Espana and Beyond: A weekend in San Francisco, Ok maybe just Lisbon, Portugal

One of my fishies....

Another eventful weekend traveling! ISA took our program to Lisbon, Portugal for the entire three day weekend last weekend and it was quite the experience! We left early friday morning and took a very long bus ride into the capital of Portugal, Lisbon. Before going the only things that I knew about the country was that they speak Portuguese and some English and that they are infamous for their fish plates. So going there I was glad that they spoke some English seeing as I don't know any Portuguese but I was extremely afraid to try the food because I am not a very big fish fan. So the first day a few of us decided to try some local food for lunch and unfortunately for us we picked the one place that did not speak any english or spanish and only had a selection of seafood. So not knowing any of the names of the plates I randomly picked a plate and regretted it immediately. My biggest issue with seafood is that I will try any of it unless I can see the head and/ or skin and out came my plate with two large uncut deep fried fish. I was terrified and thank god for my friends who deboned it and make it at least appear less like a live fish for me. Sadly I wasn't really able to eat them and walked away a little embarrassed and super hungry. Therefore I chose not to eat the local food for the remainder of the trip, I just couldn't do it!

These weren't my fish but they were Blair's deep fried anchovies :/ scary!

Unlike other trips, we did not have monument or museum trips planned so our weekend mostly consisted of a lot of city walk tours and panoramic bus city tours. However we were still able to see a lot of the famous monuments and get a feel for Portugal by just walking around. The views of the city were amazing, but it does look a lot like San Francisco, California with an identical bridge (because it was designed by the same american architect), city feel, and trolly cars. I really enjoyed all of it but unlike the ISA directors said, I only encountered one person who spoke something other than Portuguese. That made it difficult but really fun and a nice learning experience! That saturday we went on a small city tour again and afterwards had free time to explore and do whatever we wanted. We took that opportunity to visit one of the largest aquariums in all of Europe called 'Oceanario' and it was really interesting and fun. Overall I really liked Lisbon and one day if I return I hope I can make it to some of their infamous beaches further south in the country!

This one's for you Dad, it's hard to see but in the background is a structure called "The Elevator" and it's a very large elevator constructed by the same man who built the Eiffel Tower - VERY cool!