Friday night at midnight was when the bus left. We were taking a bus because it is cheaper but also, when it comes to getting to Portugal from Sevilla, it's also more convenient. Because with layovers and different things it basically takes longer to get there by plane than bus. So Lisbon was our destination. We left at 12 and were supposed to get in at 7 in the morning. Well, I don't know why they put that time on the ticket and the schedule, maybe there was supposed to be another stop or something, but it did not take us that long to get there. We actually got in at 5:30 in the morning. But the fun thing is that Lisbon is an hour behind Sevilla so it was actually 4:30. There's not really much going on at Lisbon at this hour. In fact, the metro doesn't start up til 6:30 which made getting to our hotel a little difficult.
So we got to spend some quality time with the Lisbon bus station. 2 hours in the cold bus station with less than 5 hours of sleep throughout the night. That was fun. But we made it through and got on the metro when it opened at 6:30. We headed towards the hotel and after walking past the street once we got there. We knew check in was not until 2 that afternoon but we were going to store our luggage at the hotel until we could get into our room. And then we had no idea where we would go from there. But this was a turning point for the trip. It got off to a rocky start with all that time sitting in the cold. But our luck turned around and there was a room ready and available when we got to the hotel a little after 7 and we were able to check in and get a few hours of sleep before heading out and exploring the city. It was a much appreciated nap. It would have been a rough day without it.
Eventually we did get up and moving though. We didn't have anything specific planned so we decided to just go into city center and just walk around and see if we saw anything we wanted to go see or do. And before that we found a little cafe where we got some chocolate pastries and a drink. I had this really good peach juice and of course the pastry was delicious. Then when we got to the center we walked down to this plaza by the river and saw some stands set up with different things for sale. It was a really nice day and we had actually been able to leave the room without our coats which had not happened on any of our previous trips. So it was really pretty just walking down by the water and enjoying the sunshine.
We then walked in the other direction and saw some shops and restaurants and such. There were also a lot of street performers around. We walked into another plaza area and saw a guy selling strawberries. It was really cheap and you got a lot of strawberries so we bought a bag to split. We sat in the sun in this plaza and ate our strawberries. It was just a really enjoyable way to spend the afternoon.
So after we had eaten as many delicious strawberries as we could, we walked up into the historic part of the city, the only part that survived the earthquake and tsunami back in 1755. The streets are all narrow and winding, nothing like the streets in the newer parts of the city. In this area we visited the castelo de sao jorge it might be called. It was fun to walk around and had some really nice views of the city. After that we walked to the cathedral that is in that same part of the city. It is a gothic style cathedral and it was built over some other things and there have been excavations done in the cloister part of the cathedral so you can see ruins of ancient roman and islamic buildings.
We did a little more walking around after that, but we were still pretty tired. And we were getting up pretty early the next morning to go to Fatima so we headed back to the hotel before too long and got some much needed sleep. When we got up saturday morning we got breakfast at the hotel and then took the metro to the bus station with the goal of making the 9:15 bus to fatima. We got there just in time and just like that we were off to fatima. After a quick hour and a half bus ride we were there. It was a little difficult at first because we did not really know what all we were supposed to see exactly and everything was in portuguese so it was hard to know where to go and what everything was. But we did go to mass shortly after we got there at the holy trinity church that was built fairly recently I believe. It was supposed to be an international mass, but it was mostly just portuguese with a little bit of italian thrown in.
After that we walked around the shrine area some more. We saw the site of the apparition and we went into the basilica where the tombs of the children are. We did end up visiting the book shop and looking for a guide though because we wanted to make sure we knew what we were seeing and how to get to everything. After seeing the things located within the shrine we walked out towards the edge of town following a path of stations of the cross towards the village where the children lived. We got to see the sites where the angel appeared to the children and their homes.
After all of that we went into some shops and we got a little something to eat before heading back to the bus station where we got on the 6:00 bus. We were back in the city by 7:30 and went back to the city center to walk around and get some dinner. Overall, another really nice day.
Monday was the day we had booked the we hate tourism tour that Julie recommended. So we got up early again and had breakfast in the hotel before heading off to the meeting point for the tour. The fun thing about the tour was that it took us to places a little outside of Lisbon in what are considered suburbs of the city. The tour guide was really great and it's just a small tour for up to 8 people and the guide drives you around in a van. There were four other people with us, a middle aged couple from ireland and a slightly younger pair, a guy from LA and his girlfriend I believe who was actually portuguese. Our first stop was sintra and we got to get out and just walk around the area for a little while and see one of the palaces.
After that we went to another palace like place I guess you could say and we actually went in and spent some time in there. The guide would give us information as we drove from place to place but then she would give us a certain amount of time and just let us go off on our own after telling us what she would recommend seeing and doing with the time we had. This place was amazing, like something out of a fairytale. It was just really beautiful. We climbed towers and went through wells and caves and hopped across stepping stones and explored the beautiful main house on the grounds. It was such an awesome experience.
There is seriously so much to say about the trip and we did so much more monday but this post is already pretty long and I am pretty darn tired still so I am going to make you wait to hear about the rest of it until tomorrow. But hopefully you can already tell that it was an amazing weekend and I had so much fun and just really really enjoyed myself.
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