL!! It's all hills with huge, green, leafy trees that give it a very "magical forest feel", if you will. Along our walk into town, I glanced at a tiny little bakery that we were passing and noticed that there was a sign that said it was started in 1756. That stopped me in my tracks! A little bakery in a small town in Portugal that is older than our NATION!!! AH!! I quickly pointed it out to Kyla to which she immediately suggested we stop and get a little something from there! We walked in and looked around at this little place, and noticed that they had all of these extremely old photographs of the place and of the people who initially started it. It was so cute! We had no idea what type of pastries we were looking at, so Kyla pointed at one, and I pointed at one. We payed only 2,15 Euros (and no, the coma is not a typo; that's how they write it in Europe!) and we were out the door with our treasures! We snapped a photo or two and then we devoured them! My pastry was quite sweet, while Kyla's ended up being savory! Mine was coated in sugar and then the inside was filled with some sort of filling, somewhat like applesauce. Kyla's pastry was almost like a chicken salad, but without the salad. Needless to say, the 250 plus years of their existence has allowed them to perfect their pastries because both were amazing!

Yummy!!

The bakery is the white building with the white awning. 

Once the pastries were snarfed down, we then continued our walk towards the center of town. It was just so pleasant! We looked around a bit and took some more photos before we headed into the tourist office to get a map and some needed info. One of the things they helped us with was how to get out to the place called Cabo da Roca, which, as I said earlier, is the westernmost point in mainland Europe. We had to take a bus to get there, and she gave us the bus locations and times. At that point, we had a little over an hour before the next bus left for Cabo, so we did a little more perusing and sightseeing before walking over to catch the bus.
Along our way back to the bus, we just simply couldn't help getting a second round of pastries from the place that's older than the States. For this round, Kyla got what I had the first time, and I got an interesting looking loaf that looked like it may be stuffed with something. Turns out it was just a loaf, but it was so good!!

We caught the bus and were on our way out to Cabo da Roca! The drive out was again, very beautiful. This part of Portugal is really pretty!! We took it all in as we wound around through the hills and tiny towns. The streets are EXTREMELY narrow, so it was astounding to be in this city bus that just took over the road. There were parts where the roads were really only wide enough for two European cars to squeeze by each other.

We finally arrived at Cabo da Roca and from the moment we stepped off the bus, we were BLASTED by the wind. It was so intense and crazy!! At one point, Kyla was even holding her shorts down, yes her shorts. I laughed at this sight, and asked her why she was doing that. Her response? She gestured towards some near by Asians and exclaimed, "I don't want the Chinese girls looking up my pants!". Oh my, that made me laugh!!!
To give you another indication of just how intense this wind was, when the gusts were just right, Kyla could pull off a pretty amazing Elvis look!!

Anyways, we made our way over to the cliff edge and just gaped and awed at the view before us. Just the cliff edges, straight down into the water. And then the water was just so blue and went to the horizon. It was just crazy to sit there and think that there was NOTHING beyond where we were standing and if you were to get in a boat and head straight out, you wouldn't hit land until you reached the Americas. How crazy is that?!! So we took our time at this point, just trying to take it all in. The wind was crazy and quite chilly, but it added to the experience. We of course paused for a few obligatory photos of the monument signifying the western most point in mainland Europe!

