Ginjinha!!!

Tonight is our last night here in Lisbon, it's almost sad to leave so quickly because we have gotten to know our way around here pretty dang good!

Yesterday we went to this beautiful little beach town called Cascais (google it!!) and sat in the sun and played in the sand. We made some new friends last night at the hostel bbq, four girls from Switzerland, Sev, Celina, Paulina, and another who's name I cant remember. The four of them, the seven of us, and about five other people from the hostel went on a pub crawl led by Sean and Bridgett, two people that work here at the hostel. Its unbelievable how cheap drinks, shots, and beer is around here, 1 Euro each!!!

One of their local drinks here is called Ginjinha (pronounced Gin-ginger) its a baby plum liquor. The shot is served to you in a dark chocolate shot glass...take then shot then eat the chocolate. It was absolutely delicious, but probably the cause of some minor headaches this morning.

The bars around here don't really open until like 1 or 2 in the morning so we didn't get home until around 4:30am! Needless to say we let ourselves sleep in tell about 11:30 today.

Today we went to another beach called Costa de Caparica, it's a quite a big bigger than the one we went to yesterday and had some pretty big waves and lots of surfers. We are all napping at the hostel right now and are going to join in another bbq tonight with the hostel, this time an authentic portuguese dinner apparently...they have been cooking for the past two hours and it smells DELICIOUS!!!

Tomorrow nights we leave for barcelona on an overnight train, Portugal has been amazing but we are excited to move on!

Our First Night at the Chillout Hostel in Lisbon!

We got into Lisbon at around 9:00am yesterday morning and spent the entire day wandering the clean, cobblestone streets! The city is absolutely gorgeous! We grabbed our first beer and lunch at a little cafe called BS, brenna spotted it and said we had to go there because its her initials (Brenna Sandstrom). Then we were able to check into our hostel, The Chillout Hostel, the girls Alan, and Erik took the private room and we shoved Nick and Johnny into an 8 bedroom mixed dorm, unfortunately for them its all stinky boys!

Then we set out on the streets again, this time walking all the way down to the water and over to this GIGANTIC castle, the Castelo de St. Jorge. It was big and old, but the views overlooked pretty much all of Lisbon! 

Walking around in the sun all day and the 8 hours of time difference made us all pretty tired. One of the guys, Sean, cooked us a delicious bbq of chicken breast, onions, bell peppers, mushrooms, broccoli, and potatoes (yuck), Brenna and I split a bottle of wine and then hit the sheets. I think all of us slept better than babies, except we all woke up pretty early, stupid biological clocks! 

We all just got done eating breakfast, instant coffee (GROSS), toast and chocolate cereal and now we are headed to the BEACH!!!

Love you and miss you all

Todays the Day!!!

FINALLY!!! Just about to head to the airport...our plane takes off at 11:15 this morning, we have a 1 hour layover in Philadelphia, then its off to Lisbon! We get into Lisbon at 9:00am tomorrow morning (their time), hopefully we can call suppress our excitement and get some sleep on the plane.

Cant wait to see all this hard work we put into planning this trip pay off!


See you in LISBON!!!!

Down to the Wire!!

my-o-my how time flies.....two days to go!!! I left bham today, said some very sad goodbyes :'( and made it to Gig Harbor to have dinner with the g-parents, aunties and uncles, and the parentals. Even though I have been packed for over a week now, I still have some last minute errands to run tomorrow. Wish us luck in our travels on Tuesday, we leave at 11:30am and have an hour lay over in Philadelphia, then onto Lisbon!! Woot woot!