Sintra and Lisbon, Portugal

We left for Lisbon (aka Lisboa) at 1:30 am from the Salamanca train station.  Nick and I were split up because the rooms were divided by sex. I was lucky because the helper fella who jumped off the train came straight to me. He read my ticket and walked me to my room and then took my ticket away from me. I settled in and went right to sleep trusting that someone would wake me up so I didn't miss my destination. Nick had a different experience he was left on his own to find his car and bunk. When he asked someone the answer was, "down there." As he was standing in the hallway the train started to leave the station. Lucky for him the ticket fella came by and helped him to his room. We both slept really well.

We were woken up by a knock at the door. Turns out our stop was the last one. We we arrived in Lisbon and jumped off the train and headed to the metro to get to another train station so we could get to Sintra. We made it in plenty of time so we took a short nap.

Train to Sintra:

We did a lot of research about the place before we went but we were still confused when we got there. Everything worked out fine, though. We walked a lot and took a ton of photos. Our first stop was the Castelo dos Mouros. We climbed the wall and had a great time exploring. The views of Sintra and Pena Palace were amazing. We spent a lot of time here.

Next we headed to Pena Palace. The colors of this palace are so much better in person. To keep things interesting let's play a game. Try to find Nick in the photos that we took of the Pena Palace.

Were you successful? Trust me he is in every picture.

Next we headed to to Sintra city and walked/slid down the narrow streets.

We stopped at the oldest pastry shop in Sintra and ate their two most famous pastries. The recipes are not shared with anyone and we could tell why.  So yummy!

After our wonderful adventure we headed back to Lisboa by train. Nick and I both thought the train would end where it picked us up so we both fell asleep. The train stopped and we had no idea where we were. Lucky for us the train was going back to Sintra soon so we decided to stay on and figure things out from there. It took us 2 hours to make it to our wonderful Airbnb sailboat. (We found out later, through experience, that we could have taken a bus that took us straight to our sailboat. Oh well, live and learn)

Nick took a much needed nap and I explored the area nearby by myself. When Nick woke up, we went out for dinner. This is when things got a little uneasy for us because as soon as we exited the subway Nick was approached by a man asking him to buy drugs. At first Nick had no idea what he was talking about, and I was a good 3 steps behind him so the next thing I heard was a frustrated Nick stating loudly, "I'm Mormon and I don't do that crap!" We walked quickly where there were lots of people in a tent and it turned out to be a small market (at 10 pm) We tasted a few things and left to find a place to sit and eat. We went up some interesting back-roads , following people of course, but the higher we went the more uneasy we were feeling. Nick and I decided to walk back down and find food near the subway station and that's how we found this amazing Saw Fish waiting for our taste buds.

I wish that I could tell you that we had no problems after we finished our meal (By that time it was midnight) but that was not the case. On our way back to the subway we were approached again by a different person, this time drugs were in his hands as he was shoving it towards us. We walked quickly and tried to shake the uneasy feeling that this city was giving us. 

Sunday we got up and went to church. We really wanted to visit Tyler Tillman but his building was too far north and the subway wasn't running all the way up there, so we had to settle for these two dudes.

We left our wonderful boat to explore more of Lisboa before we caught the train back home. We went to see the views at the St. Jorge Castle it also had peacocks. 

After the castle we were headed down the hill when we found this cool shop. Nick really wanted to purchase a tile because they are very popular in Lisboa. This old dude had a lot of tiles that he has collected through the years and Nick settled on one of them. We also heard that grilled sardines were a must, so we tried them... BONES, BONES everywhere!

We made it to the bottom of the hill and caught a bus near our train station. We decided to take a one-way cheap gondola ride as we were killing time and it dropped us off at a super cool shopping area that was attached to our train station.

Nick got sick of me taking picture of him and he thought he was giving me that, "I disapprove"

look but in actuality he was giving me the, "I'm super sexy" look. I guess he needs to work on his modeling skills.

Overall it was a great trip. We got back to Salamanca at 1:30 in the morning but we had Monday off to sleep in.

Frankfurt, Germany

We landed in Frankfurt, Germany around noon so we had plenty of time to take the train into town and walk around. We were tired, my leg hurt, but we did it anyways and with a smile. We found and paid for the train (I was disappointed because I felt like we spent a lot of money on a ticket that nobody every checked). 

So when we got downtown, we discovered that they didn't have storage for our things so we jumped back on the train and went to a different station to lock it up. Eventually we made it.

We walked through the shopping district first and then we made our way (by accident of course) to a cool festival. There we shared a delicious sandwich; It had a huge chunk of tender meat in it.

We kept walking because we wanted to find and walk along the river. We ended up walking through a beautiful park that bordered the city and we stumbled upon a couple of old buildings, a WWI memorial, homeless people, and a lot of bikers.

Finally, we made it to the river and took a ton of pictures.

We left the river, crossed a road and stumbled upon the old district. My mouth hung open as we rounded the corner to see this.

The buildings were beautiful so we decided to sit for a while and take it all in. A group of Koreans walked up to take a picture in front of the building and when they noticed Nick's hat they LAUGHED and asked to take a picture with him.