Having felt that that was accomplished, we headed back over to catch the bus back into Sintra. We had plans to spend the rest of our afternoon checking out a Moorish Castle perched high on a hill over looking Sintra. Little did we know, adventure was still waiting around the corner.
The bus arrived and we got on and sat down for the 30 ish minute ride back through narrow, winding streets and beautiful, forest hills. It was about 10 minutes in that we entered a part of the road where it is extremely narrow and steep (we were heading downhill), with only a couple hairpin turns that have shoulders. After beginning the on the second turn the bus suddenly stopped, and all the passengers eyes shot forward to see what had brought about the abruptness! We were met with a scene of a line of cars that continued beyond our line of vision around the corner. The bus driver immediately pulled over as much as he could, put it in park, and jumped out to go and investigate what was going on. For a hot second, Kyla and I joked that this was just another bus strike like we experienced in Siena! Haha! Luckily though, after a minute or so, he returned and said something to the extent that there had been some sort of accident and it was going to take about 10 minutes before he would be able to get the bus through. Well, as we all sat there waiting, cars from behind us kept going around us, and traffic slowly crept down the hill. Every now and then, a car or vespa made it's way up the hill, passing us as they went by. We figured that even the slow, creeping movement was good because at least it was movement. Well finally, the bus driver decided he could finish the turn and head down the very narrow road. He began to round the corner and make our way down the street towards the next hairpin turn, when the ultimate movie scene happened! Another bus was coming towards us and it rounded the hairpin turn first and came face to face with us! Now, the real fun began because this road was so tiny that there was NO way that these buses could even begin to pass one another. Someone had to back up. And that meant making the huge line of cars behind them back up. The drivers talked for a second and the decision was apparently made that our bus needed to reverse back up the hill to the turn where we had a shoulder to back into! EEK! So, the driver of the bus facing us ran up behind our bus and started getting the whole line of cars to back up so that our bus could then back up. It was nuts. It took several different angles of reversing this city bus up the incline before our driver could give the other bus enough space to pass us. And that pass was slightly terrifying to watch. But by the grace of God, it all worked! And then our bus driver continued to display his mad skills as he then wound his way down the hill and eventually out of the chaos. Let's just say that he was well applauded for his talents of maneuvering that bus!
I drive a mini bus for work and that thing is quite easy to drive. I'm pretty proficient at moving that thing around. But my goodness, I would never want to drive in any sort of bus up or down that hill, and this guy did it with quite the challenges! What a stud!

You can see the bus right in front of us!

Needless to say, it took much longer to return to Sintra than expected, and due to the bus adventure and late hour, we decided that we would skip seeing the castle and head back to Lisboa. So we boarded the next train and came back.
Upon arrival in Lisboa, we began walking back to our hostel and we ended up walking by a cafe/bakery that had an amazing window display! We decided that we needed to make a few purchases and eat them for dessert that night! So we did!

The beautiful window display!

The goodies we purchased!

After that, we headed over to the grocery store near us and bought food for dinner and whatever future meals may come. We cooked ourselves some burgers (turkey burgers because they had no other meat!), some fries (yes, I made fries!), and some delicious zucchini that Kyla cooked us! The burners in our hostel's kitchen are SO slow, so it took a long, long, long time to cook all of our food. We had to eat in courses, but it was all yummy!! And then of course, we had our pastries for dessert! Those pastries were a sweet ending to a great day!

The Longest Day

Hello! Tibby here and I just gotta tell you that July 28th was the longest day of our trip. It all began once the day began, at midnight.
We were in Sevilla, Spain, and we boarded a bus bound for Lisbon, Portugal. It was an overnight bus and we were curious as to how this was going to go. As we got on, we had to head towards to back of the bus to find seats, and we ended up sitting amidst three families traveling together with small children. Behind us sat a family (with two sons, one close to our age, the other in high school) from France. Kyla immediately popped a few benedryl, to help with her cold. We then both settled in for what we hoped would be an easy, and child-cry-free, ride into Lisboa (Lisbon). Someone out there must have been praying for us, because praise the Lord, we both were able to get a few winks of sleep. The bus traveled for about 3 hours before stopping at a rest stop for a bathroom break. The driver told us we had 10 minutes. I'm beginning to wonder if "10 minutes" isn't just a general statement because we were definitely there for 45 minutes. Once we were done there, we were back on the road. The rest of the ride was as expected. Some stolen moments of sleep, some jerky turns, and a few children whimpering and crying. It was 5am (Portugal time) when we pulled up at the main station in Lisboa. (The drive took 6 hours total). I think Kyla and I were maybe able to get about 2 or 3 hours of sleep throughout that ride. 
We clambered off the bus, got our bags together, and found a space to more-or-less camp out in the station until we figured out what to do. We had a hostel booked and we had their phone number. It was about 5:30 when we gave them a call using the bus station payphone, desperately hoping we could come and crash somewhere there rather than on the floor of the bus station. So Kyla gave them a call and remarkably, a lady answered. She told Kyla that we couldn't check in because our room wasn't going to be ready until noon. She told Kyla that there would be a staff person there by 9:30am and that we could come then. Kyla is such a sweetheart and accepted that fate. Once she filled me in on the details, I decided I couldn't be that sweet and that there was NO way that I was going to sit in that bus station for 4 more hours. So, I then called the lady and asked her if she had a common room or something where we could just come and hang out until we could check in. At first, she was told me no, but then she kinda mumbled some stuff and then clearly told me that she would call the manager and that I should call her back in 10 minutes. I said alright, and then we waited for those few minutes before calling her again. She then gave us some great news! She said we could come at half past six and she would have a woman meet us there to let us in, but that we couldn't have our room until noon. I wholeheartedly agreed to that because that meant we got to leave the bus station! So, we gathered our backpacks and headed out of the station to find a taxi. It wasn't long until we found one and were on our way to the hostel.


