Lisbon

Well, there goes my last trip for the year anyway..... Probably!

Now I have another country marked off on my map of europe - Portugal. Think at this stage the only pre-accession states of the EU I haven't hit now are Greece, Sweden and Norway. And all thanks ot Air France! Thanks to them overbooking my flight and stranding me in Birmingham last year on my way home from Paris, I had a €150 token to use with them - which I forgot about nearly as soon as I got it and only found in the drawer 2 days before it was due to expire! Was a quick "Oh shit" moment, and straight on to the info-hyper-global-web to see where I could go with it. After finding out to my disappointment that their other sky alliance (or whatever it's called) partners wouldn't take online bookings with air france tokens, I found myself back at airfrance.com. Looked at the destinations, and decided that Lisbon was the place to go - Sara had been there last year and loved it apparently. Then, I discover something else. Not only did their partners not take them. but you couldn;t boko on Air France witht he token either! I had to ring them up, book over the phone, and then post off a print-out of my booking details along with the token! How 20th century!

The day of the flight arrived, and I found pretty quickly that the one disadvantage of booking with Air France was that I had to fly with Air France, which meant going via Paris. Knowing Dublin Airport's less than stellar record of getting planes off on time, I'd given myself plenty of time for a stopover in Charles de Gaulle, which was a bit unfortunate since we only took off maybe 30mins late and I had about 2hrs to kill in the airport. Landed at terminal 2F, and had to make my way to terminal 2D. I'd forgotten how big Paris airport was! Thought at one stage I must be passing by lisbon on my way! When I got there, I took an instant dislike to the termional. I know that airport terminals are there to be endured rather than enjoyed - Charleroi airport for example has all the aesthetic grace and ambiance of a school gym, but doesn't pretend to be anything other than it is - but for some reason Terminal 2D in Charles de Gaulle really rubbed me up the wrong way. A big long half-tube of a place with a ceiling so high that any flight announcements drowned in their own echoes if you weren't directly under the speaker, and yet such a lack of space on the floor that you had to squeeze past the queues of people boarding their flights. Crap shops and a crap-looking restaurnat at either end complete the ensemble. Having such time to kill, I decided on getting a coffee, only to discover that whatever about Gay Paree itself, the airport can give good old Dublin a run for its money in the rip-off stakes - €5.50 for a regular coffee! At least I thought that, it being france, the coffee would be good when I got it, but it seems that however they may complain about "France for the French", they have ebraced globalization enough to have discovered the machines that spew black plastic crap into a cup with "coffee" written on it at the push of a button. To top it off, the waiter made a big osmg and dance about having to break a €50 whe I went ot pay - lots of gallic shrugging and sighing!

Finally, the time came to leave, and we started boarding. Problem is, after the first 5 ppl went through, we stopped boarding again, and remained that way for 20mins. Eventually, we got ont he bus, which proceeded to bring us all the way back to a gate at terminal 2F, which I believe may actually have been the gate I landed at! All that walking for nothing! I wouldn't have minded had we been bussed to a plane out on the tarmac, but we even had to climb the steps abd board via the jetway just like we'd been checked through at that gate! Anyway, eventually Paris receded beneath me, and I was on my way to Lisboa!

When I got there, I decided to be a bit adventurous. Never mind the fact that I didn't speak the local lingo, or know my way around, I decided to take the local bus into town. According to the guide book, I could take the 41 bus which would drop you off at gare de oriente, at the end of one of the metro line, which would leave me on my favourite form of transport. Unfortunately the airport was just another stop on the bus route rather than one end of it, and I forgot to check which direction the bus was going! Luckily I copped this soon enough, and hopped out at the first sniff of a metro sign. I eventually got to my hostel at about 7 in the evening, after leaving the flat at 9 that morning. The joys of transfers! The hostel itself was pretty small - only held about 30ppl total, and I arrived to discover that on friday nights some local woman came in and for a minimal fee, cooked a meal for whoever wanted it. So, I threw in my dosh and was soon snacking on Portugese chicken and pasta - score! Before dinner, there was also a free portugese class of ppl wanted it, and seeing as I knew a grand total of zero portugese words, I decided to take part as well. I soon discovered that portugese, while similar enough to spanish that I could read it (yeah, like I'm fluent in spanish), is pronounced a lot differently. It's sort of like spanish as it's be pronounced by a russian with a Sean Connery accent. So, after learning such useful words as "thank you" ("obrigado"), "sorry" ("me desculpe" or "con liciensa"), and "beer" ("cerveja" - some things don't change), munching on damn fine chicken, and getting to know some of my fellow hosteliers, I was ready to head out and see what Lisbon had to offer. Then I discovered that the hostel bar was serving bottles of beer for €1 a pop and cocktails for €2.50 each, I decided "shur it's been a long day, might as well relax for a bit, I'm on holiday after all" and proceeded to do just that!

