Munich

We arrived in Munich and checked into our hostel right around dinner time. This hostel was a palace; it has super fast internet (hence the ability to upload pictures), a huge private bathroom that had a dry area to change and sunlight, and really nice rooms. We left our hostel to check out what is considered the most beautiful city in Germany. To the eyes of a car lover this place was amazing. Being home to the head quarters of both BMW and Mercedes leaves a city with Mercedes taxis and BMW’s and Mercedes of every sort racing around every street corner.

We met our Lisbon friend Chris who was from Munich, and he showed us around the actually quite good looking city. We walked down some wide streets and saw a beautiful looking government building which our tour guide said was sort of a landmark because it was where they decided which minority groups should be removed from the German population before and during WWII. Yes, this was where the Nazi party decided that the Holocaust would be a good idea. We continued on and saw some impressive churches and the world’s largest Ko0-Koo clock which we never got to see in action. Our tour guide admitted that the clock was actually extremely annoying to anyone who lived in Munich but Japanese tourists loved it, so they keep it around. This intricate building in the main square is the only structure that came out unscathed during the bombings in WWII. We also passed by the grand palace, which ironically was also unfinished and covered in scaffolding. Europe is like a girl with giant sunglasses, they assume by covering up something you will assume that it’s pretty underneath. Seriously finish something Europe. This city is beautiful as you can see from the photos.

Our tour guide then took us to the famous Hofbrauhaus, which has the famous bier garden and only sells beer in liter mugs. These things were simply enormous and the beer was incredible. German’s take beer very seriously, along with their pretzels and sausages. The traditional german breakfast is white sausage, pretzels and beer. Yes, we joke about breakfast beers in the US, but a German would not get the joke. Everywhere you go Germans are drinking, at a minimum, half liter beers. Beer is cheaper than soft drinks and they even serve it in McDonalds. Also they have no idea what a light beer is and all beers are full flavor.

While our time in Munich was short it was also a good experience, we are now heading to the Tuscan hills near Florence to see what all this fuss is about Italian food and leather goods.

Amster Continued

Given the huge number of pics we have from Amsterdam I have made a second post to put them up since i can only load 5 pics per post

Amsterdam

Amsterdam is a wonderland. We arrived in Amsterdam and found our hostel which we actually had not reserved for that night , so we walked down the street to another hostel which offered a private room for a pretty good price. The hostels in Amsterdam are quite different because where most have a common room to hangout on the ground floor, this hostel had a straight up Irish Pub. We grabbed a few Heinekens, which is brewed in Amsterdam and actually doesn’t taste terrible and headed out to a local coffee to grab a cup of joe. We then went around Amsterdam to check out the night life. Amsterdam has something for every desire. They have streets full of stores which sell kebabs, ice cream, pastries, pizza, hamburgers( out of vending machine), Chinese, Indian, Dutch and any other possible type of food you could possibly want, except for Mexican food which was strangely missing. The food was incredible and looked like something straight from the states. I am telling you that the locals would be the fattest people in the world except for the fact that they bike everywhere, which I will explain later. Pat continued his quest for a good deal on a kebab. Every store we walked to he would walk in check out the price walk out. After about 4 stops he walked into a store came out and said , “Well this is by far the lowest price I’ve found, but let’s keep looking” . When we eventually found a kebab that was to Pats liking he chowed down and spilled a good portion on his shirt.

We made our way through the Red Light District, which is actually amazing to see as it is straight up legal prostitution, so watching girls legitimately trying to advertise themselves is pretty hilarious. What you don’t realize is that many of the people in the district are actually there to find a love for 15 minutes( 50 Euro for a basic, prices increase with additional bells and whistles. Average number of clients in a night is roughly 20). We really noticed this when we were walking through fairly later at night and we noticed that out of the 400 or so people in the alley Lauren Day was the only girl All of the girls are independent entrepreneurs who rent out the windows for various amounts depending on location and time of day. They have a union and don’t answer to a strong pimp hand. It was funny to see guys bargaining with girls to get a better price and we even saw a dad taking his son around for what I assume was a 15^th birthday present. There was all shapes and sizes of women and men who dressed like women in one area we stumbled into. What is pretty interesting I thought was that there was a gigantic church right in the middle of the Red Light District, you would imagine the purpose of this church was to try and help the prostitutes and visitors to find salvation and stay away from all the sinning going on in Amsterdam. Nope, this church sold indulgences to patrons of the local area and therefore was extremely well funded and quite beautiful. Pat wanted to try his hand at bargaining with one of these ladies of the night but said, “ I know I would get a really good deal and I would feel bad when it was time to walk away.”