On our way back on the train Nick was able to snap this picture. It looks like Alabama he said and I agree with him. What do you think?

At the airport we took a nap and relaxed until it was time to take off. This was the first time we got on a bus that drove us to our plane and then we loaded from the back. It was a cool experience.

The bus

The plane

Although we didn't have much time there we felt like we were able to see so much. I can't wait to get back to Germany and see more one day because it's beautiful and the food is amazing.

Graduate School

As of couple of Mondays ago our first year of graduate studies has come to an end. However, we only have a few weeks to relax before our summer courses pick up.  Nick and I were fortunate to be awarded scholarships to help pay for the astronomical amount of money it costs to attend a school in the Fenway.

Our first year has been tough, not going to lie. Our business decided to take off along with taking three class this past semester. Two for our program (Teaching English as a Second Language ) and the third, a foreign language of our choice. We picked Spanish of course, it just makes sense. Simmons requires that all of its students have an intermediate level of any language and we thought two classes would get us past this rule but we found out a month ago that we have to take one more class. There is no way that we will be able to balance our schedules with a third class in the fall, so we found away around it. Nick and I are headed to Salamanca, Spain to live in a cute flat and take an intensive Spanish course for the month of June.

Feel free to leave some positive vibes!

We will travel and blog on the weekends!

Let the adventure begin!

Love you all!

A Twist to Our Trip

Traveling is always an adventure. From the places you go, to the new people you meet and the new foods to try,  there are new stories being created with every experience.  What makes these stories interesting are the little mishaps that happen in every trip.  Some mishaps work out better than others but, once you get some distance from the actual event, those twists in the story are what make the whole thing memorable and make the story worth telling.

Saturday, 3 days before taking off to Spain, I went on a 2.5 hour bike ride with a small group and right before I started to head home I had a fun, self-inflicted, little accident. A huge 12 passenger van freaked out and stopped instead of getting out of the way causing all of us to abruptly stop, well my left shoe clip and my bike pedal didn't want to disconnect and I simply fell over onto a sharp curb where I was squished by Molly (my bike). I popped up and told my whole bike group I was fine and jumped back on my bike and rode home in silent pain.

I don't think I was fine.

Due to the large amount of swelling I was experiencing, my friends talked me into visiting the emergency room to make sure I didn't have a clot or broken bone; I was cleared on both counts. However, I was still nervous about the flight because I always swell up, so I borrowed a pair of compression socks and I was sorta fine.

Look at that bruise all the way from my knee to my foot.

The second twist had Nick up the whole 7 hour ride (his 3rd day with little to no sleep). Why? Well, when you own your own business and you travel, you have to work. We have a great Chinese group of students who send us papers to edit at the end of each semester and this semester was no different. However, we had one come in last minute; it was due in 15 hours so Nick got to work as we were just sitting around at the airport. He made sure he saved it on his computer so he could edit without the internet. As we got settled in on the plane both of our phones went off, and guess what, ANOTHER paper due in 14 hours. Nick quickly saved the document on his laptop and then for the next 6 hours he was that business man on the plane working hard typing away on his laptop.

We arrived in Frankfort, Germany and spent the day (Blog coming soon) before flying to Madrid late in the evening. When we arrived, we had to contact our hostel so they could send a shuttle to pick us up because everything else is shut down (it was midnight). I went to the information desk and asked, in broken Spanish, if I could use a phone to call our hostel. I grabbed my laptop and its case out of my book bag because it had all of our important information in it and set it on the counter. I took the number out and the man helped me contact them. Through a lot of pointing for directions on where to get picked up at, I decided to write everything down so I wouldn't forget. I said thanks and walked to the pick up spot with Nick. We made it to our hostel without any issue and passed out! But, the next morning as we were packing to go back to the airport to catch a bus, I realized that my laptop was not with me. You guessed it, I had left it somewhere and the only place I could think of was that information desk. In a calm panic (I was calm, Nick was panicked) we searched everywhere before the Hostel helped us call the airport to get lost and found information. They informed us that the items from the day before would not be delivered to the desk until 1 or 2 pm but our bus was pulling out at 1. So, we said a prayer and asked our shuttle driver to drop us off where he picked us up instead of at our bus terminal. We made it back to the information desk and again in broken Spanish I asked if they had a laptop in a black case and the two ladies looked puzzled as they exchanged glances with each other. Finally, one of them spoke as she held up my laptop and I burst into tears. Now that I had Blue Ninja back life was okay again. Well, almost okay since now we had to find our way to the bus parking area.

Proof that we found the bus!

We spoke Spanish to get on and it was really exciting. We took our seats and as we were getting comfortable Nick got up to put away his backpack and the bottom to his seat fell off. I just busted out laughing because we have had such a crazy day and still not caught up on our sleep. The bus driver told us we could move, so we did and guess what?? THAT seat was broken too. I couldn't stop laughing as we sat somewhere else and guess what?? That seat wasn't broken but it had gum all over everything. Finally we moved to the very back and everything worked out nicely.

Through all of the mishaps we kept our wits about us despite being exhausted. We made some great memories.