Lisboa? You should goa!: Portugal part 1

Portugal, a land on the Western fringes of Europe that clings to Spain for fear of falling into the Atlantic. The huge loser in me wants to tell you about Prince Henry the Navigator, Vasco de Gama, Bartolemeo Dias, and even ole Pedro Cabral, but I'll restrain myself and stick to simply my experiences there. Firstly, the crew consisted of me and two girls named Liza and Adrienne, a much smaller contingent than my previous travels, which was nice since its tough to do stuff when you're rolling super deep. So we flew out of London's Gatwick airport and arrived in Lisbon at about 8 or 9 on Friday night. Our cab driver from the airport to the hostel actually expressed a desire to go to Newark. Crazy!

After checking in at the hostel, we went to dinner at an apparently authentic Portuguese restaurant which was not very good and walked around the city for a couple hours before crashing after a stressful day of travel. Apparently the Portuguese national past time is standing around in small circles and drinking till 3 or 4 in the morning. The ages of people we saw out drinking in the streets ranged from about 15 till 60. I would imagine it might be awkward to run into your grandparents out drinking at like 3 in the morning, but thats just me. Additionally, this was the calmest group of drunks I've ever encountered. Hundreds of people out drinking in the streets in the States or London would probably entail yelling, stumbling, puking, fighting, etc. but the Portuguese seemed very subdued, which I suppose is both a good and a bad thing. I mean, who doesn't like some solid raging?

The next day, we woke up and decided to just walk around for a while and save the major touristy stuff for the next day. After walking along the River Tejo, we apparently turned into a very boring residential area, because there wasn't much to see, so we decided to take a ferry across the river to the suburb/neighboring town/whatever of Cacilhas for lunch. We encountered some old Portuguese men cajoling us to come into their establishments and a neat old wooden ship (see facebook picture). As we walked along, we kept noticing people dressed in pretty outlandish costumes, so at lunch we asked the cafe owner dude (one of the not so numerous Portuguese who spoke good English) what the deal was, and he informed us that the towns carnival parade was that afternoon, so we hit that shit up. Lots of crazy costumes, live music and food stands; it was pretty neat. For dinner, we hit up a much better Portuguese restaurant, and after dinner it was raining pretty hard so there weren't as many people out in the streets. We just went went to a bar for a few drinks. The girls tried the

port wine, Portugal's famous export, and after a couple beers I decided to try the agua d'ardenne that the Portuguese guy next to me had(I really have no idea if thats how you spell it, but I think thats what the guy said). Anyway, I basically got a big glass of moonshine distilled from the leftovers of wine making that tasted like shitty vodka.

The next day we went to Alfama, which is the oldest part of town and was built by the Moors (or the Moops, as they are sometimes known). The streets are all narrow and windy and there were old ladies carrying fish around and what not. Another Portuguese past time seems to be standing on the stoops of their homes or businesses and staring at people (or maybe just American tourists) for uncomfortably long periods of time. We stopped at the cathedral, which was cool looking and had orange trees on the outside, but when we opened the door, we awkwardly interrupted Mass, so I didn't really get to see the inside. Our next stop was the castelo do sao jorge, at the highest point in the city, but on the way we stumbled across a museum/excavation site of an ancient Roman theater. It was really pretty schnazz, especially since we were the only ones there. Its just crazy to think that people have been living in that location for at least two thousand years. Thats one thing I'll concede the Europeans do better than us...being old. We did finally make it to the castle though, which had some great views of the entire city. It was also the first castle I've been in even though I'd been in England for a month and a half. Wacky. After that, we hopped on the Metro (even the Lisbon public transportation is better than the L, get your shit together CTA) and went to the Lisbon Oceanarium, which is supposed to be one of the best in the world. I think the Shedd is better, though Lisbon's wasn't too shabby and significantly cheaper at only 7 euro. The sea otters were my favorite! I really considered deleting the previous sentence for the reason that its the gayest shit of all time, but they were my favorite and the world needs to know that. We went to my favorite restaurant in Portugal for dinner (out of like 4) that night. Portuguese cuisine is basically bland seafood, nothing special. I was kind of disappointed. Speaking of being disappointed with bland Portuguese things, the women were nothing special as well. I only bring it up because I have been very impressed with the women I've seen in London, Paris, and even the skanks in Wales were attractive. Portuguese women do have some junk in the trunk, which I'm usually a fan of, but other than that, they didn't really offer much. Moving on.

