Lisbon, Portugal has it all, beaches, mountains, nightlife, art, pedestrian streets, friendly people, great pastries, etc... and a great hostel. I spent 5 great days in Lisbon and all of them at the Traveller's House Hostel, which was a great place to start off your day with a hot, home cooked breakfast and a great place to relax after a
long day of trekking 
around the city (end of advertisement, haha). After being highly advised by some friends I met along the way, I signed up for a tour of Sintra, a small town outside of Lisbon, for my first day. The tour was provided by the hostel
and was a day filled with great sites including the Pena Palace and its fantastic gardens, Quinta da Regaleira and its both fascinating and eerie grottoes and mystic well, a sunset at Cabo de Roca, the most westerly point of main land Europe and finally to Cascais, a beach town near Lisbon, for a day capping drink before heading back to the hostel for a
traditional Portuguese meal. I arrived to Portugal pretty beat after 75 days of travel, so I crashed out the rest of the night and watched a movie. All this on my first day. The rest of my time in Lisbon was spent exploring the different parts of the city, which still used old time electric cable trolleys as a main source of transportation around the rather hilly city. There are many neighborhoods or districts and I did my best to get a good feel for as many of them as I could. I got some great views of the city from the Alfama district, which survived the great earthquake of 1755 that reshaped much of the city.
Belem, another district is home to museums, monuments and nice parks where I spend some time resting on the park benches after I ate too many "pastel's de nada", a tart pastry most famously made at Pasteis de Belem, a pastry shop that has been around since the early 1800's.
I toured the Jeronimos Monestary, then went back and ate some more pastries before catching the tram back to the hostel.
I spent the last day or so wondering around the Bairro Alto neighborhood, which is full of just about anything you can imagine. I stumbled up a street art exhibition, called VSP or Visual Street Performance that was pretty amazing. This group of artists was given an old school building for a set amount of time, which they transformed into a live art studio putting on performances of all kinds, pretty awesome! I had a great time in Lisbon! The time in my trip was going fast so I decided to move on and head back into Spain towards Madrid via a night train.
I am now back in the USA, where I arrived on December 22, just in time to celebrate Christmas with my family. It is nice to be home, getting some rest and home cooked meals, but reality has now caught up with me...
The first pic on the left is the sun set at Cabo de Roca, the middle left is me at the top of the gardens with the Pena Palace behind Me. The bottom left is a cable car that has just been parked for the night. The top right is the unique way to enter the grottos at Quinta da Regaleira, the middle right is the entrance to Pasteis de Belem, home of one of the best stomach aches I have ever had! The bottom right is part of the VSP street art exhibition in the Bairro Alto neighborhood. Peace!
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