TAXI DRIVER STORY
The taxi driver immediately asked us in English where we were from. We told him the United States. He then asked what part. We told him Colorado. And then he responded with something that totally blew my mind. Here's how it went:
He said, "OH! The black guy!" 
Us: "What?"
Him: "The black man."
Us: * deer in the headlights look *
Him: "12 killed. 12 killed. Joker. Joker."
Then it dawned on me...I asked him: "Are you talking about the movie theater shooting?"
Him: "YES! Very sad. America is all about guns. Everyone has a gun. America shoots everybody. Here in Portugal, no guns. We don't shoot. It's sad, one man hurt 72. America is all guns."
Kyla and I just sat in shock. Here we were, in Portugal, in a taxi, at 6:30 in the morning, and this man immediately identified Colorado with the shooting. It really is astounding when so much of the world knows SO much about the States, yet we know SO little of the world.
It still rocks my brain, even now while re-telling the story.

So anyways, after that discussion with the taxi driver, he drove us to our hostel where we paid him, got our bags, and walked into the door. Many hostels in Europe are like large apartments that have been converted into several smaller bedrooms. So, this one that we were attempting to find was one of those. So, since we didn't know what floor of this building it was on, we couldn't take the elevator and instead had to trek up every single floor, in all of our hot mess, until we found it. Thankfully, it was only 3 floors up! Ha!
We arrived, and knocked somewhat quietly because we didn't want to wake anyone that might be asleep, yet we wanted to let whatever woman we were going to meet know that we were here. Well, no response came from inside the door. So, we knocked again, a little louder this time. We waited....and nothing happened. So we knocked again. And nothing. Then we noticed this little buzzer next to the door, so we buzzed it a few times...and again, nothing. Slightly annoyed and very exhausted, we eventually gave up and figured that well, at least we knew a staff would be coming by 9:30. So, with all of our bags still on us, we just sat down on the stairs, and before we knew it, we fell asleep. Seriously. With all of our bags, on a flight of stairs, we were out in 2 minutes. Next thing I know, I hear some creaks coming from the elevator, so I kinda pick my head up enough to nudge Kyla awake and before we can really come to our senses, the elevator door opens and this sweet woman steps out and introduces herself. She let us into the hostel, showed us around, checked us in, and then let us crash on the couch!
We slept until about 9 am when there was so much commotion going on that we couldn't have slept anymore. True to their word, by about noon we were shown to our room and we were able to settle in; feeling more than content at the thought that this was the last hostel we were staying in!
We were getting hungry for some lunch, so we decided to venture out to find a grocery store. We didn't have to go too far until we found one. We made a few purchases, and then came back to the hostel, where we have a kitchen, and we made ourselves lunch!
After that, it was time to see a bit of Lisboa! There is a really old tram system here that dates back to the 1920's. So we hopped on the famous line (#28), and went for a ride. 

