Christmas in Portugal

Okay, so I’m having a hard time starting this one. I spent a week in Portugal, so summing my experience up in one blog post is gonna be a little difficult without giving you guys more of a novel than I usually do. Okay, so first things first–background on why I went to Portugal in the first place. When my mom was in college, her family hosted an AFS student from Portugal named Adriano. Our family has kept in touch with him since then, and he’s been to the States quite a few times. I was thrilled to be coming to Europe for the year, because I thought it would be a chance to finally visit him for a change. However, he and his family moved out to California last August. He still wanted me to be able to see Portugal, though, so he set up a week with a family friend and his mother showing me around Lisbon and Cascais. My friend Marissa, also studying for a year over here (in Spain though, not England), decided to join us because we wanted to have friendly faces around us for the holiday season, since we couldn’t afford to go home. So, on December 19th, I flew to Portugal. This was a bit nerve wracking, because I didn’t know who was picking me up at the airport. Once I got there, however, I met Luis, a friend of Adriano’s. He drove me back to his place in Cascais, where I met his wife Helena and their two daughters, Rita and Teresa. These guys would become our very good friends over the course of the week. The next morning, we drove to the bus station to pick up Marissa, and our adventure was fully underway.

That first day, we did a lot of exploring the Expo area of Lisbon, where Adriano’s mother owns a restaurant. There are a bunch of pathways, gardens, museums, and even an aquarium in this area of town. So Marissa and I walked around for a bit, ate at the restaurant, and finally met Celeste, Adriano’s mother. She was a truly incredible woman, if a bit intimidating at first. We were lucky Marissa speaks Spanish, because Celeste didn’t speak English at all and we communicated in a hodge-podge of Spanish, Portuguese, and hand gestures. We slept at Celeste’s apartment that night and had the next day to ourselves in Lisbon.

We didn’t do too much exploring that day, because we were both pretty tired still from travelling and exploring the day before. We did, however, go to see the Castelo de Sao Jorge, which was absolutely gorgeous. We like to think that our laziness contributed to the awesomeness of our experience, because seeing the castle at sunset was absolutely gorgeous. The bridge at the mouth of the river looks kinda like the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and there is a giant Jesus statue on the other side of the river like the one in Brazil. All of this we could see clearly from the old parapets, made of rough, cream-colored stone and glowing in the orange of the sunset.  Marissa and I had a blast running around the castle until it closed and we had to make our way to the subway to get over to Expo.

We had to go back to Expo because we had been invited to a Christmas dinner with Celeste’s family. This was a pretty amazing experience, not the least because I forced myself to try and finish almost all the food I was given (those of you who know me well know how amazing that feat was, and imagine I’m taking a bow). Luckily, we were seated among some of the young adults, most of whom spoke English. That being said, many speeches were made in Portuguese that we didn’t understand, and gifts were given out to everyone, including us! We were definitely not expecting that, and tried to thank everyone the best we could (‘Thank you’ was a phrase we learned in Portuguese pretty early).  Despite everything, dinner was still a little awkward until one of the kids brought over his iPad and we played a game involving matching logos to their brand names. Everyone got in on this game, and there was so much hilarity and fun that we didn’t even notice when Helena and Luis showed up to take us back to Cascais.

The next day, Luis, Helena, and Teresa took us to Sintra.

Along the gorgeous coastal drive, we stopped at Cabo de Roca, the westernmost point of continental Europe. This was pretty cool, because it’s the closest I’ve been to America since I left in August. Not very close at all, really, but knowing that home was just across the waters I was staring at was kind of amazing. There was a kind of park area around it too, lots of grass and hills and paths along the coast. Of course, it was very high up as well, and the cliffs were incredible to see. We wandered up and down the coast for a bit, just to see as much of the shoreline as we could. Helena was snapping pictures like crazy the whole time, of the landscape and Teresa and Luis and Marissa and I. We kept telling her that our parents would be so happy because we keep taking pictures of what we see instead of us. Now we have plenty of pictures of us doing all these things, parents, so don’t worry! After walking around the point for a bit, and airing ourselves out (it was very windy), we got back into the car and drove the rest of the way to Sintra. Sintra was really interesting to see, especially with Luis as our guide. He grew up there, and so he knew the paths to the castles like the back of his hand. There are six castles in Sintra, by the way, but we only got to see three.

