Lisbon

I went to Lisbon this weekend with some people in my program. When I first got there, I was sure it was my new favorite city. I started imagining returning to Portugal on my honeymoon and then - if I was lucky enough - moving there for a little while. I even started considering what my life would have been like if I had chose to study in Lisbon instead of Barcelona. I was reminded of San Francisco just because it seems like a pretty normal port city, but prettier and more European (and less people). We walked around and actually made it to almost all of the tourist attractions (Fado Museum, Monestary, etc.) but by the end of the weekend I liked Lisbon a lot less.

The main issue is, I don't speak Portuguese. There were multiple instances where I would try to buy something by speaking to the clerk in Spanish and they wouldn't speak to me in Spanish or English. It wasn't really an issue of them not understanding the languages but more the need to be huge douches about how I'm not from Portugal.

One of the attractions of Lisbon is that it's cheaper than Barcelona, but this means there is a lot more poverty. When we were walking home at night on the unlit streets past all the shady Lisbon folk, I felt pretty unsafe. Apparently 95% of the population consists of old men who have accidentally spent their life savings drinking and now have strange deformities that look like they're the result of accidents. These men can be found on the tram, or right outside your hostel.

There's also a lot more physical deformity in general than the rest of the world. We actually had a conversation about dwarfs versus midgets because we saw so many of them and needed to be able to easily classify which was which.

Overall it was a really good trip. We still haven't really had anything bad happen to our group on vacation yet (knock on wood) so hopefully the next couple weekends will go smoothly, too.