Monday, June 13, 2011

Lisbon is A Beautiful City!

We arrived in Lisbon via the bus and headed straight for our hostel that we prebooked to make sure we had a place to stay our final 3 nights. The hostel we stayed at was called Oasis Backpackers Hostel. It was by far my favorite hostel we stayed in. Our room had a bathroom you would generally find in a 5 star hotel, comfy beds, nice common kitchen area and a beatiful view of the bay from our balcony. When we arrived they showed us our room and then brought us down to the patio for a complementary drink. We met a few cool people our first night so we just hung out on the balcony having beers and sangrias from the patio downstairs. The next day a group of us decided to head down to the beach to catch some sun and do some surfing in the ocean. I opted out of the surfing the first day because I was kind of skeptical as to how my knee would hold up. Still had a good time swimming and catching some sun. The sun was hotter on the beach then it was anywhere else we stayed this whole trip. That being said we all got pretty sun burnt.

That night Graham and a few of the others that we had met did the pub crawl that the hostel puts on a few nights a week. I decided to stay back and hang out with Camilla (our new friend from Chile) at the patio where we met a bunch of people from all over the world. It was a fun relaxing night just drinking a nice mix of booze from the patio bar with great music to go along with it.

The next day we headed back to the beach we went to the day before and decided to go surfing again and this time I decided I would give it a shot because it didn't look as strenuous on the knees as I initially thought it would be. As soon as we got our wet suits on it started to rain but surprisingly enough our instructor said that its the best time to surf in the rain because the waves are just right. My surfing experience in Lisbon was as surreal as it gets because while it was raining where we were, way out in the ocean you could see the sun shining through and big ocean liners making there way by in the gleaming sunlight. At one end of the beach we were surfing on there was an old Castle/Lighthouse and right in the middle of our surfing lesson a massive rainbow came right up out of the castle and way into the sky. I must have just floated there for 4-5 minutes with my arms over my board staring at this rainbow and taking it all in. In the 2.5 hour session we got I caught maybe 4-5 good waves in and the thrill of riding the waves are like nothing i've ever done before. It's almost like the surf board has a little motor when you feel the vibrations of the waves turning over near the back of the board. I have to admit, surfing was a lot harder then it looks but I will definitely give it another shot by the end of this summer. After our surfing lesson we headed back to the hostel and went our for some Portuguese chicken.


That night Graham, Ben and the two guys we met from Boston went on the pub crawl again but I was so burnt out that I decided to stick back with Camilla for more drinks on the balcony. The beers and the balcony seemed to be calling my name that night because I had no urge to go out at all even though the initial plan was to do the pub crawl with the guys. Around 2:30 am Camilla and I headed in and I was going to try and shut my eyes for a few hours because Graham and I had to get up at 430 am to head to the airport to catch our flight home. I didn't fall asleep though because I heard Ben and the Boston guys come in from the pub crawl with no sign of Graham. At this point, it was about 3:45 and I was pretty sure that Graham wasn't going to make it back to the hostel in time to make it to the airport. I wasn't sure wether I should just go and meet him there or wait around the hostel and risk missing the flight. Sure enough he showed up about 15 minutes before we left. PLASTERED! He could hardly walk lol. He drunkenly decided that he should wake up all 10 people in our hostel room to say good bye which surprisingly everyone sort of went along with and didn't get mad lol. It probably helped that we knew them though. When we got down to second floor, there door was left open and unfortunately Graham noticed and decided to go in. Good thing there was only 6 people on this floor because sure enough he woke up everyone there too. After we finally got down to 1st floor we got the guy working the desk to call us a cabbie. Graham fell asleep for the whole ride to the airport which I thought would have sobered him up a little. We walked in the front doors at the airport and I was constantly reminding Graham to try his best to walk straight and act sober because I didn't want them to not let him on. We finally made it though customs and everything and found some seats to sleep on before we got on the plane. Graham passed right out but I had a harder time so I walked around to kill time. It was sad to be leaving but nice to come home to see everyone.

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