Olá from Portugal!

Olá my fellow adventurers, hello from Lisbon, Portugal!

Overlooking a city older than Rome, above you can see a photo of me admiring all that Lisbon, Portugal has to offer from coast to shining city!

Now to be completely honest with you fellow adventurer, by the time you read this post I will have already landed back in Scotland, ready to take on another week of university lectures. Why I am telling you this? Well, because after traveling to Barcelona, Spain (2/15-2/21), I realized that in order to fully enjoy my 'reading week' little vacation, I needed to put writing aside for a few days in order to experience new adventures while allowing myself to be completely present in the moment.

Just some food for thought: have you ever really taken the time to look up from your phone and realize that the world is truly beautiful without a camera filter capturing its every moment?

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE taking photos, its one of my greatest passions in life, but sometimes it's good to disconnect for a bit while traveling in order to be present, which I promise will make for some great memories that are sure to last a lifetime!

So without further adieu, I give you my first two days in Portugal, to be followed by a second post explaining my little adventures' farewell!

Did you know that Portugal is considered to be the oldest country in all of Europe!? What, how can that be?! Well, since the year 1139, Portugal has retained the same continental borders, never gaining or losing any land mass due to wars or natural disasters! Amazing right!!! Considering the fact that Portugal's landmass is actually very small in comparison to other European countries, its almost hard to believe that they never tried (or should I say, successfully tried) to expand their boards sometime during the past 879 years! Nevertheless, I can honestly say that without a doubt, Portugal hands down is one of the most beautiful countries I have ever been to, and I can only hope that someday in the future I will get the chance to go back again!

On my first day in the city of Lisbon (Portugal's capital), my friend and I decided to explore the town on foot! After doing some extensive googling/research as to what we should do, we decided to walk to a photographic scenic point, and then venture over to Sáo Jorge Castle (aka. St. George Castle).

If you look to the right, you can see the first photo I took from our first view point (hint, that's

the Castle you see off in the distance), and down below off to the left you can see an image of me sitting on the wall of St. George's Castle, the view in my opinion was just utterly breathtaking!

After exploring the castle (which fun fact: was only 5 euros to get in and worth every penny), my friend and I grabbed some lunch and then headed back down the hill to explore some more of the city streets (hopefully to find the beach, something we don't really have in Scotland)... now that's not to say we don't have any

beaches in Scotland, because actually there are tons! However, due to the fact that right now as I am writing you this post, it is SNOWING outside in Edinburgh, so I think it's safe to say that it won't be 'beach time' here anytime soon! So while in Portugal finding the beach and sticking our toes in the sand was a must!

Clearly from the photos above you can see that the sun is shining, the sky is blue and oh yah, I am NOT wearing a winter coat! I'm not even wearing a light jacket because the air was perfectly warm (not to mention since everything in Lisbon worth seeing aside from the beach is either at the hop of a hill or in the middle of a hill or even at the bottom of a hill, meaning one would have to walk down after hiking up so far), means that your body can easily get very hot from all the walking. So therefore, I would highly recommend that should you ever visit Portugal that you bring your sneakers, lots of t-shirts, sunblock, sunglasses and lots of water bottles (a reusable one will do just fine too, fun fact, Europe is very much into being eco-friendly so most cafe will fill up your water bottle for a reduced price or even free if your lucky)!

Side Note: Off to the right, you can see me on my first day in Lisbon standing on some rocks at the beach!

Truly my fellow adventurer, I really do hope you get to visit Portugal someday, because I fear that all the love and passion I felt for the city during my time in the country will not be done the proper justice it deserves here in my post, for I really had such an amazing time and can only count the days until I return! And to be honest with you, after having just left Barcelona, Spain, a city and country I thought I was going to love but ended up just 'liking' instead, I wasn't expecting to fall head over heels in love with the city of Lisbon! Now I just want to quickly mention that in my follow up 'farewell Portugal' post I will talk about the day excursion/tour that I paid for that ventured me out to Sintra and Cascais from Lisbon, two cities that I seriously even fell in love with more, so be sure to stay tuned for that upcoming post because if you think my photos from Lisbon are beautiful then you haven't seen anything yet!

After finding the beach, my friend and I decided to walk around the streets some more, take tons of photos, pop in and out of stores and of course try to figure out how to read street signs in Portuguese, and succeeded (well sort of)! By this time in the day it was almost 3:30 in the afternoon (we are both morning people so waking up at 7-8am is no big deal, for I personally hate waking up past 8:30am, I feel like half my morning is gone by that point, even on weekends!) So around 3:30 in the afternoon we were ready to head back to the hotel for a little rest before venturing back out to dinner, where we ended up eating at the Hard Rock Cafe in Lisbon!

On that note, really quickly fellow adventurer, I just want to share one last little fun fact with you... for years now my family and I, no matter where in the world we travel, we ALWAYS and I mean ALWAYS go to a Hard Rock Cafe! The amount of pins I have collected combined with the amount of t-shirts my mom must have plus the amount of burgers my dad has eaten would probably put any Hard Rock Cafe fan to shame (HAHA)! For a while now I have been thinking of writing a blog post just about my families special tradition, visiting the worlds Hard Rock Cafes, so once again stay tuned for a future post detailing ever cafe I have visited! Who knows, maybe once you read it you too will be inspired to visit the cafes or even come up with your own kind of travel tradition!

WOW so now finally after getting up around 7am, walking all day, taking photographs, and having dinner, our first day in Portugal was finally over!

Now I just need to get one more thing off my chest... this entire post I have been telling you that my day in the photos was my 'first' day in Lisbon... however, the day before all of these photos was taken was actually the first day my friend and I arrived in Portugal after leaving Barcelona. After arriving in Portugal on Wednesday February 21st at around 2:30pm, rather then trying to run all around the city before it got dark out, we decided like the studious university students we are, to spend the rest of the afternoon at our hotel doing some course work before we would venture out to dinner so we could start the day fresh on Thursday! SO, therefore, while the day I just described to you above was not my actual first day in the country, it was our first actual day venturing out of the hotel, meaning Friday (the next day) I did my day tour and Saturday (the next, next day) was our final last full day before leaving for Edinburgh!

Well my fellow adventurer, what more can I say, I just thoroughly enjoyed every moment I spent it Portugal! Flying into the country I can remember it like it was yesterday, seeing all of the red city roofs in contrast to the big blue sky, overlaid with white buildings, filled with streets containing many Portuguese food goodies, history, postcards and picturesque points galore, I can honestly say that after landing in the city and seeing it up close for myself, it doesn't matter whether you are in an airplane, high view point or down by the coast, all of Lisbon was breathtaking to me, and my first two days in the city were ones well spent!

Stay tuned for my follow up post describing my last two days in Portugal!

Until next time my fellow adventurer! Thanks for taking this little journey with me ...

Cheers,

Meghan Chayka