The next day we took a 4 hour walking tour of Amsterdam which is seriously one of the most beautiful and interesting cities in the world. The central palace, which is supposed to be extremely beautiful was under construction and covered in scaffolding. I am beginning to this that nothing is ever complete in Europe or nothing is as pretty as they say it is, so they cover it up to save face. Lauren Day loved the urban planning of the city and continued to take numerous pictures of streets, green places, and the canals of boaters. The houses are taxed based on width, so naturally everyone has extremely narrow houses. This means that they have ridiculously steep and narrow stairs, knowing this Lauren Day decided to read a map while walking up the stairs and fell on her face- she is clearly intelligent. Also, all of the houses have hooks that the top of them so you may hoist items to which ever floor you need to get them to, instead of shoving them through your narrow stairways. To solve the problem of having the load smashing into your windows if it go to close, all of the houses are built leaning forward as to save the windows. It was until several decades later that people decided that maybe they should just place the hook a little farther out and save themselves from the difficult task of building a forward leaning house. In addition the houses are all built on a swamp land so many of them are leaning in odd directions as certain parts sank over time. In addition to the beautiful houses there are a number of canals which run through the city where you find a bunch of boats running through full of happy tourists and locals. What also adds to the feel of Amsterdam are their streets. You are never really sure if you are on a road or a sidewalk because there are so few cars in many of the areas because EVERYONE rides a bike. It looks like an add for cutting down on your carbon footprint; you find people in suits, women in dresses, and bums alike all riding these old as hell looking bikes in huge streams in the same way you see people driving cars in the US. Fun fact: there are 400,000 residents of Amsterdam, 300,000 tourists give or take and 1,000,000 bikes at any given time. There is no trouble finding a bike. I brings you back to Bloomington having to dodge bikers going from place to place. The difference is that the bikers in Amsterdam aren’t the self righteous pricks from Bloomington who think they have right of way under every possible circumstance and are more than willing to run of your foot, Amsterdam bikers are extremely nice and ring their little bells to get you out of the way and they politely say excuse me! In addition there are trams and mopeds constantly going up and down the streets and somehow everyone manages to not get hit. It looks incredibly dangerous, but somehow everyone is safe.

After the walking tour we met up some friends from Lisbon and went to a bar where a pub crawl was suppose to begin. On the way we picked up some more Kebobs and Pat again spilled a large portion of the kebab on his shirt which he had spilled on previously. The crawl was suppose to last 6 clubs we made it to three. At one of the bars I was talking to a local whose drink was getting low and I offered to refill it and asked what it was. “Gnagerghashl” she said, obviously I was confused, I asked her to repeat, “Hambgrashel”. I quickly turned to the bartender and asked for two of whatever she was having, it was wine, yes I bought wine at a bar. Language barriers are cruel. It was another fun night of us showing up the other dancers. Pat and I got some food on the way home from a fastfood place called Feedo. This place takes the grossness of fast food to the next level. The do not take your order, you simply walk up to a wall of little plastic boxes, put in a couple euro, pull down the door and pull out your sandwich which may have been sitting in this greasy vending machine for anywhere between 2 minutes to 48 hours, yum.

