Tiles, tiles, more tiles..

One of the really cool things about Lisbon were all the tiles. They covered entire buildings! And the tiles themselves were probably about 5" x 5". I absolutely loved them! There were so many different types and it just made the city so unique. They're a moorish tradition, and there are still artisans who work in factories who continue to make them.



Some of the pictures aren't so good, I was just trying to capture some of my favorites!

Lisboa

Last Friday I embarked on my Spring Break adventure! Our first stop: Lisbon. None of us really knew anything about Lisbon or Portugal in general; it was kind of a wild card destination. I also do not know a lick of Portuguese, but amongst us we had a few years of Spanish, French, Latin and our knowledge of Italian so we hoped that maybe we could get by.

Friday was super hectic because (of course) I left a lot of things to the last minute! But you’d be impressed to know that I fit everything necessary to survive for a week in ONE BAG under the measurements of 20x40x55 CENTIMETERS (some of the airlines we flew had super fussy guidelines, and I didn’t want to pay to check a bag). But we successfully made it to the airport, through security, onto the plane and into Lisbon all in one piece. A bus from the airport took us right to the street that our hostel was on, smack dab in the center of the city. The hostel itself was extremely nice, free breakfast, free laundry service, and for 6 euros they’d make you a huge meal for dinner!

(stole these pics from Sally)

After getting settled everyone staying in the hostel went out to Bairro Alto. It’s basically a hill (like Rome, Lisbon has 7 hills too) with a ton of bars, clubs, and restaurants. The streets are steep, narrow, cobble-stoned, and PACKED with people. It was really nice because we could walk there without worrying about public transportation. Lisbon in general was a very walkable city, which added to its charm and is one of the reasons why I loved it so much. Saturday morning we had to wake up early to meet our tour group. My friend told me about this tour company called We Hate Tourism Tours. The tour was AMAZING and I’m so glad we did it because it was more of the area around Lisbon, places that we would never have seen had we tried to do it on our own. Plus it was just 8 of us in the group, so it was nice and small and personal. Way better than being carted around on a bus in a gigantic group with lots of other people.

The tour:


Our first stop was Sintra, a small little town outside the city. We stopped to get pastries and hot chocolate in a cute little café. One of the pastries is called a “travesseiro” which literally means “pillow” in Portuguese. Next we went to Quinta da Regaleira, which our tour guide described as a mix between Lord of the Rings and Disneyland. It was beautiful.


A really rich guy built this palace and the grounds for himself in the early 20th century. There was a waterfall, ponds, castle-y structures, a greenhouse, and an awesome inverted tower. It was basically a little kid’s dream! It reminded me of when I used to play in Melina’s “rock garden” in elementary school: just a lot cooler and HUGE!


After that we went to a small roadside market where we ate lunch. We ate at a foodtruck, (right up our alley, since we all go to Temple!) and we had this type of sandwich: bread baked fresh on site, with churizo inside. It was delicious!


After lunch we went to Cabo da Roca, the most westerly point in Europe. I sent some kisses to the states! It was basically a gigantic cliff, right on the ocean. It was absolutely stunning. Looking back on the pictures now, it seems so unreal that I was there! It was also super duper windy there. From there we went to Guincho Beach. I took my shoes off immediately! It was so good to feel the sand and the water. I love the beach!!!! After hanging out on the beach for awhile we were on the hunt for more food. We went to Cascais, (pronounced “cash-kye”) a coastal town with a nice beach, and got ice cream at a little parlour called Santini. I got mango and raspberry, it literally tasted like I was just eating a mango and raspberries (they use fresh fresh fresh fruit!)

It was a long day.

To wrap up the day we went to an area of Lisbon called Belém and sat on the river for a little bit. They have a bridge that looks just like the San Francisco bridge! The same engineers actually designed/built it. But down there they had a huge monument for all the explorers from Portugal because it used to be the port where they all set off from. Then we saw a monastery (I’m kind of over churches at this point) and we had these delicious pastries, called “Pastéis de Belém” (which means pastries of Belem) but they tasted like rice pudding, in a warm pastry! They have them all over Lisbon, but we ate the originals. If you want to drool some more: http://www.pasteisdebelem.pt/en.html


Our last stop was the Thieves Market. Unfortunately it was the end of the day so most of the vendors were closing down. Also, in Rome we have the largest flea market in Europe (seriously, its HUGE!! I’ve been twice already) so I wasn’t too impressed.

But all in all it was such a great day! If my commentary and pictures aren’t enough, check out their website! http://wehatetourismtours.com/ It’s really neat.

FOOD

Cibo! So much good food here. The tomatoes are to die for, I could seriously eat one like an apple. And everything is fresh and preservative free! "Organic" doesn't really exist.