We got off at a really cool looking point that overlooked the city and then out into the port. We took photos, and took in the view. From there, we just wandered all over, without even thinking of using a map. We just went for it! We did pause at a little bakery for a snack, where we both snapped up some deliciousness. We even stumbled upon a little church and we went inside to check it out!

The statue behind me has a huge mustache just like mine!!

After that, we just kept walking the streets and taking in the sights. We even saw several different street performers. There was a lady attempting to do some flamenco dancing. She wasn't too terrible, but she really didn't compare to what we saw in Sevilla. One that we stopped at for a little was a group of people that were doing an open mic type deal and we stopped to listen to two Australian guys play some classic tunes.

After listening to them, we then found our way into a pretty cool square. In Portuguese, it's Praca do Comercio. We took that in for a while before making our way back to a spot where we could catch the tram back to our stop.

We were still feeling a little groggy, so we decided to head back to our hostel to rest for a bit before heading back out to eat dinner. 
During our rest time, Kyla napped, and I used the time to skype home to talk to my family and wish my baby brother a happy 18th birthday. Unfortunately for me, he was out camping with a friend, so I didn't get to talk to him; but it was WONDERFUL getting to talk with my family!
It started to get late when Kyla and I realized we needed to go get dinner. So we walked to the next block over where we had walked by a restaurant earlier in the day. We were definitely there at closing time, yet they were very nice and let us come in anyways. We decided to be a little adventurous with a food choice, so we ordered a dish that said it had octopus in it! We were also going to order something that said it had salmon in it, but the guy said they were out of it. So I just pointed to the next thing down on the menu, which said "sea bass". We also ordered some Port wine because we were in Portugal and had not yet tried any!
They served us the Port first in tiny little glasses. At first I was thinking, "man! We're getting jipped!" But, Kyla and I soon discovered that it's good they only give you a tiny bit because it is definitely just a sipper drink. If you drink it too fast, it tastes exactly like cough syrup. If you sip it, it's sweeter and much more enjoyable!

Then our food came! We were seeking adventure, and we got it! Kyla's dish had octopus and shrimp in a soupy rice mixture. My sea bass came as the WHOLE fish, with a boiled potato and some veggies. I'll be honest, I wasn't really 100% sure how to go about eating that fish, but hey, I figured it out and it was delicious!! Kyla equally enjoyed her octopus dish!

We finished eating, and returned to our hostel for the night. And now, it is time to sleep... good night from Lisbon!!

Seville - how many secrets and stories you keep!!

Last day in Sevilla!

The morning began with a walking tour provided by this awesome, super-knowledgeable guy named Raphael who took us all around the city, telling us tons of information about the history of the buildings as well as a few odd stories and legends. 

This is the Cathedral of Sevilla that used to be a Muslim mosque and that huge tower used to be a minaret where an imam would call out prayer 5 times a day - in other words he had to get up to the top of that thing 5 times a day! But did he climb stairs? No he did not! There are ramps all the way up and they used to ride a small donkey instead of walking! ...poor donkey :( 

...some of the ancient Roman walls left over from when the city was a major fortified Spanish stronghold for the Empire.

...some of the excavations still going on today! That round thing down there is a Roman well!

One of our favorite legends that Raphael told took placed just outside of this excavation site - in the Jewish quarter on a street called the 'Caile dela Muerte' - or Street of Death. It came from a legend about a young Jewish woman named Susona who was in love in with a Catholic fellow. Unfortunately, the Jews were being very oppressed by the ruling Catholics in the city and so, one night, Susona overheard her father and other Jewish men talking about rising up against their oppressors. Susona immediately ran and told her Catholic boyfriend who in turn said 'thank you very much', dumped her and warned the rest of the Catholics. Then they armed themselves and massacred all the Jews, but Susona escaped and tried to plead with the Catholic soldiers to take her in since she had warned them all in the first place. But of course the Catholics said no since she had betrayed her own flesh and blood. How could they trust she wouldn't do the same to them? Eventually, however, the Catholic's piety got the best of them and they allowed her to escape and live in a convent for the rest of her days. However, she never forgot her terrible deed and in her will asked that her head be placed beneath her childhood window after her death. Well, the people of Sevilla adhered to her last wish and indeed put her head on the street where it remained for 150 years. Then, one day someone finally buried the skull and replaced the area with a plaque - an eternal reminder to never betray your own!

