Another day in Portugal

Okay, so for those who asked this is a francesinha. Yes, it looks gross, and in my opinion is gross. But, it's originally from Porto, so they're ubiquitous here. Anyways, they're made of "bread, wet-cured ham, linguiça, fresh sausage like chipolata, steak or roast meat and covered with molten cheese and a hot thick tomato and beer sauce served with french fries." According to Wikipedia. It's amazing that America hasn't gotten ahold of this masterpiece of flesh and fat, yet.

Alright, now that I've scrolled down enough not to see that food atrocity, on with the post! Today, we woke up late and lazed about until 3, when we promptly went to the beach to laze about at a cafe. I'm pretty well sunburnt from the past couple of days, but the backs of my knees are slowly getting tanner due to the fact that I keep burning them. Everywhere else is awesomely white still. After we lazed about in our beach location, we headed up to El Corte Ingles - which is like...the Macy's cum town of Spain and Portugal and trekked around there for, apparently, 3 or 4 hours. It, literally, has (I'm not lying I swear) ten floors. TEN FLOORS OF SHOPPING CENTER. It's like a little town! It has a dry cleaner on one floor, a key cutter on the same one, a tailor, a travel agency, a women's hair salon, and a men's hair salon, a pharmacy, supermarket, fashion shopping area larger than any Macy's/Dillard's/Nordstrom's I've ever been in, a few cafes, a food court, and a pet shop. I don't even think I've covered it all, but it's outrageous, and huge. It's a shopping experience. The scary thing is that it's not even half as large as the one in Barcelona, which apparently isn't the biggest one in Spain.

Trust me, I'm as freaked out as you right now.

We finally realized we had been there for hours and hours shopping for Diogo's mother, so we high tailed it back home at 9:15, trying our best to evade the mosquitos, and ended up back here at about ten. Diogo's aunt, whom we've been staying with, was kind enough to cook us dinner - we had rissois, which are like meat pocket dumplings and we had rice and the yummy pink drink. No one has yet been able to tell me what the pink drink is, so it's just the pink drink forevermore.

Anyways, tomorrow I think we're going to go to Braga for the afternoon after lunch at Diogo's granparent's. Will hopefully have pictures for you! :D

Day something in Portugal: Sorry about the lack of posting!

I totes feel bad for not updating since...Friday? No wait, Thursday. But it's only Sunday, right? Anyways, on with the show.

Friday, I was sick sick sick. WE tried to go to the beach all day, but kept having to return home due to illness and finally gave up. Yesterday, we finally got to the beach. Which is what we did all day, and then we went for francesinhas.

Today? Haven't been up to much. Everything closes in Porto on Sundays, so we went to Diogo's grandparent's for lunch and are now just chilling at home.

See? This is why i didn't update. Not exactly scintillating stuff here.

End of Luanda, Plane and Day 1 Portugal: lisbon

It's 2:20pm, and we still have two and a half hours left of this flight, since we were delayed, so I decided I'd start on my blog for today, since, hopefully, we'll be out and about this evening. That is if my stomach doesn't just give up.

Angola was a really good experience. One of my first forays into a vacation without amenities I'm used to - like drinking water from the tap - and other things I take for granted as a luxury - clean fruits and vegetables, running water, working toilets, that sort of thing. I got a taste of it when I went to Juarez, Mexico a few years back to build houses, but that felt more like a field trip - we were only there 3 or 4 days, and we drove there from Colorado. It also was a working holiday, so I wasn't ever expecting it to be nice and clean - we were sleeping on the floor of a church, building houses in one of the poorest and most dangerous cities in the West, and a runner-up in the world. Anyways, I digress. This trip, though, had a weird dichotomy about it - we weren't really vacationing there, but we weren't really 'native' there, at all. Even though we were in a house, and often chose to stay inside to hang out with the fam, it was still a jarring experience everytime I walked out the door. I feel like I'm ready to take on less developed countries, now, since I've dabbled in them - I won't need to be pent up in a vacation resort or anything to go and explore. I also feel ready for Cairo, now, definitely. I had always been reticent of just booking a flight to just go to Cairo since, I don't speak Arabic, would be travelling as an unmarried female, and had never been to Africa, but now I feel like Cairo is an easy jump. I've wanted to go since I was six, so maybe, next summer/winter, I'll make it happen.