The next day we set out to go to the Ann Frank museum and Vincent Van Gough museums. The Ann Frank museum was incredible. We literally went into the house where her and her family hid out during the Nazis occupation of Amsterdam. We then went to the Van Gough museum which was also interesting though expensive. We saw a number of cool self portraits, a few famous works and we learned a lot about Vinny. It was a little disappointing for Lauren and Avril as their favorite Van Gogh piece, the Bedroom, was being restored. Looks like yet another thing here is not yet finished. Being a artist he of course hated his parents and being a genius he of course hated everything he had to do in art school. Of course, even though he is now incredibly world renown, his works sells for millions of dollars and they were selling cardboard boxes in the gift shop with his work on it for 30 bucks, he considered himself a failure and shot himself in the chest. After the museum we had worked up quite a hunger and went to a burger joint a guy on our train from Barcelona to Paris recommended, BurgerMeester. Literally the best burger many of us had had. Check out the picks it was ridiculous. My cheese had truffles in it, enough said. We then went back to the hostel and since we had an early train in the morning we decided to just head to a coffee shop and chill out for a bit. We took our friends through the red light district again and got ourselves some more Kabobs. What do you think happened next? Yes, Pat spilled approximately a Kilroys shot glass worth of sauce and greasy meat on his Bib. This was the shirt he was wearing out every night. This is exactly according to plan however as his original plan was to look like a bum in order to deter pick pocketers, mission accomplished.

We crashed in our 18 person hostel room, which contained only sweaty naked fat men whom smelled like sweaty boat shoes in the worst way possible. These stinkers would attempt to negate their smelliness with body sprays adding to the stench of our courters. Needless to say we let Lauren Day, the only girl, sleep in the bed hidden around the corner.

After a bit of debate we have decided to cut out Prague and Copenhagen in favor of allowing us to chill in places for longer periods of time, and we are now able to add the Greek Island of Santorini to our schedule upon multiple recommendations. So now we are heading to Munich and Lauren is looking forward to finding some good Bratwurst.(German Sausage)

BARCELONA!!!!!!

After what may be described as the most uncomfortable train ride ever we arrived in Madrid, Spain to drop off my bags for my stay in Spain after our trip. We got off of the train and both Pat and I tried to figure out which was north. Apparently our Spanish was terrible because all we got were directions to the metro station. I called my head hunter company to make sure it was ok for me to drop off my bags at the language school I would be attending and of course no one picked up. I then called the school who had no idea what I that I was planning on leaving my bags at the school and they didn’t think there was any room for my bags. We decided to find our way to the school which at this point I was half expecting to be a complete scam. We entered the actually quite beautiful school and talked with the secretary and then head of the school who eventually agreed to let me leave my giant duffle bag in a broom closet, crisis averted. We then boarded our high speed train to Barcelona.

We arrived in Barcelona tired as hell from our horrible train ride and crashed for a couple hours in our hostel. We then got up and tried to get our bearings and went to a local grocery to get some bread and cheese for dinner, where we ran into an American girl. It was at this point we realized our hostel was not near any of the major tourist attractions when she said, “What are you guys doing here? Is there even a hostel around here?”. We then realized that we were in the middle of a Barcelona apartment suburb and headed to bed for the night.

The next morning we got to got on the metro and two trains and twenty minutes later we were at the Parc de Guall. We walked to the park which was designed y the famous artist Gaudi, who like Seal, is apparently famous enough to only have one name. The park was pretty cool, apparently Guadi designed it to be a utopian neighborhood and has a beautiful entrance and some interesting sloping roads. While the entrance area was beautiful, there were only two houses ever built in the area. So essentially the park is an unfinished sub development.

We then went to a little store to find Aaron Day a Barcelona soccer jersey (Messi). At one store we went to the price tag said forty euros. The shop keeper clearly spoke English but used a calculator to instantly display that he would mark down the price to thirty five euros. We decided that we kind of stared at each other saying that we are not so sure about this price. The shopkeeper recalculated the price of the jersey, aka typing into the calculator thirty euro. We were still not impressed but since Pat was Chinese he gave us yet another discount, now the jersey was 25 euros. We decided to look around more and went down one more store, which actually was the same store. The bargaining again started at forty euros and he gave us a discount down to thirty euros even though this new shop keeper claiming that the price for the jersey was fixed by the Barcelona Football Club. We then told him that the top half of the store offered us twenty five euro but because this jersey had Messi on the back, the other jersey did too, it cost and extra five euro. We then asked why he could give us a ten euros off in the first place and he said it was because they didn’t have to pay tax on the jersey. He also pulled demonstrated these complex calculations by displaying 40- 10 on a calculator. Clearly these guys both graduated from the same ivy league business school. So the shopkeeper was willing to perform tax evasion to get us to buy the jersey AND the tax on this jersey was 25%. BS whatever, Lauren loves Aaron and bought the jersey.

