Today was a fun and beauty-filled day, though of course it is rather late for a work night right now, so I will keep things kinda brief. I started today by sleeping in till 10 (I don’t know how I do it here–it’s so loud because of the trains and planes, or at least I thought so at first, but now it’s like I don’t even hear them) and eating a leisurely breakfast. I cleaned my room and it had started to drizzle, so I huddled inside and read–now I’m reading Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar by Cheryl Strayed, and it’s heart tugging and funny and feels like Dear Abby on steroids. In short, it’s great.
Then Laura and I met up at Praca do Commercio and listened to some of the street preformers there before going to Lunch at a Ramen restaurant recommended to us by a fellow intern, and a Lisbon native. This was Chinese ramen, with chili oil and flavors from Sichuan, so it had a bit of a bite. There were only three different types of ramen we could order–with pork, beef, or tofu at 0-5 levels of spice. I ordered tofu at level 3 and it was perfect.
After that, we ate some Bing Fen, which is like vegetarian unflavored jello with toppings–we had peanuts, Ginger honey, and goji berries. Overall, there were not many choices at this restaurant but everything we did have was delicious and affordable–a drink, the ramen, and the dessert were 9.80 euro.
After that, Laura and I split up and I went to the National Tile museum, which she had already visited on her previous trip to Lisbon. It was a beautiful museum with many tiles, as well as a section that was a church with a lot of artwork in it. I’m a little rough on the details because all the signage was in Portuguese. But the tiles are so beautiful, it was nice to walk and just stare.
little feet at the bottom of the stairs 🙂
An indoor courtyard that reminded me a lot of the Isabella Stuart Gardener in Boston
Three Dimensional tiles from the 19th century!
These were in a section of more modern tile artwork–I thought this was a cool addition to a museum that houses truly ancient things.
Tower of Belem excerpt from the below panorama of Lisbon. 
This 23-meter long bird’s eye view panorama of tiles depicts 14 kilometers of the Lisbon coast and remains the best record of what Lisbon looked like before the great earthquake of 1755.
The Churh-like part of the museum
It took me about an hour to get home (though it should have taken around 20 minutes) but I had just barely missed one bus, then the next never came, and by the time the next arrived 40 minutes had passed because it was running late as well. Nonetheless, my housemates waited for me at home, and when I got back, we packed up and left for Ericeira, a coastal town north of Lisbon. The intention was to walk around, enjoy the coast, and enjoy a “Lanche” (pronounced Lunch, but it really means an afternoon meal) of shellfish and other seafood. It turns out that of the 6 in the group, two were allergic to shellfish and another didn’t like seafood at all, so we didn’t go to any of the specialty restaurants we were originally planning on. In these, I’d like to note, all of the food is priced in Kilograms. So a group of people can order a certain number of grams of shrimp or clams or squid or cuttlefish or a million other things, and it gets cooked up and served with potatoes and bread. Plates of food American style where everyone orders their own doesn’t make as much sense in this way.
Anyway, we walked around and enjoyed the views of the ocean together. I’m really so lucky to be near this incredible group of fun-loving, casual people that just want to see the world in a relaxed way. Among us were French, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, and my combination, and it’s delightful to learn so much from them about the portuguese language, holidays, and sayings in other languages, and so much more. We’re also from a wide slice of experience–I’m the youngest but there are other students in the group, other people have jobs and others have careers, which is great to hear about as well.
We ended up eating at a restaurant that served shellfish (the town specialty), fish, and meat, so everyone had something. I ate some clams, some shrimp, salad, and some steak, and I think I liked the clams the best–they were soft and delicately flavored with garlic, parsley, and lemon. my mouth is watering just thinking about them again. I didn’t take photos of the actual food, but here are some photos as proof that I did eat seafood! and that I did enjoy it a lot!
Then on the drive home we got a little lost and made around an hour long detour, but that was okay, since I got to see the area at night. I am now very tired and I must go to bed!
Much love!