in another land: Off to portugal - a short but memorable trip

Monday, January 21, 2008

Off to portugal - a short but memorable trip

Bondias! Portugal-my last travel experience before I end my exchange, totally different look, the streets and train stations are all so clean they remind me of Singapore! Porto was more developed than I expected, has a train station right in the airport that links to the city centre for only 1.30euro, most airports where budget airlines land on are located faraway from city centres n need at least 7euro for a one way bus trip.

Planned this trip with my friend on exchange at Eindoven, shiiyao. Had some problem in contacting him on my first day as his phone had no more credits!! L Okay, actually it was my fault for not being able to reply to his emails.. anyway, I found him easily at the hostel later. The hostel was awesome, I rated v.high for this one: excellent location, fast free internet connection, free breakfast (though they could improve more on this, heh the best breakfast is still the one from nice hostel with 12 different cereals to choose from), our room was located in an isolated compartment just beside the open terrace viewing the porto river, c’était très belle…sy then showed me around porto.. the night view of old porto is charming, too bad my camera was not good enough, it always gives orange photos…the next day at porto was spent largely on tasting porto wine, going for a wine tour, more photo taking and souvenir shopping…

Photos of porto (random order)

a typical porto boat on the porto river well known for carrying barrels of grape wine.

This was the wine brand Calem, sy went for sandeman thereafter. For only 2 euro, we get a wine tour and free wine tasting..

place for wine tasting

slopes in porto

The traditional way of serving food in Portugal: there will be small side dishes given before our meal, whether we have ordered or not, and you pay for what you eat, i had this small fish appetizer, measuring only 3cm, and it costs 0.50euro, but it was really good!

not only italians hang their clothes outside in this manner, the portugese too... i tink the spanish too..ok.. actually singaporeans too..

the train on one of the porto bridges

hostel in oporto, the door behind is my room:)

Catarina: "I know how to write a little mandarin, I think"
Catarina began to write what she remembered from lecture when the professor used chinese characters of 1 to 6 to represent the different range of marks the students obtained in class. The right column was written by catarina, the left one is the correct version of chinese. Coool!

Met this pretty swiss gal, catarina, in the plane, and she taught me alot of new french words..

From Porto, we lost some travel time to Lisbon, but luck was on our side. In the train, we found a helpful guy from Holland who offered us a free ride to the street where our hostel was located. We managed to find our hostel easily, which was even better than the last hostel in porto, excellent location just in the heart of Lisbon, great atmosphere and friendly stuff. The night we check-in, there was a portugese party for all to try the portugese delicacies. Also got to know more people from the hostel as we mingled around with wine and food… phew, fatigue!..That was when we started to make friends from all over the world, and it was really interesting… sy met a Czech guy and they discussed football till late night over red wine, mm football creates friendship.. the next morning, everyone woke up late, as expected, and we all met during breakfast, all looking tired and half asleep… strange enough, these people were all going to Sintra, another city near Lisbon, and so we formed a small group of 6 and went there together, but halfway through the journey, we lost the 2 european guys, the Czech guy and another sad husband whose wife left him for work while he continued to travel around himself. Sintra was a big city, lots of palaces and natural views. The 4 of us, including tingting from Taiwan, exchange student studying law and Jae sen from korea, studying in London, continued to cabo de roca, but the sun set by the time we arrived and it was completely dark.. so we couldnt see anything…tanpis

The hostel was nice enough to let us stay in the lounge till the next morning at 6am to take the bus to the airport, we could use the toilet and kitchen facilities, n internet too, at no extra costs :) Still rmbered we had cereals and cabonara pasta (by sy) for breakfast, a wierd combi thou very filling ;)

Thanks to sy for doing most of the planning and ensuring a smooth trip throughout…Sad that Portugal trip ended, n the next day it was time to return to Singapore…au revoir Europe

local delicacies value for money

sweet desserts of portugal, lisbon

the aquaduct

dun think i m kidding, it was written there that this was the queen's table

the portugal flag

great coordination with great photographer(heh!)

this guy looks like he was confessing to his beloved at the top of the palace..

mosaics

sy with our hostel mate from america staying in the same room.

A school excursion organised for these kids to teach them english, and they were very keen when we wanted to take photos of them...we chatted with the teacher for awhile, got to know that the children there dun like to study, n do not take them seriously, so they had to employ different study methods to keep them interested, such as this excursion here, ... so good, the children there study in an interesting environment, but the children in stressful spore mug too hard jus to earn a degree.