Portugal

Last weekend I went on a trip with CEA to Portugal, my first time outside of Spain! We left on Friday morning at 7am because we took a bus all the way there. I think it's so cool that we could just hop on a bus and drive to Portugal in about 6 hours. We went to three different towns - Faro, Portimão, and Lagos - on the southern coast of Portugal in the southernmost province of Algarve. 

On the way there, we didn't drive straight through to Portimão where our hotel is located because we stopped in Faro to do a city tour and eat lunch. It's a small little town so there wasn't that much to see, but we went inside this really cool church. Here's the inside of the main chapel of the church. 

As you can see, there are all these big cutout areas on the sides and in the front that are filled with carvings and statues. Even though everything looks like real gold, it's mostly just wood that's been painted gold. The main reason we went to this church in particular is because it has another chapel in the back that's made of bones. The tour guide kept telling us that we were going to the bone chapel, but I thought I misunderstood her. Unfortunately, I did not, and there really was a chapel made of bones.

This chapel is bigger than most of the other bone chapels in the area. We saw another much smaller one in Faro, and the skulls on the walls seem to be a common theme. When I asked the tour guide why in the world anyone would create a chapel out of bones, she told me that it was strange but they were being resourceful. Apparently there was a really bad tsunami that hit Portugal in 1755, and a lot of the damage involved unearthing bodies in the cemeteries. Rather than trying to rebury all of the bodies, a lot of the towns used the bones to create chapels like this one. I'm all about recycling, but the bones chapels kind of freaked me out.

The rest of our day Friday was very relaxing. We arrived at Portimão, checked into our hotel (Hotel Jupiter), and then had some free time to get settled before dinner. Sophie and I were roommates in the hotel which I was excited about because we already know how to live together. We had a whole room to ourselves and they were actually really nice (much nicer than what I would have stayed in if I had gone on my own). There were two twin beds that were pushed together which was kind of funny and we had a cute little balcony that looked over the beach. At first Sophie and I thought the electricity wasn't working because the lights wouldn't turn on; however, when I went downstairs to get another room key and tell the front desk about the electricity, I ran into one of my friends who told me that you have to put your room key in a little slot thing to get the electricity to work. The hotels do that so you can't leave the lights on or have the air conditioning running when you're not in the room. It's very European (or so I've been told). 

I ended up spending my free time at the beach, which was about a five minute walk from our hotel. 

We ate a group dinner at the hotel and had the rest of the night to do whatever we wanted. Two of my friends had a giant patio balcony that could have held maybe 70 people so I ended up hanging out over there and then went dancing in one of the discotecas on the main street near the hotel. Most people stayed out ridiculously late, but I was tired and went to bed early(ish) so that I would be able to enjoy the next day of our trip. 

On Saturday, we had breakfast at the hotel and then drove to the port for a boat cruise and grotto tour. I was a little nervous about the boat because I didn't know how small it was going to be, but it ended up being a normal size so I didn't mind it. 

The boat cruise took us from Portimão to Lagos, where they stopped the boat to do the grotto tours. There were all these cliffs along the coast that were really cool. It was hard to take pictures on the boat because we were swaying so most of my pictures turned out kind of crooked!

In order to go on the grotto tour, we got off the big boat and took turns going in smaller boats that could go closer to the cliffs. The water and the cliffs were absolutely beautiful! The captain of our tiny boat kept pointing out different objects in the cliffs. The one below is supposed to look like an elephant so of course I had to take a picture with it because I love elephants. The face is on the left and its trunk is in the middle.

Here's me with some friends on the tiny boat.

Once we got back on the big boat, we were allowed to go swimming in the water. It was a little chilly at first, but after a while it wasn't too bad. We were all wearing bathing suits under our clothes so we were prepared to jump off the side. I'm the one on the far right in the picture. 

We had a nice lunch on the boat and headed back to the port. The boat cruise lasted about four hours so once we got back to the port we had to rush back to the hotel to shower and go on a tour of Lagos. The first part of our tour was Prince Henry's School of Navigation, where Christopher Columbus studied navigation. This is the front entrance of the school. It's super rocky and right near the ocean.

This is what's considered the inside part of the school. If you look at the side of the picture, you can see that the school is on a cliff right near the water.

After spending some time wandering around the School of Navigation, we went to the end of the world. I don't know what it's actually called because our guides kept referring to it as the end of the world, but it's basically the most southwest point in Europe and used to be considered the end of the world before Columbus discovered the New World. Needless to say, the view was breathtaking. 

At this point, there wasn't much we could do in Portugal that would top going to the end of the world, but we did do a tour of Lagos that included the slave market and walls of the old city. We had group dinner at a local restaurant and went back to the hotel. Because we had been outside all day, I was exhausted and spent the night hanging out with some girls in the hotel. At one point, we turned on the TV, and out of all shows that could have been playing, the Savage U episode of Tulane happened to be on MTV. We couldn't get over how weird it was that we were in Portugal and Tulane was on TV, even if it wasn't exactly the best representation of our school. 

I woke up early on Sunday morning so I would have plenty of time at the beach before we left. Brittany and I ate a quick breakfast and settled in near the water. Brittany refused to wear a bathing suit and I didn't go in because the water was so cold, but it was really beautiful to just lay on the sand and listen to the ocean.

After about two hours, I had to go back to my hotel room, shower, and check out. We ate lunch at the hotel, had a little time to wander around Portimão, and then boarded the bus for Granada. There's a law in Spain that requires large buses to stop every two hours (or something like that) so the bus rides there and back took longer than they needed to, although I didn't think it was bad at all. I was sad to leave Portugal, but I missed Granada at the same time. 

On the bus ride back, the CEA Director of Extracurricular Activities, Daniel (Dani for short), put in a movie for us to watch. He is literally the funniest person, not because he makes jokes or anything but because he's just so nerdy and doesn't know it that you can't help but laugh at him. As a general rule, he looks significantly more touristy than anyone else on our trips, even though he's not actually a tourist. He carries around his CEA shoulder bag (which the rest of refuse to use) and has his camera attached to his hand. It's very comical. So of course when Dani put the movie on, he commented on how it was a romantic movie and that the boys should be careful. Well, the movie ended up being Revolutionary Road, which is horribly depressing and not romantic at all. Dani realized this about halfway through (apparently he had only watched the first ten minutes) so when the movie finally ended, Dani announced over the microphone on the bus, "Well chicos, life is not always he he ha ha." We could barely keep ourselves together. Even Juan, the other CEA staff chaperone, was crying because he was laughing so hard.

They speak Portuguese in Portugal so I wasn't able to use my Spanish at all while I was there. The people actually get kind of offended if you try to talk to them in Spanish so I stuck with English. I think Portuguese is a beautiful language (I hear Aloana speak it all the time so I have a pretty good reference). She explained some of the differences between the Portuguese in Portugal and the Portuguese in Brazil. According to her, the Portuguese in Portugal is more closed whereas in Brazil they pronounce things more openly and clearly. Aloana also said that Brazilian Portuguese is more elegant, but she's completely biased on that because she's from Brazil. Apparently people love her accent whenever she goes to Portugal so in my mind it's kind of like when the British come to the US.