For our last day in Lisbon, we took a 50 minute train out to the town Sintra, which I guess you could describe as the Versailles of Lisbon, since its a kind of suburb with a bunch of palaces and what not. We got off the train and went to the tourism office to get a map. The dude said we should take a bus to the top of a giant hill to see the Moorish/Moopish castle that dated to the 9th or 10th century. We decided "fuck that noise" and started climbing. When we saw a woman pushing a stroller up the hill, I was offended that the dude thought we would need to take the bus. The path did start to get steep and rugged however, and I worked up a sweat, but it was pretty awesome, probably my favorite thing in Portugal. It went through a forest, which was very cool since I've been a city slicker the past couple months and it was nice to get some nature. The castle itself was also awesome. It was in ruins, but that just added to its awesome-ness in my opinion. The view from the top also kicked ass. I'm definitely glad I didn't spend 4 euro to take the damn bus, instead I decided to spend that 4 euro on beer at lunch. We ate lunch at the base of the hill with a dude from Missouri who was training to be a Baptist preacher (a good, friendly dude, but I think he was judging me for having two beers at like 2 in the afternoon) and an obnoxious Canadian. The Canadian met his girlfriend in Texas playing a computer game. He also sucked. I'm being especially harsh on him because he made fun of me for pronouncing the city of Regina, Saskatchewan like Mrs. Cahill's first name, and not as a rhyme for vagina, which apparently is how they pronounce it. Anyway, I don't like being made fun of for being wrong about geography facts, ipso facto, Canada sucks. That night we went to bed early, since we had to travel to Porto the next day. My Portugal crew was not an especially raging bunch, which is probably good for my wallet and my comfort during the sight-seeing, but it made for a lack of interesting night time stories (thus far, stay tuned for my next post about our stay in Porto which involved some more exciting night time activities).

The next day we hopped on the train for a 2 and a half hour ride to Porto.... but for that thrilling tale, you'll have to wait for the next installment!

Various shenanigans: some frisbee related, some not.

Well hello everyone,

The past week has been fairly busy, which is always good, and thus this post is a bit long. It includes frisbee tournaments, being a complete screw up, a mini Northwestern reunion, over-eating, and Ash Wednesday (woo!).

Lets start with the frisbee tournament. How did I get mixed up in all this frisbee business you may ask? Well one of my friends here is pretty intense about ultimate frisbee i.e. plays on his college's team and takes it all very seriously, which I respect, and he met up with an English guy who is also a good player and really into it and they formed a club team here at Queen Mary. Now they were fairly desperate for players, since the regional tournament took place shortly after they had formed the team so Jake asked if I wanted to play. I was all like "why not?, it'll be fun."

So theres the origins, now on to the actual tournament. We woke up at 6:30 am on Saturday (ugh) to catch a train to Chichester University, where the regional tournament was being held. Chichester is this tiny little town about an hour and a half by train from London. From the little of it I saw, it seemed to be a very nice little English town. As for the tournament, I was a little blown away by the magnitude of it all, since most of the other teams had full on uniforms and what not, so our team kinda figured if we won one or two games, it'd be a success. We were seeded last in the entire tournament since the team had just come into existence, and in our first game we ended up winning 13-1 (say whaaa?!). It seems we probably shouldn't have been seeded last, since Rob and Jake (the British and American co-founders of the team) are absolute frisbee studs. The rest of us were at least moderately coordinated/athletic and I was fairly happy with my play for the first couple games before I got super tired and cold, but those two would basically pass the disc between themselves while the rest of us tried to stay out of their way and not completely screw up on defense. That formula seemed to work, as we won our next two games against increasingly better teams. Now, remember when I said earlier that we were desperate to find players? Well, I have failed to mention thus far that we didn't quite scrounge up 7 players (the standard number of players on the field) so we didn't have any subs and played a man down the entire time. Thus, by our fourth game of the day we were absolutely obliterated (tres fatigues, as the French would say). I could barely move my legs, and my determination to never again touch a cigarette has never been greater. Despite our condition, we still managed to stay close to an absurdly good team, and ended up losing 13-11, I think. Finishing the day at 3-1 was better than any of us had anticipated, and we were feeling pretty good.

