Return of Imagery with Sweet Seville

We left Portugal with bitter memories, a burning hatred for the scum that took our things and a sudden realisation of just how much apple had taken over our world with the invention of the Ipod. This all melted away when we crossed the border back into Spain, I dont know what past misgivings Portugal has had, but they definitely got the ugly gene, and it's instantly noticable. I've found in Europe that the further west, the more to detest. And the sun finally came out! So it was back to the tapas, sun and gorgi-arse women (OMG!!).

We ended up sharing a room with this dude we met in Largos in a fantastic and cheap hostel! First thing was to find a new camera! So finally I have a picture to show

This is us drinking some famous orange wine

I also found much wanted red shoes! I bought a pair of red suede Puma's reduced from €120 to 20!!!!! What a score, originally it was only reduced to 50, but the girl at foot locker fucked up the scan I think. We also managed to buy back nokia chargers for €8! Seville, what a beauty.

Walking along one night I think I saw the most ingenious ideas ever, it also almost made piss myself. Called the 'Lazy Beggars' they just lay out cardboard and you donate toward things, such as whiskey, food, cocaine or an ipod mini. They even have a business card and a website! And if you want a photo they hold up signs with photos : €10,000. So classic check em out.

http://www.lazybeggers.com

They have the most amazing wood carved organ in their cathedral

The streets were all dug up and I joking said it was like an archaeological dig.... and it was

Cello got bed bugs. Haha! He was so paranoid he threw away his shoes, sleeping bag and backpack.

Graz ordered a San Migeul and instead got a Samichlaus, brewed only once a year, these monks must have been moggot all the time. At 14% it is the strongest beer in the world.

Samichlaus - Strongest beer in the World

Amazing flamenco dancing and THE most incredible guitar playing I have ever seen

Crazy parking - how did he get in? And how the FUCK is he getting out. We witnessed multiple 'bumps' whilst parking. They are called bumper bars after all.

Big olives!

Just Grand

Meaty Madrid

Due to our inability to follow travel schedules, we didn't have much time in Madrid. Saw lots of huge cardboard cut out of bulls. We were staying, in an awesome place called Hostal Orly which happened to be situated in the red light district, that also happened to have a hard core porn channel (we love porn). We only really had one night there. Which was just enough for Smurf to die his hair, see a museum, buy an awesome pair of sunnies, order a plate of cold meat with nothing much else and sip some coffee. Oh we also commend Madrid on the air port, which took around 7 terminals but only €1 to get too.

Some bear humping a tree

Tauro! fucker!! Tauro!

Filth and Loathing in el Lagos

I had to build up enough hate to write this section. By far the worst section of our travels, although we still had fun, was mainly marred by the greatest thievery incident since Brad Pitt and Clooney teamed. Cunningly executed, we have a feeling all were involved, the apartment owner, the cleaner, police, every resident in Lagos some even say the President.

It all began when we got off the bus, some old fucker came up to us and offered rooms for €10 per night. Being cheapo we took it, the placed seemed nice - needed 2 keys to get in, windows secure, clean except the smell of old cigarettes.

Everything seemed ok at first. Given how sun deprived we were from Ireland, we came to Lagos for the sun and beach, but got clouds and rain instead. Bloody everywhere I go!!! We did manage to bum on the beach for a little, enjoying just a little brief moment of sun. There also happened to be some medieval festival going on, with people every where in tacky knights/maidens costumes, heaps of stalls with wierd foods to eat. We even met one of 3G's old school mates, who happened to get robbed the other day through a B&E- how much warning did we need???

We decided to go on a bender one night, lots of tequila, lots of beer. Cello even showed off his new hot dog undies to the hot dog stand guys. Randy girls (all not portugese) everywhere. Great craic. Got home, passed out.

