Life Abroad: Portugal: Land of Pastries, Castles, and Wine

This past weekend I took a little trip to Portugal :) I'm not gonna lie it was totally AMAZING!!! I went into the trip with no real expectations because I was dumb and didn't research Lisbon or put any thought into anything but the weather. But I think it worked out in my favor because everything I did just blew my mind! The only thing that I didn't like was not being able to speak Spanish. I thought Portuguese was going to be really similar to Spanish but it was way too different for me to follow.
We left Friday night on a bus at about 12:30a.m. and we arrived in Lisbon (which is an hour behind Sevilla) at about 6:15a.m. I took a tylenol PM at 11p.m. hoping it would kick in when we got on the bus and I would sleep the whole way there. Unfortunately it didn't help much since we made a lot of stops on the way to Lisbon, so at 4a.m. (Portugal time) I decided to take another one. I don't really know what I was thinking about when I did that because we arrived about 2 hours later and I was insanely groggy. Fortunately our hostel was amazing and they let us check in at 7a.m. instead of waiting until noon! So we all took cat naps to be ready for a full day of exploring :)
For a quick recap of day one: We got up from our naps and went to a pastry shop, then wandered around the area by the ocean for awhile. There was a market and tons of restaurants, so we stopped and took our time. After lunch we made our way inland and found an amazing park! These are my pictures from day one:

These trams were both touristy and actually used for transportation! So much like San Francisco it was crazy!

One of the plazas in Lisbon

Another plaza in Lisbon right next to the Ocean

I'm holding my Hawkeye Camelbak in case you can't tell! Iowa abroad :)


The beautiful park we found at the end of the day. I love Lisbon!

Day two: We went to a small town right outside of Lisbon called Sintra. This town is famous for it's many castles that the royalty of Portugal used to stay in. We spent the day exploring castles and pastry shops :) Quite a delicious mind+body combo if you ask me! The best part is I never have to feel guilty about all those pastries because I had to hike up to all of the castles! It's kind of like eating a celery stick only it's enjoyable hahaha The best pastry I had was a berry tart that had a berry sauce on it, and the custard filling and crust were just amazing. Lisbon almost made me want to be a chef so I can recreate all of the amazing food here on a daily basis!

The start of our visit to Sintra

Such a beautiful town! Rolling hills and castles :)

The best berry tart you could ever eat, ever.

One of the many castles

A view from the castle

Rapunzel, Rapunzel let down your hair! lol

Day 3: We spent this day exploring the other side of the beautiful city of Lisbon. We took the metro along the ocean to try the famous Belem pastries. The food was delicious of course, and the sights were amazing! The weather was a little chilly due to wind, but the sun was shining and the birds were singing :) We met our friend Ji there as well! She's from South Korea but spent the past year studying English in India, and now she's traveling around Europe on her own for a month before returning home. She's going to come to Sevilla and visit us! I also had this Salmon dish that was just AMAZING. I can't get over it. It's like the chocolate muffin of food. It was salty and smokey and tender and perfect. I savored every bite of it I'm not going to lie. Turns out the way to my heart is through my stomach, and Lisbon snuck right in :) Our bus ride home left at 9p.m. and got into Sevilla at about 5a.m. Now this time I didn't mess around. I took two tylenol PMs straight up at the beginning of the bus ride and I slept like a baby straight through the trip :)