We then made our way to Las Ramblas which is a huge strip near the marina. Here we found a huge variety of stores which included an unreasonable number of outdoor pet shops which sold birds of every type, rodents, rabbits, lizard and turtles. We also went into an awesome open air market which smelled like heaven, except for the meat section which smelled like rotten flesh and stinky fish. After leaving the market we made our way down the rest of the street which had tons of street vendors and outside restaurant. We eventually made it to the marina and then beach where we sat and had glass of Barcelona’s famous sangria and were entertained by a man in short shorts singing and selling donuts balanced on his head while he banged on a triangle, he looked like the British guy in the holiday, Lauren was in love again with his tan bod and tight swim trunks. We made our way back to the hostel after this fun filled day and met up with a few aussies , a kiwi(new Zealander) and a couple frenchies (they enforced all stereotypes about French people). Actually the frenchies were pretty nice, just the girl sucked. She would speak in French to her friends and roll her eyes when she had to speak English. Sorry for Partying. We talked to the aussies about all the bars that people had recommended around Barcelona, which were recommended for great deals on drinks and great atmospheres. We even were informed about a couple secret bars where you had to knock on the door in order for them to let you in. Also a guy who doesn’t go to bars or clubs knew of one on the beach that was expensive but had no cover. A group of twenty of us hopped on the metro and headed straight to the beach clubs ignoring all prior advice. 30 minutes later we came out of the metro to be greeted by a couple shady guys in Fedora’s and vests, classic “I am full of shit but this outfit will make people trust me” outfit. They told us they could get us into the best club for free and handed us all passes. We begin to walk to the area where the bars are and we notice everyone is passing out these tickets, so suspicion rises and when we get to the club they say they cannot get us in, but they can get us into another club, classic mix up apparently. We being to file into this club and they stop Pat they say something in Catalan, but when someone is trying to say no in any language you usually understand. Pat had arrived in shorts and flip flops, an apparent no no at this high class club. We beg with the bouncer to just let us in, after all we did bring about 20 patrons to his club all of whom are properly dressed. He insists on not letting Pat stay. The French girl says, in French, to her friends this would not have happened if everyone was French reminding us all that French people instinctually know where there will be dress code . Pat and decide we will run back to the hostel being sure that we are able to make it back before we the last metro leaves for the dance club area or else we have at a minimum of a 2 hour walk to the club, in a city where we have no idea. We run back as street performers change their music to go along with our sprint from metro to metro. We get on literally the second to last or last train to the bar area, Pat now donned in black Good-Will dress pants and 8 year old mall walking shoes which is somehow more classy than banana republic shorts and flip flops. We make it into the club which is something out of a movie and begin to get down. Lauren Day, Pat and I throw down some solid dance moves on the dance floor and quickly begin to realize that American’s are fantastic dancers. We look around and it really looks like everyone is just standing and talking on the dance floor to each other while loud techno remixes of American songs muffle out their conversations. Lauren Day found another love, this one was physical therapist from New Zealand, he looked a little like Turkish from Snatch, but he was not nearly as good a dancer as I imagine Turkish would be, Lauren was able to look past this shortcoming however. The French girl got mad because “Americans have fun over nothEEEng” which was meant to be an insult I suspect but I am still trying to determine what she was getting at. One of the Auzzies from Melbourne who was fanstic at the shuffle gave us a quick lesson and I guarantee that both pat and I are more proficient after 10 minutes of practice than either Gunnar or Kyle, one because they are too soft and uncoordinated for such complicated moves, two we’ve got skills. Boo Ya The club eventually closes and we check our watches, it is 3:30, we were planning on staying out till 5 which is when the metro opens. We decide to buy a few beers off of some guys selling them directly out of the grocery bags which they took them out of the grocery store in, plopped down on the beach and waited for the metro to reopen. The French guy decides to go skinny dipping alone and we eventually make it back to our hostel at around 6 am and take a well needed rest.

