Well to start, yesterday was incredibly long. So, we had to make this treck out to the Castelo de São Jorge. Well, we got a bus that took us up to it. Other people weren’t as smart (or as lazy really) as I was and took the metro. They had to basically climb a mountain. Whatever. Anyways, the road was extremely windy, narrow, and kinda steepish, so it was pretty exciting. That castle is sooooo cool. It’s super high up so it has a great view. And it looks like a legit castle. It stones and has the whole like castley block up, block down on top of the towery things. Does that even make sense? So we had an hour lecture kinda out of the way of the tourist about Portugal history, Roman influence, and the history of the castle. It was kinda funny that at the end there were a couple of maybe Americans that were standing behind us kinda listening. Good old history. Then we got to explore and take pictures. We could walk up on top of the castle walls. Super cool. After the castle we decided to do this walk thing. For one of my classes, we have to do seven walks. They are all guided by this book, and it takes us through like 20-something stops. So this specific walk started at the castle. It did not start well because we spent like 20 minutes just looking for stop 2. They get kinda hard because sometimes the directions are ambiguous or the streets don’t show names. So we got lost quite a few times. And we were trying to find this restaurant that no longer existed. Good times. FINALLLLY, we finished that walk. We were literally doing it for 4 hours (minus the 30 minute lunch). It was supposed to only be 3 km. Whatever. Then we had no time to go home or freshen up because we had a lecture in less than an hour. So we found a metro stop thing and went to the place we needed to be. We had a lecture about fado, which is a Portuguese music. The lady was interesting, but everyone was so tired that you could tell everyone was struggling to keep their eyes open. It would have been funnier if I wasn’t included. Then after that 2 hour lecture we had to get up and go to fado. So how fado works, you go to a restaurant and eat food. Then a singer enters, the lights go down, and everyone stops eating to listen. Fado has usually two different guitars and one singer. The voice is nasally, chest voice, and quite a bit of vibrato. It might take some getting used to, but now I really like it. Then the lights come back on, and you eat some more. Then more singing, more eating, etc. So cool. So in the end, we got back after 11. It was a super long day.
However today was so chill. I worked on my independent study class in the morning (kinda). Then we all went to the Museu de Arte Antiga (Ancient Art Museum), which was super cool. They had a bunch of things from the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries. It took a long time to go through it all. Then we came back and got groceries and our laundry (we had given it to a lady to wash, kinda by accident. Long story. Oh well. It smells really good now). Then all that was left was eating, studying, and a little bit of Netflix. Awesome times.
Minha Jornada por Portugal 