Back home

I am now back home in the US and still trying to adjust to the Eastern US time zone. For some reason my body doesn't want to sleep past 9 AM, so I have been trying to get to bed earlier each night.

For those of you who haven't heard the story of my return trip back to Raleigh, here goes. I was still able to make it home on August 7th as planned but the journey took about 8 hours longer than expected. After leaving Lisbon about 20 minutes on my flight this threw off my schedule at my next destination of Newark, NJ. I missed my connecting flight to Raleigh by 10 minutes and I was able to exchange my ticket for the next flight to Raleigh three hours later than my planned flight, no big deal. However, this later flight had many issues. Since my arrival in Newark the airports in the Newark/NYC area began to back up and the delays were piled on. It started out with my new flight being delayed 45 minutes because the flight crew had not arrived from their incoming flight yet. I was still anxious about returning home but I handled that no problem. We were able to board the plane just fine but then we continued to sit at the gate for a long period of time before we were informed by the captain that air traffic control was making us wait to leave the gate and join the wait for the runway. This was one of many reasons why we were delayed once we boarded the aircraft but to cut this story short I was stuck sitting on the plane for four hours before we ever left the ground. The delays included needing maintenance to regulate the air pressure in the cabin and the maintenance truck conveniently breaking down on the way to repair our plane. Just one of those days I guess...

I have been back a week and have been reliving my trip to everyone who asks and will listen and that is part of the reason why I am slow to report about my trip to Portugal and about my final thoughts about the trip. This trip was an amazing experience and I am very grateful for being able to take it. I hope you have enjoyed reading the blog and looking at my pictures and videos. I hope to use this blog again next time I travel and I will probably let you know by email in case you would like to follow along too.

Trips in Portugal

I have now returned home from Portugal and Europe but I would like to write to you about my experiences. In Portugal, I stayed in a village called Venda do Pinheiro, northwest of Lisbon, with one of my aunt Sharrie's friends Vitor Morais and his family. While there I was taken care of very well with an excellent bed to sleep in, great Portuguese food, and shown many beautiful sites around the southwestern part of the country. We started out taking a tour around the southwestern coastline and to the palace at Sintra. On just my second day I tasted my first Portuguese pastry and boy was it good. This started a trend that continued the entire week that I was there. I was able to try many traditional tasty pastries and found some that I like a lot! The Portuguese take their food seriously and it shows because their traditional cuisine is quite tasty. For someone who hasn't tried a ton of different fish and seafood it was quite an experience. I tried bacalhau, a cod dish with potatoes, and an octopus dish which was a surprise. Aside from food, I really enjoyed the landscapes in Portugal as you can tell from my pictures and videos. The Lisbon area of the country is very hilly and makes for some beautiful scenery. The city of Lisbon itself is built on seven hills, which is kind of hard to tell it because of the tall buildings on the land. Another thing that makes the area scenic is the water, from rivers to the Atlantic. I have never been to California or San Francisco but when I came over the bridge into Lisbon on a bus from Madrid Lisbon looked like what I imagine San Francisco to look like. The hills, river, and the April 25 Bridge that is designed by the same architect as the Golden Gate Bridge.

The language and history in Portugal are two things that interested me during my trip. As far as language goes I knew beforehand that Portuguese is a Latin language and that it is similar to Spanish but after having been in Spain for a month learning Spanish I was curious to see how similar they actually are. Turns out there are quite a bit of differences with the most notable being the pronunciation differences. The vowels in Portuguese are fairly difficult to pronounce in comparison with Spanish. I bought a Portuguese phrasebook before I left for Europe but it was neglected while I poured all of my energy into Spanish. However, I was able to find some time for a little Portuguese and was able to speak a little of the language with such little background and confidence it was difficult. Luckily, Vitor and his wife Isabel both spoke English so I was saved by that. As far as history goes, I was able to learn some general Portuguese history thanks to the Lisbon tourism book that Fred let me borrow for my trip. Touring around some monuments in the city and around the country taught me a few things, but the biggest draw to me was the exploration period. The Portuguese discovered many places in the world and was a world power in its heyday despite being relatively small in size. Many things about the explorations are commemorated in the city and I enjoyed being in awe at all of them.

Overall, there is much more to say about this trip and my entire trip to Europe so the best way to find out more is to just ask me the next time that you see me. This was such a wonderful experience and has inspired me to want to travel more often in the future!

In Portugal!

I arrived safely into Lisbon yesterday afternoon after a long 19 hour period of bus rides and waiting around in random places in Madrid (like sleeping on the cold hard tiled floor of the Madrid airport and thinking wow this is actually comfortable). Vitor and his family are very nice and I am having a blast so far. Lisbon is a very pretty city and the surrounding areas are also pretty. I am staying in Venda do Pinheiro, a small village northwest of the city, in a house with AC and a bed that I actually fit in! That is the first time I have been to say unless, except my hotels, since I left the US in June. We took a trip along the coast near Lisbon to see some gorgeous landscape, including the western most point in continental Europe, cool huh? I have many great pictures and videos from here and from my last weeks in Spain that I have not uploaded but I hope to do so when I return to Raleigh next week. I know I am truly blessed not to have any transportation issues so far on this trip. Some of my friends have had disasters on their trips including the Lufthansa airline strike during their flights back to the US. I am trying to soak up everything Europe is throwing at me so far, but there is so much to learn: language, culture, history, food, etc. You name it. Even though it is inspiring, my brain will enjoy resting and hearing familiar words all the time in English.