Highlight reel:


1. Trip to Todi/Titignano: the entire program went to the little hill town of Todi for the day, finished with an 15 course delicious meal at a medieval castle in Titignano.


2. 24 Hour Bakery! The concept of open 24 hours doesn't really exist here. They have the wackiest store hours- they close for lunch from 1/1:30 to 4 which is super inconvenient. But they do pastries right.


3. Home cookin'. Me and my two roommates Corin and Alexis take turns making dinner. Corin has made some really great sauces for pasta and Alexis made some delicious stuffed peppers. I've contributed some homemade pancakes (from scratch) and salads. We really love making home bruschetta too. Just chop up some tomatoes, add a little basil, put a little olive oil on the bread and toast it! Divine. One night Corin made pesto-rubbed chicken wrapped in prosciutto! It was basically all the left-overs we had in the fridge, and it was great. Last week she even made gnocchi from SCRATCH! It was quite the process and took her about 2 hours. But it was worth the wait.




4. Geeeelato. The consistency is somewhere between ice cream and rita's, leaning more towards the ice cream. But the aforementioned Old Bridge is our place! For 1,50 euro you get to pick 3 flavors and they load you up. Cones too! And the whipped cream is free, and it's the good kind.




5. Carbs carbs carbs! I'm waiting to have my to "die" for pizza in Naples, but they do a pretty good job here. There's a restaurant literally right outside the residence that serves pizzas to "take away" and you get a huge personal pizza for only 5 euros! It's great. And they have a chain here called Pizza Rustica where they have huge rectangular trays of pizza and you tell them what kind you want, they weigh it, cut it in half, and then wrap it up and you eat it like a sandwich. It's cheap and delicious! And the pasta! My best meal here by far was when we got cacio e pepe. We absolutely love love love Anthony Bourdain's show No Reservations and he recently did a Rome episode before I left. The first place he goes to he calls "Restaurant X" because he didn't want to turn it into a tourist trap. He gets the cacio e pepe which is some fresh pasta, tossed in cheese and pepper and then served in an edible bowl made of cheese. Again it's all about the fresh ingredients! Our waiter knew we were there for the cacio, but he was super nice and we want to go back in the spring and eat outside like Tony did!


6. Nutella. Since peanut butter here is rare, a lot of people basically eat nutella in place of peanut butter. We love the grocery store here, Carrefour. Like Weis & Giant they have store brand stuff and we discovered that the Carrefour nutella is actually better than the fancy kind! We've moved on to our own personal jars because we eat way too much of it.



7. Prosciutto. My new deli meat of choice.

Finally!

This is extremely long overdue, but I wanted to get my blog rolling before spring break! So much has happened in the past month I don't even know where to begin!

I guess I'll start with last Thursday. Art history classes here function a little bit differently because a lot of the artwork that we're learning about is actually located in Rome. On Tuesdays I have a lecture, and on Thursdays we have "excursions" where we go to museums and churches to view artwork on site. This particular day was special because we went to the Vatican museum & I got to see three of the most amazing works of art EVER.

1. Laocoon: my absolute favorite sculpture.



A little history: it was discovered in a man's back yard during the Renaissance and after they excavated it the Pope bought it. Michelangelo was actually there during the excavation.


2. The rooms of Raphael: amazing frescoes that cover the walls of the Popes quarters. The School of Athens is the most famous one. In the center is Plato and Aristotle and they're surrounded by poets, mathematicians, philosophers, and artists. The man in the center left is actually a portrait of Michelangelo. But it was so impressive! For some reason I had the idea that it just covered a small 5'x5' area, but the figures were almost life-sized.

3. The Sistine Chapel. AMAZING. It was so much information to take in at once, and I think I had a little bit of an advantage because I've studied it a lot so I knew what I was going to be looking at. I actually expected the space to be bigger and the ceiling higher, but it was still incredible nonetheless. My teacher told us that during the restoration he got to go up on the scaffolding and see the ceiling up close. That gave me goose bumps! Unfortunately you can't take pictures in the chapel, but they wouldn't really have done it any justice anyway.

The morning was a little bit of a sensory overload, I felt like I needed to decompress after. So we went to Old Bridge (the BEST gelato place and really close to the residence) and got gelato. :)

Drawings

Drawings from last Semester (2 are self-portraits)
The pinkish one I did over Winter Break

 
 
 
 

Final Computer Project

These are the images that I created for our final computer project. We had to do something autobiographical, so I recreated portraits of myself with old photographs of my grandmother and some scanned objects found in her house. The soldiers are scanned images, and they were all hand painted by my grandpa. There are literally hundreds of them in their house, and I always remember him by them.