I could never see myself living in a place like Angola for any amount of time, unless it was for volunteering work, or whatever. It's just way too foreign (and has too many mosquitos), and has too much disease for me to ever feel safe and sound there. I'm constantly reminding myself to not get the water in my mouth, or to take my malaria pills, or put on a sweater in the evening, even though it's still warm out, so I don't get bitten. Apparently something around 50% of the population has HIV or AIDS, even though only 3-4% is the official number. They say that it's the under 18 population, which outnumbers the over 18 population, is nearly 1 in 2 for HIV/AIDS. That both scares and saddens me. Sometimes, I feel like I could never live in a country with intense poverty and illness just because I'd know I couldn't fix it and would feel guilty for doing anything else with my life. It's easier to push out of your mind when you don't drive by favelas everyday. And the fact of the matter is that even if I tried in a place like that, my dent would be very small. And it would be a worthwhile dent, but I don't have the determination to fight a losing battle, nor do I have the funds or time. I'm getting into a volunteering tangent, though, which is probably best left for another day. I would love to just devote my life to helping people and things, but, selfishly, I don't. Most of us don't. And there aren't excuses for it other than we just aren't doing it because it's scary or takes us to an uncomfortable place, or faces us with death and disease. It takes a stronger person than I to devote their life to volunteering, even though I'd like to do it.

Anyways, tonight, we'll be in Lisbon. We've rented a hostel room in the Bairro Alto, which is supposedly the cool part of town, and we're going to hustle there, drop off our bags, buy tickets for the hop on hop off tour, ride on that for an hour or two, come back to the hostel, take a nap until 10, whereupon we've been advised to go out and stay out as late as we can, because Lisbon is best at night. We probably won't stay out too late, but it should be fun. Also, the euro has dropped to the pound over the last two days, so that means a cheaper trip for us! Then, tomorrow, we're going to go on the other leg of the busabout tour (it's touristy and terrible, but it's the best way to get around to all of the sites in the shortest amount of time, with the most freedom, and you get to see the entirety of the city), then grabbing our luggage and catching a 3:30 train to Porto's Campanha station. I'm pretty excited. We're planning on going to the beach everyday in Porto, and I'm buying batteries at the airport now, so I will have my camera!

Talk to you later!

PS. Totally just looked out the window. We're flying over the Sahara! It is just brown sand as far as you can see on all sides of the plane.

It's 9:54pm and we're sitting in our hostel in Lisbon. It was hell to find, and you have to walk up and down about 500 (i'm not exaggerating) stairs from the main road. The picture in the bottom of the buildings at night, we start at the bottom, equal with the tower in the foreground. I'm going to get fit the two days I'm going up and down these stairs. We didn't get to go on our sightseeing bus today, our plane got in late (at 5!) then we had to do immigration, customs, and then the bus we knew we could take said that we couldn't bring bags on it - even though it had a sign that said that rolly bags were okay. Whatever. We ended up getting the shuttle, which was a better idea anyway - it'll give us money off tomorrow for the tour bus, if we do it, and we can use the tickets for 24 hours. Anyways, I'll just put pictures up now, I think we may try and go out and about again since it's cooler now, and the city's way alive at night.

This is the Praça do Comercial, which is where the iconic scenes of Lisbon come from, and it's really smelly because of the ocean.

This are fish. No joking around. There were thousands of them, just swimming next to the cement. I don't understand it, but whew they stunk.

My oily/buttery portion of their brethren at dinner. It was so good I forgot to get a picture at the beginning.

Also, too good to photograph, but this was our octopus salad.

The below guy was totes awesome. He is a living statue, with eyes painted on his eyelids, and he's hovering in midair off a cane, then has a hidden attachment around his back. And he has the world record for human stautes. Awesome.

