After leaving Finisterre last week and returning to Santiago, I enjoyed two days of the "Apostle 2012" festival. On the 24th they had an amazing fireworks and light show above the cathedral. I can't even begin to describe how wonderstruck I was during the show! They made it appear as if the cathedral was on fire, they made the cathedral dance, made it crumble to the ground, and turned it into a mechanical machine. It was also an interesting experience because the plaza was filled with thousands of people, and you literally had no bubble space. But all in all, it was fantastic.Most of the festival I wandered the crowded streets of Santiago (while attempting to stay clear of the thousands of new pilgrims arriving during these two days). In one of the parks they set up a PNE type of thing with sooo much food, rides, and different forms of entertainment. I only rode the Ferris wheel because it went slow, and the reason I did so was because for the past two months I have been going at a speed of 4km an hour, and after the bus ride into Santiago (where we averaged 100km an hour) I was extremely car sick, so just the thought of riding the roller coaster or spinning rides made me feel sick. On the 25th there wasn´t a whole lot going on, although in the morning they had a parade and ceremony outside the cathedral followed by the special pilgrim mass which I did not attend because people had been waiting in the line for over four hours and by the time the ceremony was over, the line to get into the cathedral was almost a kilometer long! And there was no way I was going to be crammed into that cathedral again to watch a hour long mass.
When I concluded my two days in Santiago, I took a morning bus on the 26th to Portugal! It amazed me while I was sitting on the bus that in just a matter of hours I would be in a completely different country, and that it would only take me five hours rather than a month (if I were walking). I had to change buses in Porto in order to get to Lisbon, so when I arrived in Porto, I took a taxi to the bus station to buy my ticket to Lisbon. The lady in the ticket office said that the next bus would be at 3pm...it was already 2:58pm so I would have to hurry up and get to the platform. I waited for a good half hour and there was still no bus. I didn´t know what was going on...Portugal is worse than Spain when it comes to arriving or departing on time. Forty-five minutes passed and there was still no bus. I was standing there all alone with my heavy bags, fearing that I might have missed the bus somehow. Then it dawned on me, maybe there is a time difference between Spain and Portugal. So, I walked over the the clock in the bus station and discovered that there was indeed a time difference...it was only 2:45pm. Stupid, stupid me. When the bus arrived, it was only a four hour ride before I would be in Lisbon. And by 7pm I was finally in the first Portuguese city I was going to explore. However, I felt very overwhelmed walking in to Lisbon because for the past two months I have been in small Spanish villages where you can reach everything by foot. Now, I was in a city with 600 000 people and I would have to take the metro in order to get where I wanted to go. It was all a big confusing at first, and even when I figured out how to get out of the bus station, my confusion only grew worse. In order to get to my hostel, I would first have to take the metro, then the bus, then the tram, and then walk a few meters. It was beginning to get dark and I didn´t have a city map so maneuvering myself throughout Lisbon was fairly difficult. The tram was the worst part. The stops were not clearly marked, and none of the people I asked knew where I was supposed to get off. So, I rode the tram for over a hour before this lady told me where my stop was (If I got off at the right stop in the first place, it should have taken less than ten minutes). By the time I found my hostel it was already 9pm. I was tired from my long day of travel, so after a late dinner of curried chicken, I called it a night.
I have now been in Lisbon for three days, and the city is very beautiful. Even though I get lost...everyday...it is fun wandering through the narrow streets and stumbling upon hidden treasures. However, I am finding it hard to go from pilgrim to tourist. I am so used to the relaxed lifestyle I once had on the camino. I miss sitting in cafes for hours reading and basking in the sun, and even though I can still do those things in Lisbon, there are so many touristic sites that I want to explore, and I feel that I would be wasting the little time I have here if I sat in a cafe all day. So far I have visited the St. George castle, the monuments dedicated to the Age of Discovery, many, many churches, and a few very interesting museums. One of my favorite museums so far has been the Tile museum (which I didn´t think I would like very much, but it was on the list of the top things to do in Lisbon so I decided to check it out). The museum was neat because it contained different tile artwork from the 16th and 17th centuries, and the museum is located in a palace that is decorated elaborately with the tiles. Some of the patterns and pictures just blow you away.
When I was on the camino, the Canadian couple I met, Dean and Amanda, told me so much about the delicious Portuguese pastries, one in particular being a burnt custard tart. On my first full day in Lisbon, the first morsel of food that I had was the burnt custard tart...IT WAS AMAZING! I have to control myself whenever I walk past one of the several hundred pastry shops because I could easily eat those tarts all day. One of my favorite things that I have done in Lisbon so far is visiting the Oceanarium. It is the largest oceanarium in Europe, and the second largest in the world! Basically the oceanarium consists of four large salt water tanks each containing sea life from either the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, or Antarctic oceans. The four tanks then flow into an even larger tank in the center of the oceanarium where all of the sea animals swim about; it is supposed to be representative of a single ocean (composed of the four main oceans). I have two more days in Lisbon before I leave for Sintra, and then Lagos in the south. I´ve checked the weather reports, and in the south it is supposed to be HOT! Perfect weather for the beach.
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