Lisbon - best city ever

We took an overnight train from Seville to Lisbon and arrived yesterday morning. Since then it's been one cultural activity after another. The museums here are incredible - we went to the Modern Art museum (Bill, I might have to have you explain modern art to me. I actually thought the first exhibit was construction work being done on the museum...) and to the Calouste Gulbenkian museum, which was amazing. Apparently this guy only bought the best of the best pieces, so everything was intact - it was all these glass vases and pottery and furniture and rugs in addition to paintings. I'm normally a person who pretends to be really impressed in museums, but it was so cool that I was actually impressed. And it was free because we told them we were teachers! (Well, we were. And will be again this summer...)

Last night we went to see The Departed. Thankfully the Portuguese prefer their movies subtitled instead of dubbed. I liked it a lot, but there was a ton of blood at the end! Ew. I can see why it won Best Picture, though. Tonight we are seeing Music and Lyrics, a Drew Barrymore and Hugh Grant romantic comedy that I've never heard of, but I don't care. I love them both. And I've missed going to the movies! Cam is not really looking forward to it, but is a good sport.

Today we spent the morning at a religious artifacts museum that also had 2 mummified children. Ick! But interesting. Then we headed to the Jeronimo monastary, which was extremely impressive and huge. We also saw where Vasco De Gama set out on his explorations and then tried to go to a Design Museum, but it was closed. Then we had a cream pastry that The Lonely Planet said tasted like it was made by angels...and it was good, but not amazing. The writers should get a cream puff from the Wisconsin State Fair before publishing such bold statements!

Portugal is truly fantastic. People have been really helpful and the signs are in English and it's all relatively cheap. Museum entry fees have all been less than 3 euros...compared to 8 in Spain.

Can't believe I'll be back in the US in just over 2 weeks. Well, maybe. The annoying company I bought my ticket home from sent paper tickets to my house in WI, so my dad sent them to Cam's mom in Colombia to bring to me, but they never arrived and my dad sent them regular mail, without a tracking number or anything. Hmmm. Hopefully they'll let me know soon what needs to be done to get another ticket. Otherwise I might just have to extend the trip...