uniquetrips

Before travelling to Portugal, I had no idea where was it on the map. What I only had in mind about it was "Cristiano Ronaldo", as many people asked me to send him warm greetings, when they knew about my trip to Portugal. It was my first time to get to know about him as I am not into football at all.

I began my trip in the winter, mid of October ,an Egypt air flight crossed the Mediterranean and within 5 hours I landed in Madrid, from which I was picked up by a" Tap Portugal" plane and stepped my feet for the first time on the Portuguese lands.
Pedro my host form "couchsurfing website" was waiting for me in the airport, and from inside his car the European capital Lisbon began to unfold in front of me. It was night but as I expected Lisbon is clean, not crowded..well, I guess I couldn't help myself not to compare it to Cairo.

My host Pedro is in his 60's, living by himself in an old house, almost a museum , full of books from all over the world, statues and souvenirs form different cultures, which he collected from his journeys around the world .
He took me to the room where he had the couch, my bed for the coming days. He showed great excitement for the Papyrus gift I brought him and the "Egyptian dates" he asked for when I sent him my couch request.
I was very careful and I chose a 60 years old man to avoid any kind of sexual harassment specially as I was travelling alone.
Pedro was very kind and helping and seemed to be extremely happy for my arrival. The next day he took me to the art museum near his house which was free because it was Sunday. I noticed many paintings about Jesus and virgin Mary but what stopped me was a statue of Jesus on the cross with a big belly, which I noticed in many Portuguese men, seems like their physical characteristics are reflected on their art.

We went home and I found Pedro preparing for his lunch, which was some grapes. He was a writer and as most of the cultural jobs, his income wasn't enough, although he denied this and explained his grapes lunch with his desire to live a healthy lifestyle, but at the same time he didn't mind when I invited him for a meal of Bacalhau fish and steamed veggies.
In the evening we started talking about our cultural differences, and he showed lots of sympathy for women in the Arabic world being raised in such a closed conservative society. Few minutes after he tried to hold my hands, I moved away and we continued our conversation but I was of course alerted and he was disappointed