Mom & Me

For those of you who have patiently been waiting for my "vacation" blog entries, thanks for your patience. I've been home for about one week now and it has taken me this long to get back into the swing of things. It might take some time for me to get all of my thoughts together, but they will come...eventually.

Let's rewind to December 2007. Jamie and I had been home from Japan for four months and we were to celebrate my mom's 49th birthday. On that day my mom was given a plane ticket to Portugal avec moi! It wasn't even my birthday and I got a ticket as well. SCORE!!!!! It had always been my mom's dream to visit Portugal before her 50th birthday, so my dad helped grant that wish by providing us with the opportunity to have a "girls getaway". SCORE!!!!!! Here is where I give a big shout out to my dad for making this trip possible :)

It took a while to figure out when we could both get some time off. We started our journey about 3 weeks after my Mom turned the beautiful age of 50...and beautiful she is!

The plan was to visit Portugal (obviously) and since we were in that neck of the woods, we also decided to hit up Spain, Morocco & Holland. Well, Holland only came into the picture because we had to fly out of Amsterdam to come home. We were gone from Jan. 5-28th, so I hope you enjoy these next few entries as I share some stories and of course photoz :)

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LISBON

As I mentioned already we left Vancouver on Jan. 5th. From there we flew to Minneapolis, then to Amsterdam, then to Lisbon. We arrived in Lisbon around 4pm and went straight to our hotel. We were absolutely bushed, but didn't want to go to bed at that hour, so we made our way to the old part of the city. Since my back was killing me we decided to take the Metro instead of walking. It was then that I was groped and gyrated against by some SICKO. I elbowed him as hard as I could in the ribs and said "Don't even". He shrugged his shoulders and got off at the next stop. Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!!!!

I was so fatigued that I didn't even take out my DSLR, so the first few shots of the city were taken with my P&S. They're pretty ghetto because after being up for almost 24 hours I was not inspired at all to take ANY photoz. Ha ha ha...

 
***This was the beginning of our "Who can take the best self-portrait" contest. Look at how bagged we look!***

 
Just a small example of the broken tiles along the sides of buidings

 
A shoe store....oh ya....for those of you who don't know my Mom's name is Jennifer :)

We got back to our hotel around 8pm. We were famished!!!!! We didn't have the brain power to actively seek out a place to eat and had hoped to stumble across something on our way back to the hotel. The restaurants we did come by did not have any English menus and we weren't in the mood to order something that in our eyes who have been deemed inedible. The only things we saw on every street corner were these pastry shops. So for dinner we had a cheese croissant and a chocolate croissant for dessert!

We went to bed around 9ish, slept like crap, but managed to sleep through our alarm and just made it to the breakfast buffet in the nick of time. After that we got ready, took the Metro to Rossio train station (no groping this time), and bought a train ticket to the small town of Sintra.

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SINTRA

We arrived in Sintra just after lunch and attempted to find the hostel that I had chosen before we left. As we were walking down the narrow, cobblestone street we came across a hostel. Not the one I was looking for, but one nonetheless. Thankfully the girl spoke really good English, however she told us that they didn't have a room with two beds. So, we went back out to the street and pulled out the map trying to locate the initial hostel we were looking for. One minute later an old lady approached us pointing to the hostel that didn't have two beds. We were trying to tell her we needed two beds, but she didn't speak / understand a word of English. Eventually the girl who spoke English came out and they spoke to each other in Portuguese. Supposedly the old lady said that a room with two beds was available down the street. We checked it out and decided to book it for two nights....it's the nice pinkish coloured building below.

We dropped off our bags and decided to scope out the cute little town. We took a bus up the mountain and got off at Castelo dos Mouros. From here we had a great view of Sintra, but we opted out from going into the castle as it was quite the hike TO it. I was having a crummy back day and preferred to walk through and around Palacio de Pena.

 
En route to Castelo dos Mouros

On the highest peak of Serra de Sintra stands the Palacio de Pena. It was built in the 19th century for the Queen and her husband. It is one of the most beautiful architectural structures I have ever seen and the inside is MASSIVE. They were very strict and had security at the end of almost every hallway ensuring NO ONE took a picture. One lady "thought" she saw a flash and was on a hard-core mission to find where it came from!

Since I felt somewhat refreshed, I was all ready to put my DSLR to use:

 
Self-portrait #2

When we got back into town we went back to the hostel for about an hour before dinner. Restaurants don't open until 7-8pm, so we had some time to kill. In other words I needed to rest my back. When we got back to our room we realized there wasn't any heat. IT WAS COLD!!! We asked if there was a heater in the room incase we didn't see it, but NOPE! IT WAS COLD.....have I mentioned HOW COLD IT WAS?? After our delicious dinner I piled on the layers. Needless to say that didn't work and I had the worst sleep of the whole trip and we didn't stay for the second night.

 
You can see that I tied my scarf around my head so my toque wouldn't fall of in the middle of the night!

The next day we decided to make our way to the Algarve. Stay tuned.........