The next morning we got up and headed to the train station to get our tickets out of Barcelona . We are surprised to find out that even with our eurorail pass our train “reservation” fee was 71 euro or around 100 bucks which is marked down from 120 euro. Happy that we ponied up for the eurorail discount card we bought our tickets and went across the street to a restraint to try the local delicacy, Payaya . We are seated and they bring us a couple small alcoholic drinks. After being charged for what we thought was free bread in Lisbon we were suspicious. At first we said we were not going to drink it but they sat there for so long (3 minutes) that Lauren Day began trying to come up with excuses for why we should drink it, “It has ice! Its our last meal in Barcelona!”. We ask the waiter about the drinks, they are free. Still suspicious we cautiously sip the drinks. They then bring out a plate of French fries and dipping sauce. There is no way this is free. We stare at the fries and ask a waiter if they are free. He says yes but he didn’t seem to speak English very well. We eat a couple more fries as if we are stealing them and decide they cannot be free and try to smooth out the sauce and spread out the fries to make it appear we hadn’t been fooled. We ask the manager if they are free and he says yes, they come with the Pallaya. Why are we such suspicious and cheap tourists? We get the Pallaya, which tastes like bland Jumbalya and then head out to see the rest of Barcelona. Lauren Day said the pallaya left a lot to be desired compared to some she had before –and we all agreed. Should have packed some hot sauce.

We walk through some more Las Ramblas and then head to the Gothic District which has buildings that actually have survived from the Roman era. We saw a Cathedral that was designed by Gaudi which was started in 1883 and guess what? It is still not done! The current estimate is that it will be done by 2020. Imagine that proposal by Gaudi, “ Guys this will be an awesome Church, unfortunately neither you or your children will likely see it as my design will take over a century to complete”. Whatever Barcelona. Lauren Day loved the layout of the city and its narrow streets. We walked around the gothic district some more and we realized how cheap we were as none of us were willing to pay the 2 euro to get into any of the museums in the area as we just took pictures from outside or through the windows. We went back to the hostel and got our stuff together to headed to the train station to get on the night train to Paris.

Last Day in Lisbon

Today we woke up late yet again and headed out with our Australian friends where we got some pizza which was fantastic. We then made attempt number two to make it out to the Aquarium, or oceanarium as they call it. This time we took the subway which was wicked fast and a far better choice than the bus. The area surrounding the aquarium was awesome(see image) and the aquarium was awesome. The Aquarium is the 2^nd biggest in Europe and had a bunch of cool fish and sea creatures on display. The middle of the whole place had a enormous main aquarium that had everything from manta rays to maco sharks. Lauren Day was captivated by the sea otter which did nothing more than look incredibly adorable as it tried to take a nap.

We then went to dinner with a couple of friends from the hostel. We went to what may be the only asian buffet in Portugal. They had dishes from Japan, Korea, China, India and Thailand and it was delicious. We then tried to explain what State Fair food was to our foreign friends which was absolutely hilarious. Foreigners already think Americans are glutunous pigs, but when you attempt to describe what an elephant ear, corn dog or deep fried twinkie is, you really feel like a fat ass. Think about it.

Now we are currently sitting in a train to Madrid where I will drop off my stuff for when I take up residence there and then we are off to Barcelona!

Lisbon Day 3

Today we went to the Castle of Saint Jorge which is at the top of a hill by our hostel. The walk was pretty nice and the castle was pretty cool. The castle cost 5 euro to get in so of course we didn’t actually go in so we walked around it and snapped a few pictures. I also tried my first Portuguese cheeseburger at a little shop in the area surrounding the castle. It was kind of funny because when the owner gave me the sandwich the whole bar watched as I took my first bite to see what the American thought of their burger, it was solid. The area surrounding the castle was straight out of a picture book with cobble stone streets and closely packed houses. Portuguese people were clearly very small at the time they were built because I don’t think the doorways were taller than 6 foot , so we all looked enormous next to the doors.

