Monday, September 14, 2015

Last few days

Ok, so I saved talking about the last few days for one post since nothing seemed interesting enough to stand on its own. I think the jet lag is finally gone.. it took about a week to finally go away. The second week of class started today and it seems hard to believe that we are taking our final exam for the first level language class Friday already.

Anyways, last week we had a second field trip during which we went to a local market called Mercado 31 de Janeiro where they sold fruits, vegetables, nuts, meat, and fish. We didn't stay long, just long enough to take a quick look around, so the only picture I have is of this huge ugly dead fish next to a stack of dead stingrays. I didn't know stingrays were edible but here we are:

Picture of my friend in the market:


That night I went out for the first time. Night life here in Lisbon is CRAZY. The Baixa-Chiado neighborhood, which is where we went, is like party city at night. It is literally so crowded at 2am that you can hardly walk. The streets in this few block radius are just full of bar after bar after bar. However, each bar has such a radically different feel from others that it was interesting just walking into them. We started out only with only around 5 people but later we became 9. There are no laws against having open containers of alcohol in Portugal so most people just spent a few euros for a whole bottle of wine and just walked around drinking that on the street, which was funny. Drinks here are very cheap. I ended up splitting big mojitos or Caipirinhas with my friend for 5 euros but in some places you can get a decent sized drink for only a euro or so. The best part for me about the whole night was just looking around at the people. EVERYONE WAS SO ATTRACTIVE!!!!!!!! Seriously, I don't think I've ever seen so many beautiful people in one place before in my life. Plus the atmosphere was very international... it was impossible to even try to guess where all of these people came from.
The only thing that was not so fun was that men there can be very creepy/aggressive. One of the girls we were with was constantly being harassed. Also, on my way out of one bar some guy grabbed my hand and refused to let go, even after it became an all out tug of war me vs. him which was way too intense for my liking.
We didn't even meet up until 11:30 pm so although I left at around 2:30 am I was one of the first to go. Overall, an interesting night though not really my thing.    

The next day on Saturday I took a trip with 3 other people to go to Cascais, which is a touristy beach town about 45 minutes west by train of Lisbon. The first thing we did was eat some really great Indian food which only cost 20-something euros for 4 people.


They had some REALLY good mint yogurt sauce there.....



After we laid down on the beach an just hung out. I hadn't brought a beach towel, sunglasses, or bathing suit but it was still really pleasant. The water was really cold at first but you got used to it quickly and then it was just refreshing. After we walked along the beach to a cafe where we drank caipirinhas and sangria and ate french fries. Classy.
When we went home around 7 I was beat and decided to just go home and sleep instead of go out again. Phew.











   

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