...eerie.

Also, there was a story about this street:

...that literally revolved around a guy not being able to find any pepper in the city (with which to preserve his meat) and so he went back to his house, prayed so hard to all the saints that he fell asleep, and the next day awoke to so much pepper in his house that it spilled out of his windows and into the street below!!

 Then this window was called the 'Devil's Window' because if you look closely all the bars are interlocked and after generations had lost knowledge of how it was made, many just began to say it was the work of the Devil. lol!!

...this was the monument to Christopher Columbus and at the top is the lion - the symbol of Spain...but evidently it wasn't always the lion, but indeed a bunny rabbit....with fangs. Oh yes. And if you're thinking Monty Python, then you're on the right track. Supposedly the Spanish decided their vamp-bunny was too tame and when their armada was getting ready to set sail for England, they changed it to a lion. In Raphael's words, "Well, we have no lions in Spain, but what the hell!" ...unfortunately, as we all know, the mascot-change didn't help. And thus, Monty Python made great fun of it. 

And last but not least: the story of this cool-lookin' building...the Tobacco Factory! Turns out that this is the setting of the famous opera, Carmen! I'll let you look up the story if you don't know it, but Raphael told us that it definitely was a spot of romance - you see only women were allowed to work in the factory and so all the young bachelors would wait outside day after day to catch their eye. I would also like to note here that there is a trumpet inside the doorway and supposedly every time a virgin walked through, it would sound.....

What a place, eh?!!

Anyways, so there's a pretty good gist of what we learned whilst with Raphael and we were so impressed with his memory of facts and all his awesome little anecdotes! 

We ended the tour at the bull ring - another important building for Sevilla - and Raphael was very good at explaining some of the rules of the famous, but sad sport. 

Once our tour with Raphael ended, we tipped him and then headed back to our hostel to eat the rest of our pasta dish we had made the night before. Once our bellies were content, we headed back out to get a closer look at a few things that had looked interesting along our tour. Our first stop was the HUGE Plaza de España. 

Plaza de España is a huge park area in Sevilla that was initially built to be a part of the world expo in 1929. Well, with the economic crash in 1929, it never was used to it's full potential. So now it is just used partially as government offices and a university. It has also been the setting of three films, the coolest of which (In Kyla's and my opinion) is Star Wars!! ...Episode II: Attack of the Clones, to be specific...

After soaking in the wonders of the Plaza, we decided we wanted to go check out the inside of the Cathedral. So we meandered our way through the city streets, stopping along the way to try these delicious gofres! It's a waffle thingy with different toppings. Kyla got one with just powdered sugar, and mine had some sort of strawberry jam. They were delectable!

From there, it was only a few more steps until we reached the Cathedral. We walked into the first open door we could find and turns out we had actually walked into the baptistery! So we checked that out for a few moments, and then walked back out to find the entrance to the Cathedral. Unfortunately, we discovered that the Cathedral had in fact already closed up for the day.

Slightly bummed, we just began to stroll through the streets without any mind to where we were. We entered shops, took pictures, and tried to soak it all in. Eventually, we made our way to a grocery store where we bought a few things to make dinner with and then we went back to the hostel and did just that! By the way, groceries in Europe are SO cheap. Like, unbelievably cheap, even though the Euro is more expensive. It's pretty awesome. Makes traveling like this a bit easier. 

While we were cooking dinner, we tried to catch glimpses of the Opening Ceremonies in London on the TV, but eventually we had to clean up, grab our bags, and make our way to the bus station for our overnight bus to Lisboa (Lisbon)!!!