We then decided we wanted to go check out the aquarium so we hopped on a bus which we knew went to the aquarium, little did we know we were hopping on a regular city bus, which made frequent stops, needless to say we were the only tourists on the bus. We reached a stop that Pat thought was the correct stop for some reason and he quickly rushed us off of the bus. Pat still isnt sure where our hostel is located, I don’t know why we thought he knew where he was on this occasion. The other riders of the bus must have been very confused or very amused by the fact that we got off at this stop because we got off at the bus station for the whole city in the middle of a low income housing area. We were literally where they park the busses at night and an hour walk from the aquarium. We walked a few blocks to another bus station where we caught a bus back home. Pat got kicked out of his seat by some old lady who didn’t want him sitting next to her apparently, probably due to his Touristy Turkish Festival hat.

We had another dinner back at the Hostel made by Momma, who loves Lauren Day, probably because her son is in love and was talking all about his American love to her. She literally only asked for Lauren Day’s name and consistently winking at her, Andre is making moves. We met some people from Minnesota, Australia, Germany, Michigan and Scotland and introduced some people to kings. We gave a couple of our new friends from Australia the low down on how the Greek System works. Given the fact that we went out the night before we instantly became the experts on night life in Lisbon so we made our way back to the bar where they make the monster Mojitos and enjoyed another night out in Lisbon and Luaren Day found another love, this time an American who just launched an Iphone app, go download it! It is finger twist or something like that and only costs a buck! Get it while it is hot!

A Wonderful Day in Lisbon

Today we woke up decently early and, upon recommendation by a beautiful bartender we made our way to the Belem area of Lisbon. Here we found a bunch of museums, the presidential palace and a number of beautiful parks. What the bartender did not tell us is that most museums are closed on Monday so we were forced to observe the majority of the museums from the outside, all of which were located in an enormous catholic cathedral. (pictured above)

We then made our way to one of the only museums open- the museum of modern art. Here we saw all sorts of works from a chandelier made entirely of tampons to huge works made entirely of plastic cutlery. Some of the exhibits were just bizarre, one which was by a French artist of course which contained a series of films are art work that were beyond description. For example on of the short films has a midget, a normal sized man, and 2 iguanas covered in oil and rolling around in flour. It appeared that this guy had been by our hostel and bought some of the drugs off of the locals. Once we got away from the French exhibits things got a little better. As we walked by some enormous bean bag creatures and into one of the coolest rooms we had ever seen. Inside the room it was completely dark and there was a huge maze of glowing light of plants, it was as close as any of us thought we would be to int he world of Avatar! Lauren was thrilled! I attempted to capture it on my camera but it was simply too dark to get a good image.

After the museum we hopped on the train and went to the town of Cascais where we sat on on of the most beautiful beached I have ever been to. The sand was very hot on the feet and quite fine. The beach was located in a cove so pat and i got a few climbs in, with the protection of the water below. we also jumped off a few of the rocks into the really cold water below, while Lauren watched us with the concern of a mother. The only topless European women were over the ago of 40.

When we returned from the beach we had one of "mamma's dinners" which for 8 euro included a three course meal and three drinks of our choice so obviously we were in! The meal was good and Lauren and I actually ate with the owner of this wonderful hostel. Lauren thought he was cute and even cuter when she learned he owned the place and was throwing some mad game at the 32 year old slampiece.