Now, nightlife in Lisbon apparently doesn't really get going until 2am, just about the time us poor Irish folk are trying to hang on to our last drinks of the night and listening to "are ya right there folks, have yis no homes to go to!", so a bunch of us decided to head out about midnight(ish). In typical hostel fashion, it was a mixed group, there was an irish, an austrian, a few yanks, a few aussies, a couple of brits, a mexican and a welshman - there's a joke in there somewhere..... The bar street in Lisbon (or at leat the one we found) was, um, different, not like back home at all. Was a pokey little side street on a hill, with the bars being on average the size of your front room at home, with ppl packed in and cheesy music on. We hopped from bar to bar til about 4am, at which point the combination of a long day travelling, the pissing rain and €1.50 a bottle of beer made me decide enough was enough for my first day!

The next morning dawned bright and sunny - too bright and sunny, as I realised I'd left my damn shades at home! So, first stop, buy sunglasses. Luckily there were some nice gentleman hanging around placa de commerciao who were quite wiling to part with "genuine" armani and DKNY shades for a mere €25 (must have been a special limited edition, as they didnt even have armani written on them!). there was a british guy who was bying a pair ahead of me, and he drove a hard bargain, and got hem for €20. Then it was my turn, and while the guy was prob used to haggling, he hadn't learned his trade in Beijing's Pearl Market like I had. So, newly adorned with my €5 pair of shades, I got on the hop-on hop-off bus to get my tourist on! I always find this is the best way to take a look around a city you've never been in before, take the tourist bus first thing, stay on for the whole trip and then you know what you want to go back and see later. This time tho I actually got off at one of the stops, which was a bit out of town and which I'd pretty much have had to get a train back out to again. On the way we passed by a big-ass bridge across the Tagus river which is the spit of the Golden Gate in San Francisco, and that added to the fact that Lisbon is probably the hilliest city I've been in since San Fran made me a bit confused as to where I was for a while. Then, I looked across the river and was even more confused as they also have a big-ass statue which is the spit of the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio! By the time I got off the bus in Belem tho, I had my bearings back again. So I wandedered around a bit saw the big monument to Henry the Navigator, went up to the top of it (good view), and was just debating whether or not to eat there or go back into town to eat when the hop-on hop-off bus arrived along. Seeing as they only go every 45mins I took it as a sign from the gods that I was meant to eat in town and hopped on.

Once I arrived back, I headed up Baixa to get some grub. there were no shortage of restaurants but they were all pretty much serving the same thing, so it was a case of pick one at random. The food was OK but nothing to write home about, but the experince was slightly enlivened by guys coming up to me every 5mins and offering me drugs - and I mean nodges of hash the size of your thumb for feck-all money! And this just off the main shopping/touristy street in the town, Rua Augusta! After that I decided to do my pressie shopping for the folks back home, as I heard that pretty much every shop in Lisbon closed on sundays. Miracle of miracles, I managed to get every single pressie I needed in two shops! So, laden down with gifts, I struggled back up the hill to the hostel (did I mention that Lisbon is bloody hilly?) Got there and met Gunther, the Austrian guy I'd been on the piss with the night before, and we spent a bit of time chatting to the really, really cute Estonian girl who was working the reception at the hostel. Gunther had been to the butchers and had gotten pork kebabs at a ridiculously cheap price, which he threw in the oven and offered to share with a few of us, so instad of going out for a meal that night we again ate in again! While he was cooking, Guenther hatched a plan to save himself a lot of money on groceries - apparently it'd be cheaper to catch a flight to lisbon on fri night, stay in the hostel, do all of his food shopping in Lisbon and fly back sat afternoon than to go out and buy everything at the local Tesco in Edinburgh! We hung around the hostel again, got chatting to a Serbian girl who'd just arrived, then about midnight headed out with our new-found Estonian and Serbian friends, the barman from the hostel (a yank) and a few other guys. Went to a small-ish club near the hostel, which was deserted til about 2, but after that the place filled up in short order and it was jammers by 3. Music was shyte (crap danc remixes of crap 80s tunes) and women were nothign to write home about, so left early-ish - maybe 5.

