A Day of Settling in and Catching Up

Today I have little to report. We stepped off the train at Lisbon's station around 9 and into a place completely foreign to me. The preceding hours of daylight trainride showed us glimpses of a world far removed from the relative affluence of downtown Madrid. As we rolled past stretch upon stretch of fields and factories and highrise housing in various stages of disrepair, I reflected on the fact that we had no clue how to speak Portuguese or really how to find our way around town once we arrived. At this point the train was making periodic stops and passengers disembarked sporadically. No anouncements were made about the names of the stops, and Stacey confirmed that, like me, she could see no outside signage for the station stops, either. It was at this point that I began to get slightly unsettled for the first time since our trip began.

With each stop, my naive mind reflected more and more on literary imagry of destitute, ungoverned Soviet satelites and the early morning mist only added to my apprehension. At the last second, we noticed our station, and departed into Lisbon Station. Still on edge, we did our best to navigate through to the safety of our hostel.

By the time we emerged at our Metro's destination, the fog - both real and imaginary - had lifted from the streets. We emerged in a large square paved in an intricate mosaic of black and white that was orders of magnitude, cleaner, quiter, and emptier than any public place Stacey and I had been in Madrid.

In less than fifteen minutes, Stacey and I had found our hostel. We checked in, ate breakfast, and from what I hear, I fell right asleep. You can read about how cute I was here. Around noon we were let into our room (any earlier would have been disturbing the other twelve guests that shared it with us), whereupon I promptly feel back asleep. Of course Stacey was a sweetheart and let me rest.

In the afternoon we left the hostel and made our way to Baixa (pronounced BAI-zha), the downtown area of Lisbon. We simply strolled and took in the sights, adjusting to our new city. This city is breathtaking, and I will fill you in with excruciating details in later posts.