After dinner we spoke with a few people from the hostel and the bartender(Bruno) and another local guy offered to take us and a three Germans out for a drink.Laruen instantly fell in love with the curly haired bartender, two loves in one day, we seriously have 5 more weeks in europe we will see many loves of Lauren Day. We went to a bar where the offered mojitos for 7 euro that were insane. They literally poured about 2/3rds of a fifth of rum into the AMF sized drinks, no joke and we took our drinks to the street where everyone was drinking. It was honestly pretty crazy for a monday and we arrived back at the hostel around 4 am for a few more drinks. All of the Germans were extremely fun and goofy. The German guy loved America because we produced Girls Gone Wild and the German girls thought we were ignorant for not knowing where Angola is, wtf. The girls we also half Chinese so yet again Pat found someone to speak Chinese with! Both pairs of roommates we have had since we have been here have been Chinese , the grocery we go to is run by a Chinese family and now some of our friends our Chinese and Pat has seriously broke out his Chinese with all of them! Back at the hostel we got into a huge argument over whether Chuck Norris or David Hasselhof (sp) was a better cultural product, we won because Chuck Norris created the idea of a cultural product as well as all cultural products from for every country. We were supported by a designer from California who is on a European surfing trip (of course). He desgined hotwheels though, enough said.

Anyway it is about 1 pm our time and even pat isnt out of bed so we obviously had a great day yesterday.

Lisbon!

We officially made it to Europe today arriving in Lisbon! After waiting for about an hour in customs we made our way to the buses. I knew we were in a different land when I was about to get on the bus and a lady looked me in the eye and asked me a question I presume. All I could think to say is "Si" and she turned to her husband and started pointing at me and saying "Si" , so apparently I confirmed something to her unknowingly. We are definitely not in Bloomington anymore.

We rode what turned out to be a city bus all the way to Praca de Comercio (pictured), (http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praça_do_Comércio) which is apparently the second best planned square in the world- how they determine this I have no idea. I am guessing they want to say that their square is awesome without being boastful. We then began to search for our hostel in a very beautiful district. During our time we (we as in just Dan for some odd reason) were offered weed by atleast 3 people within 10 minutes! They all we wearing suites, as class clearly indicates quality of product, as well as little hats. [I'm convinced one of them tried to franchise the business because all of the suits look the same.] They also sold pipes which looked remarkably like crack pipes. These guys were offering it up in broad daylight, so i guess the laws are less stringent here, crazy portugeise!

We eventually found our hostel which is awesome, I think we are definitely going to be spoiled by this place because it is super clean, has a ton of amenities, and has a ridiculously cheap bar. Happy hour starts at 10pm and goes till when ever (3 good beers for 2 euro). The US should really take after this place with its timing of happy hour because 10pm is obviously when people are looking for drink deals!

We spent the day lounging at cafes where we had some awesome pastries, and Pat and I tried the local beer, of course Pat got the flavored beer so to satisfy his softer side. [ The menu said Super Bock (local beer name) con tango, so I obviously had no idea what I was getting...] Lauren ordered the first of what already seems to be the most delicious coffee in the world. We also went around our area which is full of public squares which are better seen (see images) then described. Tonight we had some of the local cuisine and listened to some man playing guitar and singing: "Hotel California", "Crazy" (yes by gnarles barkley), "I'm Yours" and a number of other American favorites. We also got fooled into eating the bread and cheese they brought us which cost us and additional 3 euro a person -though it was delicious!

Once we arrived back at our hostel we stayed in the lounge area and watched the move Wall Street on a projector. Dan ordered a round of ginja liquor shot, which you are supposed to sip on instead of shoot. The shot was very sweet and reminded me of cherry cordial. Shortly after Lauren went to bed, while Dan and I ordered a few Sagre beers (happy hour). The rest of the hostel attendants were being antisocial facebook stalkers during their vacation, so we just ended up talking to the bar tender for a while. She was a Portuguese local studying computer graphics and she helped map out our Lisbon adventure starting with the beach.

The trip is about to officially begin! We just flew into Philly for our 5 hour layover where I enjoyed an authentic mediocre cheese steak and pat and lauren munched on granola bars.

Our gate is actually hopping because of this nameless bar that is awkwardly placed in the waiting area of gate A11. Seriously, they are playing funky town off of a DVD player in a Bar that Lauren Day and I are convinced came straight from the skymall catalog(see Image). There is no way this little operation is in any way commissioned by the airport, but they have a deal on white Russians so they may be getting my business.

We are all still talking about this trip as if it is months away but in less that 11 hours we will have to negotiate our was to our hostel with zero knowledge of Portuguese. Wish us luck!

START!

TODAY WE START, Jaime cried for hours and hours and hours.