Woke up to the tapping on my door, to my suprise it was the old guy. He handed me 3G's passport book, in my hung over state I took it, said thanks, thinking 3G what an idiot for leaving his passport in the hallway! Knocked on his room to give him shit about it... thinking this was all very strange. He too was baffled, opened up the book and his Aussie passport was missing. Rushed back to my room - the fucking scum had taken everything that was mildy expensive, even the 8 euro cheapo sunnies I had just bought the day before. Here's the list

- Ipod (bought with Trost)

- Digital camera (present from friend, all photos lost)

- Pocket knife (present from Denise)

- Nail clipper (what the?)

- Phone charger ( Oh come on!! they're worth like 5 bucks!)

No sign of forced entry, who ever it was had the keys. Luckily, and i don't know how, but they missed my passport, $800 and a USB key in my backpack's side pocket! 3G got hit hardest, he even lost his reading glasses and new beloved vest!! He was so angry you should have seen it. We then spent the next few hours frustrated and hungover at the police station. Thankfully, Cello knew portugese. Needless to say we moved right out. It was pretty uneventful after that for me. Our moods were down, the lads went out again, but I stayed in bed cos I was still sick. Graz met another greek, tried but crashed. At least he did do a funnel out of Eddie Mabo's pants (picture to follow later). Woken by Marcello's loud banging on the door. We were supposed to leave the next day - no way that was going to happen. So we stayed another day in this shit hole. Fuck Lagos.

Capital Portugal

I am a very visual person, I remember things by pictures and my lack of pictures makes me forget. Ah but now I have a myriad of memories, spawning off each other - they rush like a wave I cannot catch. I really dont feel like writing fluently about Lisboa, partly because I was sick, I didn't have the best time, hence this feels like a chore also, fittingly, Galway's recent gastro has caught up with me. I will have to go every point I write in this blog. So point form it is.

- stayed in a 8 person dorm where the toilets were so small your knee prevented the door closing. Maybe you're supposed to sit on it backwards - you know, "face" the toilet. In the middle of the night, whilst we were all sleeping, some wierdo girl came in ate something in the middle of the room, took 4 attempts to reach her top bed bunker (due to horizontal challenges of her own part) dance on her bed for a while. Jumped off and left. I thought I was the only witness to it, until the next day we discovered that everyone saw it too!

- met a US marine, who liked his Hickory smoked chicken. Serving in Iraq, currently on leave. Said he was in "interrogator"

- Pissed, absolutely pissed down rain

- Saw a man with the most hideous growth on his face, it is one of the few things that actually made me feel sick.

- Bought my wicked side laced shoes.

- Ate at a fantastic restaurant, the name of which alludes me

- Saw some shitty castle

- I was still ill

- Went out with the lads on the hostel pub crawl, but ended up joining some wierd night tour group full of non-english speaking people. Quickly broke away and ended up catching the last few minutes of some gig, in possibly the most opulent club. Minimal dance floor, but miniture "beds" everywhere, giant glowing balls etc. Still the ugliest girls....

- A car driving by and splashing cello!

Sintra

I actually have some thing to say about Sintra. Add an "A" and you have a wonderful crooner. For me this was a most breath taking little town in the mountains, with castles in the mountains. We only got to see a Moorish broken one, because we thught we could walk to it.... about 30 minutes into it, and only 1/4 of the way there up hill we decided that it might be a bad idea. But the others look spectacular even from a distance. Had an awesome pizza lunch, and wonderful toilets (as written in Ode). What more could I ask for? Ok, beautiful women.

Origin of Port - Oh

I didn't really know what to expect of Portugal, the main reason for us being here was that Cello for a brazilian, not that he's clean shaven or a nut, but he does have portugese heritage. Much to my surprise there was a lot of asian influences (or maybe the chinese have portuguese influence) in the food. Their shops are lined with really yummy and cheap pastries, alot of which resemble asian deserts like egg tarts, coconut tarts and the like. And in keeping with usual theme of my travels so far, it rained. Yet to buy new shoes, my old sketchers were slippin around all over the place. It's never pleasant to walk around when dogs freely poo everywhere, even worse when the rain dissolves it and spreads it thinly across the pavement.