IF you click any, CLICK THE ONE ABOVE. then zoom in. Those are painted on eyeballs!

This is the view I was talking about. You see that little pointy thing about the string of lights? Yeah, that's where you start you climb. The Praça do Rossio.

Out of order, a bit, but Diogo's paella like rice dish at dinner.

The prawn that exploded all over with brain juice. But, looks yummy, right?

Days 4,5,6: Luanda, Lobito, the plains, and the rivers

My camera battery died, unfortunately, on this part of the trip, but Diogo's dad let me borrow his. However, that means I don't have control over the memory card at the moment, thusly, pictures will come later. For now, I'll just google some images to give y'all an idea.

We left Thursday morning at 11, and drove down through Porto Amboim:

After having awesome grilled lobster in Caboledo, and driving through Quiçama Nature Reserve (we didn't see any cool animals).

And then through Sumbe:


And a lot of small townships in the provinces.

We stayed in this nice aparthotel in Lobito, and ate at a place called Zulu.
Lobito:

The aparthotel was very very nice. :D three bedrooms, three bathrooms, a rooftop terrace. Sweet.

Anyways, we slept and woke up pretty early the next morning to drive back.
After a few stops due to a bad stomach form malaria pills (or the plague), we had an unfortunate meeting with some motoqueiros:

And our car didn't fare very well. But, everyone in the situation was okay. Though we thought for a bit we wouldn't be able to drive to luanda in the car - which would have meant walking, and hitching a ride in a taxi or something (and wishing we'd had the meningitis vaccination).

Some nice townsfolk fixed our car, though, and we were on our way for an uneventful ride back to Luanda. Although there was a huge fire in the outskirts of the main city, which was pretty interesting.
We got home last night and all my evilstomach wanted to do was eat, so eat I did, and then slept for 12 hours, got up, and slept for another 2. Between the heat, the malaria pills disrupting my digestion and sleeping habits, and generally being tired after car trips, I layed low today and watched Discovey channel while Diogo's parents went grocery shopping. Tomorrow, I think we're going to a buffet to get lobster! And Monday's our last day here. I have, thus far, liked this place, but I won't be missing it too intensely - the bug population and heat aren't for me. I've only got three mosquito bites and one random stinger embedded in my leg, but, damnit, I live in London for a reason. I can deal with flies and picnic ants!

Until tomorrow.

Day 2.1: Luanda in the Evening

So, first of all let me introduce you to Diogo's parent's dog: Waku. Probably part pit bull, but definitely all cute.

Tonight, we drove out to the Ilha de Luanda. It's the tourtisty-er part of the city, and has nice restaurants and everything. We went to Cafe del Mar and had drinks and some chocos fritas (fried cuttlefish) and beef. Very tasty.

One thing I forgot to mention, and should before I forget. The currency here is the Kwanza, and it's 100 Kwanzas to the dollar. They use dollars quite a lot here, so that's the math they give me. :D It's weird paying 300 of any currency, and it's weirder when it's as offhanded as just spending 3 dollars.

Anyways, we sat and ate and drank Cokes in this gorgeous restaurant that opened up to this vast expanse of praia and we watched the oil boats on the horizon along with the cargo ships go by, while swatting mosquitos.

We drove by the city both ways, which is pretty modern looking. As Diogo's dad's friend, Paul, said, "It looks great until daytime, where it looks like it's been deserted for a decade or so."

It's pretty intense here, in the most expensive city in the world, the gap between rich and poor. I mean, we drove by the favelas, and tomorrow we're going by this market that's been going on for years and very unfriendly to foreigners, but is very telling of the lifestyle here - still very much the Africa we see in Discovery channel programs and hear about when talking of tribal rituals and habits, but meshing cohesively with the modern, urban sprawl that Westerners know.

The old Sunangol building right across the street from the new one.

An old castle/fort near the Ilha. It's been renovated and has a museum inside.

The roads have no markings, but are relatively thoroughly paved. It's crazy driving around here.

The new Sunangol building, which has a helicopter pad that is unusable due to miscalculations. (it's the lit up thing on top)