Some friends and I decided to take a long weekend and drive to Portugal. Renting the van was an eventful experience. First, the rental company moved locations in between the time we made the reservation and when we went to pick it up. Once we found where we needed to be, we discussed who would do the driving. Since all of the rental cars were manual transmission, that eliminated five out of the seven of us. Out of the two we had left, one had an expired license and one didn't meet the age requirement to be the driver. We finally decided that the expired license wouldn't be too big of a deal, and the officer would read the date the European way (day then month) making it seem like it wasn't expired, right? As we were pulling out of the parking garage to start our trip, the car got stuck on a hill and started smoking. It was smoking so badly that people were actually pointing and staring. Turns out the gears are arranged differently on cars here, so our driver didn't realize that he was in the wrong gear. Phew...then it took us awhile to find the freeway and get out of Granada. After a couple of times going down a one-way the wrong way and getting a few honks and unfriendly gestures, we made it to a gas station. We had only been out of the parking garage for about 10 minutes and our driver was so ready and relieved to take a break. We got gas, programmed our GPS system, and tried again. One of the girls brought a GPS with her to Spain. Its name is Lee and it speaks in an Australian accent. This is a picture of us driving aimlessly through Granada trying to find the freeway. The streets were so narrow. We actually had to fold in our mirrors to get through.
Rain.
Here's our driver, Ryan, happy to be on the freeway and for the rain to have stopped.
We were all very excited to cross the border into Portugal. We had our passports ready and were waiting to be stopped at the border. We were a little disappointed to discover that we wouldn't be stopped and that we didn't need our passports.
On the way to Lagos we stopped in Faro to go to a church called Igreja do Carmo. We heard about the church from other study abroad students. In the church there's a chapel that is made entirely of human bones. There are 1245 skulls in the chapel. They belong to the church's monks who were previously buried in the adjacent cemetery. I'm still not sure how to characterize my impressions of the bone chapel...it was cool, and creepy. Definitely something to see.
All bones from floor to ceiling.
After the bone chapel we went to a park in Faro to eat our lunches. Then we hopped back in the van to go to Lagos. It took us a long time to find our hostel in Lagos, but when we finally got there we were greeted warmly. Azelinda, the woman who runs the hostel, was so excited to have us there and she treated us like we were her own kids. She was a very funny woman. When she explained the hostel rules to us, she took out a rolling pin to demonstrate what she would do to us if we were too noisy. This is the view from the terrace of the hostel.
After settling into the hostel we walked around the city center of Lagos. There weren't very many people there because it was a rainy weekend. The town was really cute.
That night we cooked dinner at the hostel and just hung out before going to sleep. This is the whole group with Azelinda.
The next morning we walked around the marina. There were lots of people offering boat tours and trips to see dolphins.
Next we went to Lisbon. This statue is huge and you see it right when you enter the city.
Our stay in Lisbon was unique because we stayed outside of the city center at a campground. We rented a bungalow. It was fun to be at a campground because it reminded me of home. Still, we were a little wary of the bungalow at first because it was, well, kind of gross. After awhile we started to warm up to the bungalow. That night we drove to a grocery store, which ended up being part of a mall, and we had a nice dinner there. After a full day of driving, we decided to spend the rest of the evening in our bungalow playing card games.
The next day we woke up early and headed into the city. We didn't have any tourist attractions in mind, so we just spent the day walking around. I really liked the city. The architecture was very different from Spanish architecture and there were lots of trees.
We came across this church where there was a concert going on inside. We toured the church and then climbed to the top of the cupola to see the view of the city.
After spending the day walking around Lisbon, we headed back to our campground. There happened to be an IKEA not too far away from the campground that I had spotted the first day we got there. All of the girls wanted to go, but it took a little longer to convince the guys that we should go. That night we went to IKEA. It's one of my favorite stores, so I was pretty excited about it.
The next day we drove home. We traveled a long way on our trip through Portugal, and spent a lot of hours in the car. However, we had a really nice time. We saw a lot of cool things and it was interesting to see and hear Portuguese. Portugal is a beautiful country.
Here's a link to more pictures:
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