Sunday morning, I got chatting to Olja, the Serbian girl, and Lynette, a Canadian who was in my room the night before (who, probably rightly, was accusing me of snoring), and they said they were heading out to Belem with some others (mostly aussies), and did I want to come. Decided to tag along despite it being what I'd pretty much done the day before, but I had no better plans of my own so we headed out with a bunch of about 8 ppl to catch the train out. We discovered when we got there that touristy stuff like museums in Lisbon were free in until 2 on sundays, so we went into the Mosterio dos Jeronimos, then wandered to the castle at the mouth of the river, then to a bakery which our guide books told us was famous for some local custard-filled pastry delicacy. Have to say it was damn nice!

After that, the Aussies decided to head back to the hostel, and me, Lynette, Olja and Mel (an Aussie girl) hopped on a tram to got to see the castle. The tram ride was a bit mad, the hills were so steep and the roads were so windy it was almost like a slow-motion roller coaster! We got to the castle and were just debating whether or not to spend the €5 admittance fee whn it started to piss rain, which decided the issue for us, so we browsed the touristy shops a bit and then headed back to the hostel, as we'd agreed to meet the rest of the crowd from that morning for dinner. The plan was that maybe 4, 5 ppl were going out for dinner, but then someone else heard we were going and wanted to tag along, then they asked their mate, who suggested it to their friend, and so on and so forth, until eventually 17 of us forayed out to invade some hapless unsuspecting restaurant! I have to say, I was well impressed with the place we found - not only did we all manage to get the one table, but the food was good and the service was so fast that we gave the one waiter we had a big round of applause (and a big tip!) at the end. We eventually rolled back to the hostel and, despite the rain, ended up huddled up underneath the umbrellas out at the outside bar talking bullshit til the wee hours - a pretty chilled night I must say. Lots and lots of beer was drunk, and I'd say we drove our cute estonian friend nuts after teh bar closed by going down to buy beer off her at reception!

Finally, eventually, on monday morning I had to leave. The sun broke though the clouds just as I was leaving (typical), and seeing as Gunther was heading off as well, we split a taxi to the airport. We were both going to the same place (Dublin), but seeing as he was going direct and I wasn't (Bloody Air France!), he was taking off at 10:30am and getting to dublin at 12:30, and I was taking off at 11:30 and getting in at 6pm! Seeing as I hadn't had the chance to do much shopping for myself over the weekend, I was hoping to pick up a t-shirt or somethgin in the airport. So, I went thru security fairly early only to discover that there were shag-all shops thru the gate so all I could do was get a coffee! I only had about 1h15min of a stopover in Paris this time, so I was a bit concerned about the flight, but we took off relativly on time (as in, we were boarding at the time we should have been taking of and in the air 15min later), and I made it to my gate with hust about enough time to catch my breath in CDG before we boarded. Was too bad actually I didn't have more tiem, as Terminal 2F looked like it had a lot more going for it than the one I was stuck in on the way over! When we went to board, I was a bit unnerved to see a 747 waiting for us at the gate - to dublin? - but instead of boarding that we went down the stairs and hopped on a bus which seemed to take us half-way back home already before dropping us at the expected little BaE 50-seater plane, same as we had coming over (think "minibus with wings").

So, I arrived in dublin again evenbtyallu, and pretty much went straight out on the piss with Gunther who had a night's stopover in dublin! A nice way to end the trip!

Oh, and the pictures from it can be seen here.....