I left off on a bus from Madrid to Lisbon, on the recommendation of Joao, the only Lisbonite I'd met before. He was busy the day after I arrived (which I believe was in the evening), so I wandered the area around my hostel, a bit of a hike from central Lisbon proper, for a few hours to see what was what.
Immediately before the wind changed in a savage act of war against my poor, battered camera.
"Monument to the Discoveries," a celebration of imperialism next to the rather massive river to the ocean.
After meeting up with Joao, we went to nearby Sintra for the afternoon. Sintra has to be one of the most picturesque places I've been, full of colourful original architecture and regal-looking estates and castles. Unfortunately driving around is a shitty idea, but we still saw a few things!
View of the ocean from what I believe used to be a royal retreat, but that day was being set up for what one can assume was a rather sumptuous wedding.
The coolest thing we visited in Sintra was definitely the Quinta de Regaleira, an estate which had a succession of rich owners before being acquired by the Sintra Town Hall in 1997 and opened to the public the following year.
The Palace of Regaleira from near the entrance to the estate.
The outside of the chapel. Almost everything man-made in the quinta was amazingly well-carved...
...like this bench.
This guy was mostly natural though.
Closer up on the palace.
Hunting scene carved over one of the palace's fireplaces.
View of the estate from atop the palace.
There was a crazy variety of animals carved on the sides of the palace.
When I buy a house, all the doors will be clad in velvet.
One of the grottoes.
One of the (apparently two) initiation wells on the estate, which was supposedly used for Tarot initiation rites, with the design of the stairs and landings being related to Tarot mysticism.
Then for a little walk around the streets, mostly to visit the best place for travesseiro, a famous pastry from Sintra filled with almond paste and egg yolk. Worth having at least one!
"Noone can dream for you!"
Back to Lisbon, and Joao tried to take me to an abandoned building up on a hill overlooking the city, but there was a bunch of forest police watching it so we stumbled upon the end of an open-air jazz concert instead.
The next day I explored central Lisbon while Joao was at work. It's crazy how beautiful the central areas of European cities are, and walking around Lisbon in the perfect weather I had the whole time I was there drove it all home.
Commerce Square.
After a while on the flat bits of the city I decided I should go up to the castle. Bit of a walk in the blistering sun, but the streets continued to be interesting.
Pano of the city from the castle, with the "25th of April Bridge" on the left. Basically it's a clone of the Golden Gate Bridge, though it was constructed by the same company as the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, but doesn't have anything to do with the Golden Gate.
An entrance to the castle proper, within the outer walls. The original fortifications were constructed by the Moors during their occupation of Iberia, though I'm not sure how much of that remains, and it's apparently been extensively renovated a couple of times between now and then.
After the castle I went and got lost in the Alfama, the oldest district of Lisbon. Its twisting streets and ancient buildings are hella interesting to wander around.
Another night of hanging out with Joao's friends, and in the morning I went to the Jerónimos Monastery, an impressive piece of Gothic architecture which took the entirety of the 16th century to construct.
I'm pretty sure all of these little columns in the whole cloister had different designs.
The upper choir in the chapel.
One more day in Lisbon, and in my continuing quest to find some botanical gardens as cool as Hamilton's (inorite?!), I visited Lisbon's attempt. Was pretty much a small forest of trees from all around the world, but was a nice spot to sit and read for a while.
The one plant from New Zealand I could find in the whole place.
In the evening we drove back up to the abandoned building we'd tried to visit a few days earlier, with a stop at Portugal's massivest flag.
This guy used to be a restaurant for rich people, but went out of business sometime and is now a tourist spot. We were about 10m away from the gates on our way out when we heard some car doors closing. "That's the police." And so it was, but after a few minutes of humbling himself, Joao got a us away scot-free. Nice view though!
My stay in Lisbon done, I caught a train to Porto, in the north of Portugal, which I'd heard was good. As usual, I essentially spent my 2 days there walking around the city. Naturally I was misled about the location of the hostel I chose to stay at, and had a bit of a walk to the middle of town. Got to see this guy on the way though:
I really wish I'd got a photo of the bridge I took this one from, it was pretty badass.
Much of central Porto was a sea of tiled roofs cut by tiny twisting lanes.
On my second day in Porto I went to see Porto's Crystal Palace, a huge glass dome in a nice park.
Pretty sure these were the first peacocks I'd seen irl.
I also went up the Clerics' Tower, which had a nice view of the neat park just below.
So many tiles!
Someone that worked in the hostel had told me about a "big boat race" going on on the river that day, so I decided to go check it out. Turns out it was a leg of F1H2O, basically the Formula 1 of boat racing. It seemed to me that watching is basically entailed watching an identical boat whiz past in first one direction, and then the other, though I now realise they probably run boats separately and each boat does the course several times. Was a little boring for me anyway, so I didn't stay long.
I was unsure about where to go after Porto, as my birthday was the day after the boat race, and I didn't feel like spending the entire thing trying to make new friends. So I booked a flight to London, where I could stay with a friend from uni for a while and play catchup as my birthday party. Was pretty good.
