Day 2 in Lisbon - Writing

Boy do I wish we had learned some Portugese before we arrived. Good thing most people here speak English!

We flew straight from Denver to Frankfurt, phew, no stops. 10 hours on the plane wasn´t bad at all with our own tv´s for movies, shows, games or music. I thought we would sleep most of the flight as our last few days/weeks in Boulder were so hectic. No luck. Even with a few cocktails, I slept about 3 hours and Ryan only slept for 30 minutes. Ugh. A 3 hour layover in Frankfurt and then off to Lisbon. We sat on the plane for over an hour before we actually took off because someone in first class had a medical emergency. It wasn´t so bad as Ryan got to sleep for a solid 2 hours.

21 hours from our Boulder departure, we made it to Lisbon! Now to find our 4 boxes that contain all of our stuff for the next year (we will post some pictures at our next computer stop, apologies in advance), and we are good to head through customs. I was a touch worried about customs as the only place I have really had to go through that was in Australia, and they are quite strict. Customs in Lisbon, no problem. They opened one box that contained a bunch of bike parts and we were through. We finally flagged a cab that would take us and our huge boxes to our hostel. Lisbon is a pretty religious city, so nothing was open on Good Friday. No dinner for us. We had booked a room with 2 beds thinking it would allow for more room to rebuild our bikes. Due to a plumbing issue, we were moved to a tiny tiny room with one bed. Trying to explain that we couldn´t just lock our bikes on the street....finally we showed the man and he understood. His reponse was, ´´You know you can rent bikes in Lisbon too?´´ Ha! We did our best to stay awake the first night until 9, woke up for about 2 hours in the middle of the night, and slept again until noon! 15 hours in bed, oh my!

The next day they moved us to one of the best rooms in the place with no extra charge, lucky us! Yesterday was fantastic. Everyone at our hostel is extremely nice and they speak English so well. We headed to the market for some lunch, bought stuff to make sandwiches and then were off for a beautiful 3 hour walk around the city. In the 1700´s there was a major earthquake that destroyed Europe. When they replaced the sidewalks, they used stones, simply beautiful. Black and white stones, hand layed sidewalks. Ryan now has a favorite sidewalk/city center. The designs are beautiful. We walked through the city, down to the water, and got ourselves lost before we headed home. It amazes me how similar cities are to one another. Lisbon is too a melting pot like NY, or Chicago, or LA. The world truly is so small.

On our way home last night, we stopped by the market yet again for some cheese, salami, crackers and a bottle of wine. I guess not much has really changed! This was pretty typical of our days to come. Wake up, walk/ride to find some food, ride some more to find a place to sleep. That will be the basis for many of our days. I can´t wait! Now to just get our sleeping down, everything will be fantastic.

Off to the market again before they close early for the Easter holiday! Tomorrow we will head on our first ride to.....well, not quite sure yet. But, we will be heading somewhere!