Food here is amazingly cheap and good! We came across Porto's amazing valley of the Douro River and had their famous Bacalhua in the Ribeira district. Unfortunately it was about now that we realised that something was awry. We went, out got really drunk on overpriced cheap wine and beer, tried our hardest to find something happening, but everyplace was empty, dying or dead. In the most packed club everyone was just too sober and sitting around. So dissappointing. Then it dawned... considering how close to Spain we were (which is full of absolutely gorgeous women) just how not so the Portugese girls were. We had been forewarned of this, and it carried. No wonder nobody goes out, either the beer goggles are ineffective or waking up one too many a time next to the wrong person has scared everybody off from partying.




Due to the heavy heavy rain, we stayed in a lot. But we did venture out again and heard strange chanting everywhere and suddenly noticed a lot of cloak clad people walking around. Originally thinking they were some awesome fashion trend to bring back the cloak, we all wanted one. Then we saw about 100 of them standing in a square chanting whilst kneeling down, and we thought maybe it's a cult, so we looked, but didn't join. We noticed after a while that there were more of these guys on the street then general public, so we got scared. Then we noticed they were all young, wearing shirts with slogans and came to the epiphone: it was Uni induction day!! But first we were hungry. So we ate dinner at this fancy silver service place that we chose at random called Guarany, but turned out to be one of the most famous restaurants in Porto. Ate possibly the BEST steak in the world, like how the Japanese do it, rapid seared on both sides, but still completely raw in the middle, it was AMAZING. To top it off we had green wine and port for desert! It was so so cheap.


After, we took a gamble and just followed these cloaked students around, passing by the occasional bunch of freshers kneeling and pledging to their seniors on the street, we finally came to a congregation of hundreds of them. What subsequently followed was a magical one-off experience, we were treated to musical performances from each University house. Their classical guitar and singing was absolutely enchanting and with the most wonderful setting. At the end of each performance they dont clap, the either shake their hats, or cough. Which worked out really well for me, since due to my newly acquired TB I was perpetually coughing.

Train Ride from Hell

Damn this blogger this is hard to keep up with. Thanks to Siwok's kick up the bum I'll start writing again. Let me see, i'm only 6 months behind... pretty bad considering that I'll be gone pretty much only for a year. So, continuing on

Well, if I did'nt have TB before I am sure that I (along with my travel companions) have it now. If there is such thing as foreshadowing in life, this train ride would be it for our stint in Portugal. After leaving the beautiful San Sebastian we hopped on a shitty shitty train and initially were amazed that we got our own little cabin for the 14hr overnight train ride that lay ahead. However, quickly booted out by some irate travelers not realising that we had allocated seat, our new cabin shared with a slightly-wired polish tough man (leaving any eastern european country for Portugal to find work cannot be a good sign). Although refusing to open the window, make room or generally communicating, we got along. Then came some stop where all these vagrants boarded, all them who smoked in the corridor and getting absolutely smashed on fuck knows what. But we hit the absolute jackpot when a man who had the foulest smelling urinary tract infection coupled with stale cigarettes and a putrid cough entered our cabin. Note, that this cabin is the size of a toilet cubicle. Betweeen the germ infested vagabond, no open window and the air so thick with marlboro 22's it was an OCD's nightmare. The only bright thing was at a stop our polish man rolled a joint went outside to smoke it, didn't come back for a while, the train started and all I heard was the slowly dissipating sound sound of a man yelling "Oi!! Oi!! ooii!! fuck!!!fuck!!!" Funniest thing ever, ahhh curse my wicked heart. We no hear of polish man again.

Lesson learnt: Always pay the extra for 1st class cabins.

We did have a much needed stop in a nice little place called Coimbra, where thankfully, we got to change trains. Sweet little place, where we found it really really difficult to find a shoe shop. I don think they're used tourists, it's funny when you go somewhere and ppl all look when you go a cafe. But I suppose it's not everyday you see a brazilian, asian and greek hanging out. Uni on a mountain. And seriously, if you need shoes... or better yet want to open a sock store, remember Coimbra. Too bad I have no photos, so here are random picks.