Thursday 5 November 2009

July in Portugal - Only just updating now!




Ye! After Budapest I've gone to a few more places like Cinque Terre in Italy, York Liverpool in England and maybe I should write about them! But I always forget hehe and I've been suffering from attention disturbance and lethargy lol will try to talk about something !!
One of my favourites places so far is without doubt Lisbon! But that can be because it resembles Brazil a lot, and I've met some awesome people there.

I went there in July this year and got acommodation for free staying at my sister & friend's house. Their house is shared by 5 people, everyone friendly and ready to party! They're all a bit crazy and were running low on money, even their fridge and microwave were found dumped in the streets, and the washing machine was not working properly, but who cares? They had that family sense well common among brazilians. "Everything is fucked but we rock the party anyway!"


Rightio! Lisbon transmits a very laid back feeling, it's just perfect to walk around, feel the sun (again!) on your back, sit down on a bench and contemplate the city from above (once you've climbed loads of stairs as expected when in Lisbon). Or don't do that, just take an yellow tram to get around the city, it's cheap and cool!

One stop's called "Senhor Roubado" or something like "robbed sir" - change it to "robbed ma'am" and that could be in my honour :)



Lisbon was to me, also a city of firsts...First time I ate snails! First time I was robbed! hehe One nice tip here is, don't leave your bag on the floor (never ever ever) even if it's by your foot, in front of you. That's the way I got mine nicked while enjoying beer at (guess what's the name of the coffee shop?) Brasileirinha. Coffee shops and bars packed with tourists are to be avoided, but if you can't, simply keep your bag with you all the time. And don't carry your passport around! I thought I had mine stolen and panicked, luckily I had left it at home!

Night life! There's always something on! Bairro Alto is not to be missed. On one night we went round a few bars & clubs and could enjoy songs from the 70's, 80's, loads of brazilian music and even a rock club that was playing songs by Bon Jovi, Queen, Guns N' Roses. And what's more, as it's a popular destination and filled with students, everybody in Lisbon is really friendly and ready to party. You can tell by all the Erasmus events, hundreds of bars...hundreds of people at Bairro Alto at night, and there u can meet lots of different people, many travellers, adventurers - few people go home before 5am. On one night I got talking to the barman over there and he kept filling my glass up with beer for free (I was well excited ! haha) . After he shutted the place we went round loads of differents clubs and bars, and I even stopped once just to play guitar with some random people playing it in the streets at midnight... Love those spontaneous situations.

At some point me and some friends got the car to cross the bridge and find a beautiful beach on the other side of the river. We went to Praia do Meco, it's supposed to be one of those nudist beach, but we didn't reach the 'nude' area of it. Thank God as everyone would be terrified to look at me! :)

Saturday 3 January 2009

New year in Budapest


Ha. Our amazing trip to Eastern Europe couldn't have been better. We went to Prague, Bratislava and spent news year Eve in Budapest. I will post about Prague and Brastilava later, as for now I'll just write about our last 3 days.

We stayed in a very good hostel called Corvin Point (M3 blue metro line station: feren korut - for those who might like to know..), very central and clean (it even had those air fresheners in the toilet so it was never smelly haha), about three bathrooms, free breakfast, etc. The only bad side about it was the italians roommates who were farting all night long...but anyway. It was something I had to put up with. haha. We went round the city to places like Heroes Square, Chain Bridge... Very beautiful city. Very cold though. At new year day we got temperatures like -6, -8. About ten o clock we were at a square called Vorosmarti ter. There were plenty things to see as there were loads of stalls selling masks, cheap bad tasting champagne (which we bought ehhe) etc etc. The atmosphere was great as everybody was happy and ready to celebrate. People couldnt stop with the fireworks, it was great.

I and my friend Marmota started drinking about 23:00... Dont know what happened to me but I was drunk at 00:00 and wishing everybody a happy new year. I took loads pictures of strangers, so if u're one of them, please let me know!

Strangers

Brazilians

Japanese
Greek
STRANGERS SECTION BELOW!



The funny italians


The midnight fireworks at the Danube river were a bit disappointing. We were expecting something much more amazing. Anyway, at least the people there were great! We had some people from Croatia making a funny dance at some point, then we met some brazilians singing out loud (like we always do hahaha), and as I said, I was drunk so I went on talking to people I didnt't know. I spoke to so many different people from all over, people from Ukrane, Poland, France, Germany, Italy and so on.

In the following day we just wanted to relax so we couldnt go for anythig better than a Thermal Bath. It was very crowded when we got to Széchenyi Bath, but waiting in the queue was worth it. We relaxed in the swimming pools of 36C, 38C...

On the last day we only had a walk around and bought loads of souvenirs uhuhhu. Too bad as my bag is still lost somewhere in the airport with everything inside !! eheheh

I also brought home the hostel's key. But already posted it back! So no more worries from this holiday. Only my bag...and tracing continues...