August 23
Today we did absolutely nothing! We were exhausted after 2 weeks of non-stop talking, and the travel day, so decided to indulge ourselves and do nothing but watch a dvd and surf the net to organise where we would end up next, which will be Rome, Italy.
August 24
Much more relaxed and re-energised, we headed out to a walking tour starting at 10am. For only 10 euros was extremely worth it, as for the next 3 hours we basically went into every crack and crevice Lisbon had to offer! After many earthquakes and fires they try to rebuild but some parts are left the way they are and so the city is full of many different influences in architecture and broken buildings and even a massive burnt out church which was just amazing...the fire was that hot that even the stone had melted away.
There is no way ever that i would live in Lisbon...it is built on 8 hills and man everytime you go for a stroll your butt and legs certainly feel the hills! One of the first things that you notice is the lay out of the city and it's suburban houses...in that there IS NO layout...it is so hap-hazard, and in one suburb there was only like three streets and the rest you had to walk up and down stairs and stairs that were like vertical and made of marbel which were so, so slippery! In some of the houses, they are that old that they don't have bathrooms or laundry rooms as back in the day they had public washrooms and laundry places, some of which you can still see today.
Because of the hills, we saw some really amazing scenery and had good views of the port and sea.
After all these hours of walking, we went back to the hostel and fell into our beds!
August 25
Because of it still being summer and high season, we had to take the bus from Lisbon back to Madrid and then fly out to Rome. So early in the morning, we back our bags and jump on the bus for the usual bus trip to our next destination...only this wasn't a normal bus trip.
At one of the stops we met a Portugese guy Ricardo who lives in Barcelona, but was going to Madrid after visiting his parents to stay with some friends. The next stop was lunch, so the three of us, Lisa, Ricardo and myself, head to the restaurant at the bus station for our 40 minute lunch. With three minutes to go, we head back out to the bus area and wait for our bus...5 minutes goes by, no bus...10 minutes, and still no bus...15 minutes later and we are really starting to worry...so Ricardo (lucky we met him!) goes back into the station and askes the information man where our bus is...after some words Lisa and i start to worry, because the looks on both their faces is not a good sign...
Ricardo and the information man walk down the other end to another window and we follow...it turns out that the bus has already left...left without us, and with our bags still on it!!!!!!!!!! Ridiculous! The bus drivers ALWAYS do a check before driving off to make sure they have everyone, so how the hell did this one just drive off?!?!?!? we were NOT impressed! Luckily the guys Ricardo were speaking to were really nice (i think they might have seen mine and Lisa's faces haha), and promised us they would call ahead and get the bags taken off the bus in Madrid. The only worry that we had was that at the next stop, our bus ended and we had to change buses to the Madrid bus, so we crossed our fingers and hoped someone would be bright enough to figure this out!
The nice men spoke to the bus driver that was next going to Madrid and sorted us out 3 seats on this bus...at the next stop Ricardo got off, but gave us his number so he could translate in case we had any difficulties in Madrid (hopefully not!).
At Madrid...by the time we got into Madrid it was 10.30pm (we had left Lisbon at 10.30am!), and our worry now turned to whether anything was open, and the fact that our flight out to Rome was 7am the next morning!
Luckily there was a little office still opened, however they didn't speak English, d'oh! I went to find someone to interpret for us, and when i came back Lisa was conversing in German with one of them...for the second time in 4 days, a non-english speaker starts speaking German to us...what a pisser! so after about 15 mins and sending us to different parts of the station, they finally understand what we are after and their three faces light up like light bulbs, they have a small chuckle and take us back to where we met them and open a door, and low and behold, there are our bags...YYYYYAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!! including my book that i was 3/4 finished that had been sitting on my seat in the bus, ridiculous! Lisa and i started jumping up and down with joy, and there were kisses all round...think we made the three bus peoples nights, or at least gave them a good laugh, lol!
After all of this, we decided to taxi it to our hostel and thankfully there were no issues with this!
