Lisbon

Heya! I just got back from Belgium yesterday. Went to a town called Bruges(said to be the most beautiful city after Venice), and Brussels, the proclaimed capital of Europe. I bet you know all about Belgian chocolates – I think it lived up to the hype (there were more chocolate shops than souvenir shops), but it was also a gastronomical delight! I never liked mussels, but the mussels in Brussels were to die for. Took some really nice pictures that i’ll upload soon, hopefully. The buildings, canals and city squares were peekture perfect. It might be cliched, but the whole place was like one big postcard.

I’m really lagging behind in my updates of trips, but time is really in short supply. I’ll be headed to Amsterdam this wkend, and will be leaving for my finance competition in Germany next Friday, for more than a week. This leaves like 5 days to complete all my outstanding work, including my International Financial Markets paper, which other students have a month to do. Oops.

But for now, I’ll continue with pictures from the Portugese capital, Lisbon! Portugal is generally regarded as more backward as compared to Spain, but i was pleasantly surprised (impressed even) by the state of many things in Portugal.  I found the people there friendlier and more receptive to tourists, relative to Spain. And the signs are alot more English – friendly, which wasn’t the case in Spain.

Lisbon, or Lisboa in Portugese, was built on hills, which explains its extremely steep sloping roads but contributes greatly to the exquisite appeal of the city. The following photos are evidence of why i think Lisbon was the most aesthetically pleasing city of our tour.

The first thing we did when we reached Portugal, was to buy tickets in Porto for the derby match between the 2 best soccer clubs, FC Port vs Sporting CP! That soccer match was arguably the highlight of the whole trip, which i’ll go into more detail in my upcoming Porto post. The stadium was really attractive and the atmosphere was just electrifying.

The main thoroughfare in Lisbon, note the nice motifs on the floor. Other cities didn’t have these nice motifs. The shot was taken from my hostel. Yup, we stayed right smack in the middle of the city!

Customary statue in customary city square

Typical Lisbon street view, the gradient of the roads is steeper than it looks. U’d think that everybody in Lisbon would be damn fit with all the climbing, but in reality, most are pretty stocky. I’m sure i became alot fitter after Portugal.

…and the vertical marathon pays off. Big time.

We visited this castle on the top of the hill, and as if on cue, my camera ran out of battery. Just as we reached the best vantage point of the whole city. Argh, of all places. The photos taken from the castle using my camera phone turned out pretty appalling relative to my trusty panasonic lumix. This was the last shot before my camera died.

Forlorn guy. He gave the whole picture a very melancholic feel. The cannon looks pretty cute next to him though.

Interior of a church

The archaeological museum.

I havent been blogging about food much, but this meal deserves a special mention. On a recommendation, we went to this pastry shop called Belem Pastries(established since 1833 or something). We knew it was something kinda special cos of the queues. But we din expect something to be so good – Portugese egg tarts are REALLY from Portugal. I thought it was a Chinese ‘invention’. And this place serves the best Portugese egg tarts in the world(I think). Its very likely that no egg tart i’ll ever eat anywhere else will surpass this.

Up next, Porto!