Travel Series: Lisbon

Okay, so technically most of my day was spent travelling. I had flights from Sioux Falls to Chicago to Zurich to Lisbon, and ended up landing in Lisbon around 2PM local time. I had been travelling for around 16 hours at this point. I ended up having to wait for about 2.5 hours in the Lisbon airport for the rest of the crew to arrive so we could transfer to our hotel, but it gave me a chance to get some coffee and refresh, just a little bit.

airline food gets a lot of shit, but this really wasn’t half bad!

My first affogato: espresso with a scoop of caramel gelato. Absolutely to die for.

Once we transferred to our hotel (which is BEAUTIFUL, by the way), we had a chance to take quick showers before getting changed and heaing to the city center. We took the metro to the city center, which stressed me out just a bit, given my lack of experience with public transportation. Luckily, it’s very well organized and pretty self explanatory, so I made it in one piece. We took a little trek through some Portuguese neighborhoods, and quickly learned why Lisbon is known as the city of seven hills. It seems like everywhere we go is an uphill walk, somehow.

The prettiest overlook of the city

A convent with a collapsed roof from the earthquake of 1755

If you look closely you can see the tiles that Lisbon is famous for.

The outside of our hotel

After our quick exploration of the city center, we hopped back on the metro and went back to our hotel for our welcome mixer. We had some wine and appetizers, and chatted with the people we’ll be spending the next month or so with. I found out that I’m one of the youngest people on this trip, a majority of the people on the trip speak Spanish, and a bunch of people are either currently teachers or in training to become teachers. It’s really interesting to see how fast some of these friendships are able to form!

Cheers to the beginning of a trip of a lifetime.

The rooftop pool of our hotel.

A few of the people in our tour group decided that we couldn’t waste our first night in Europe, let alone a Saturday night, so I was somehow roped into going out. I blame the wine from our welcome mixer. We ended up taking the metro once again, and heading what’s known as “The Pink Street”. The name is fitting, since the street is literally painted bright pink. We spent a little bit of time in a bar before heading to a club. Sadly, the jetlag finally caught up with us, so here I am, laying in bed, writing this little recap! Tomorrow we get to really explore Lisbon, and I could not be more excited. Just one day in, this trip is already amazing.

Stay tuned for more updates,

xoxo, second sister suzie