I wish The Lonely Planet didn't oversell...

While I have appreciated The Lonely Planet's advice on many occasions, they do have a tendency to oversell a place. Yesterday Camilo and I took a day trip to Sintra, a gorgeous town that they said was like "Alice in Wonderland meets Lord of the Rings in a Never-Never Land." What the hell does that even mean?? The town was beautiful and we had a great hike up to a castle and palace and a gorgeous park, but come on, how could it have lived up to it's expectations?? It was similar to our experience at the pastry shop in Belem and the "angel tarts."

The hike was about 5k, all uphill. We should have taken the bus, it was exhausting!! We just kept on saying, "this is good for us." And eventually we made it, a little sweaty but intact. Then we met this annoying Canadian kid who told us he was majoring in alcoholism and wouldn't shut up about his polarized sunglasses. Clearly he followed us around all day. And I tried to ignore him, but it was difficult. Cam was taking photos and left me to babysit the kid. But his photos are uploaded...check them out at

www.flickr.com/photos/camilo11

We also met these adorable women from Arizona. It was like hanging out with my mom and her friends for a little while and I had such a nice time talking to them! Of course they were all impressed with our adventure and took a picture of us...what a riot.

Last night we finally did some drinking at the Lisbon equivalent of NYC's LES. Oh, how I missed it. Then we ate some yummy garlic shrimp and pork while sitting next to a man who let "Smack That" play off his 2 cell phones, even when he wasn't at the table. It was weird, and even weirder given the buzz I already had.

Oh, and yesterday morning our hostel owner told us there wasn't any space for us for a 3rd night...I asked why he waited so long to tell us and didn't leave a note in our room or anything letting us know and he just looked stupid and pathetic. Luckily we didn't have a hard time finding a new one, it was just across the square and run by these 2 old sisters who seriously only yelled at one another to communicate! They told Cam that we should report the other hostel to the newspaper and were just horrified by what happened to us. What nice ladies. It was like being in my grandma Janet's house - they had all this old furniture and knick-knacks everywhere and plastic flower arrangements. Unfortunately, this also meant that we had to act/be somewhat sober when we got home - you can't return to your grandma's house drunk!!

And the flight situation is resolved. For a $25 fee I can get a ticket reissued in Barcelona just before the flight. Thank goodness. Who the hell uses paper tickets anymore, anyway??

We are off to Coimbra, a university town a couple hours north of here.