The first was in the center of Sintra, and involved some of the most beautiful tile work I’ve ever seen. I kept having strange flashbacks, because I’m nearly 100% positive that my grandmother has replicas of some of that tile work in  her house. The first palace also had these incredibly tall chimneys, stark white and enormous, that erupted from the kitchen. We could see them driving in to Sintra, and we saw them later from the Moorish castle.  After a tour of the palace, we got roasted chestnuts from a street vendor. And let me tell you, those chestnuts are one of my new favorite things, which is actually really bad because I haven’t seen them anywhere since Portugal. These roasted chestnuts were actually amazing, especially with the kosher salt that was put on top and the warmth and… basically it was delicious. We also went to have coffee in a famous shop called La Piriquita. The coffee was wonderful, and we ate some traditional Portuguese pastries (we ate a lot of Portuguese pastries on this trip).

Then we climbed the hill to the Moorish castle. The hike up from the parking lot was lovely, and the castle was even better. It was very old, dating back to when the Moors conquered Portugal, and the sturdy stone walls and tall parapets illustrated the warlike nature of that period very well. climbing up the parapets and walking the defensive walls was incredible, and we got amazing views of Sintra below us and the ocean just beyond. Plus, clambering around old castles, rocks mossy with age and walls haphazardly tumbling down, is just plain fun. I’m pretty sure I had a permanent smile on my face the entire day.

The last palace we visited was called the Palaisa de Pena, which was ironic because Luis’s last name is also Pena. Much of our visit to this colorful palace involved us cracking jokes about how Luis was finally coming home, and how everyone here knew him, and that was his bedroom and this was his personal balcony. The palace was incredible though, all jokes aside. Inside they had the first telephone in Portugal, as well as an early shower-like contraption. Walking around these castles was one of the most surreal experiences I’ve had thus far in Europe, and it was truly amazing to have people like Luis, Helena, and Teresa showing us around. After the palace, Luis and Helena took us out to eat at one of their favorite seafood places. I, being me, was rather nervous for this because I am a notoriously picky eater, and I didn’t want to offend anyone. But to everyone’s surprise, the clams, crab, and fish we shared was really fantastic. I ate my fair share of everything (I’m not lying, Mom, people took pictures to prove it!). It’s safe to say I was pretty proud of myself after that.

The next day, Helena, Rita, and Teresa showed Marissa and I around Cascais and Lisbon. We strolled through Cascais at a leisurely pace, taking in the beaches and the houses and the tiled paths and streets. Helena was fabulous about giving us maps of every place we went so that I could tape them into my journal when I got home. We also got to eat ice cream at Santini’s, a famous ice cream parlor in Cascais. We stopped for more roasted chestnuts too, because by this time everyone knew I loved them. Then, Helena drove us into Lisbon. We were going to visit the monastery where Vasco de Gama is buried, but unfortunately it’s closed on Mondays. So instead we walked around a bit, saw the Monument to Discovery along the shore of the river and had coffee and some more pastries at a well-known cafe near the monastery. After that, Helena showed us around a twisty, cozy area of Lisbon called Alfama, and we had lunch at a cute restaurant deep in Alfama. It was, unfortunately again, raining for most of this, but we drove down to the main plaza and got a few pictures in anyway. After that, we went back to Cascais and had dinner, which was delicious, and spent our last night at the Pena’s. Marissa and I really didn’t want to say goodbye to them, because they really were a great family to stay with.

The next day was Christmas Eve, and we headed back to Celeste’s for the last three days of our stay in Portugal. We were shocked by the generous amount of food that greeted us when we walked into Celeste’s dining room that night. It was a full-on Christmas feast, and there were only three of us to eat it. Each and every thing we tried was delicious, but I’m a pretty light eater. Marissa managed to make a pretty good dent though. We just hope we didn’t offend Celeste by eating modest portions of everything. On the bright side, we managed to finish most of the food over the two days of our stay at Celeste’s. Christmas Eve was strange for the two of us, being away from our families. We both stated, multiple times, that it definitely didn’t feel like Christmas. The next day, we skyped with our families as much as we could, and Celeste took us out for Mexican food at lunch and fabulous Chinese food for dinner. It was a quiet Christmas day, but for my first away from my family, I think it was a good one. The day before we left was bittersweet, because we were really excited to go to Germany next, but Portugal had been amazing. We took a last walk around Alfama, and Expo, and packed our things. We had Celeste drive us to the airport around midnight, because our flight was really early the next morning and we didn’t want to wake her up early.

Portugal was amazing. It was not at all like I expected, but it was incredible for that. I’m so happy I got to go, and that I got to go with a great friend like Marissa.

With gratefulness, a smile, and much love,

Bryn