After the fourth game, Jake and I headed back to London for the night, while the rest of the team looked forward to a restful nights sleep on some random floor. We wanted to get back because it was one of our friends' birthday, and they were hitting up a cheap all you can eat sushi place that couldn't be missed, and it would also be nice to sleep in a real bed. So after dinner, I get back to my flat, completely exhausted, ready to hit the sack, and what should I find? The Brits are having a bit of a party in our kitchen, and I was convinced to stay for a couple drinks. Well, as tends to happen, one drink turned into multiple games of Circle of Death and before you know it I'm drunk and going to bed at 2 am, having to wake up at 7 the next day to get back to Chichester. And this is when I completely screw up. I apparently forgot to turn on my alarm and didn't wake up until noon. I had several missed calls and angry texts from Jake. Luckily, another girl joined for Sunday, so the team still had six people, but I still felt like a complete douche. The team ended up finishing tenth out of 23, which is amazing considering our situation, but it woulda been nice if I was there and maybe helping the team do a little better. (Afterword: The next couple days after Saturday, I could barely walk I was in so much pain. My whole body ached. It really makes me consider exercising more regularly.)

So after hitting up Draper's once again for 1 pound pints (glorious deal), Tuesday rolls around and the plan is to meet up with a couple fellow abroad Wildcats, Jessie Cai who is studying at the London School of Economics and Emily Winant who was visiting Jessie from Paris. We hit up Ice Bar, which is a pretty schazzy place made of ice (a little internet research tells me its in the location of the former royal wine cellars) where you have to throw on a goofy parka/poncho deal and pay too much for girly drinks in cups made of ice. It was really pretty cool, and it had been recommended to me by a couple people who'd been in London. After that, we went to Sports Cafe, which is basically an American college bar, to meet up with a few of my Queen Mary friends. The night quickly devolved into a shit show, in typical Northwestern fashion, with beer pong being played, pike songs being sung, and me being a stupid drunk dancer. Overall, a good time (I'm dreading the pictures the girls took going up on facebook).

Finally, today is of course Ash Wednesday, so I figured thats as good a time as any to go to Mass for the first time overseas. I decided to go to Westminster Cathedral, where I went to Easter Mass when I was in London back in high school. Its the headquarters of the Catholic diocese for London and a very cool church, built in the 1800's in a sort of Byzantine style. So I got my ashes and walked around the area for bit. It was a solid day, and tonight I have to decide whether I or not to participate in the great "grizzly challenge" where some of the Americans and a couple Brits have decided to have an eating competition where you have to finish a large doner from this skeezy kebab place and a big chicken meal from this skeezy chicken shop. Basically, you're taking a couple years off of your life in the spirit of competition. I dunno if my skinny frame and small stomach can handle it, so stay tuned for that. Oh, and I just remember you're not supposed to eat meat on Ash Wednesday, so maybe I won't participate. Whatevs.

Well, the big trip to Portugal starts Friday, and I am super excited about that. We've got all of our plans figured out and a quasi-itinerary made-up, which is good. After that, my Uncle Jack is in London for a couple days on his way to a business trip in Switzerland so I'll have an opportunity to show off my London local-ness. And after that it'll be March already. Holy Crap has time flown by over here. Its all been such an amazing experience and the fact that its almost already been two months is just mind-blowing. As I was walking around today after Mass, I think it kinda finally really hit me that I'm actually living in London. I guess before I was in the mindset of kind of an extended visit or vacation. It was a pretty surreal moment, and on that note, I guess thats it for now, thanks for reading.

Super bowling

Hey there everybody,

This is gonna be a fairly short post, just because I didn't travel anywhere last weekend and didn't really do anything especially interesting. One thing that was pretty sweet however was watching the Super Bowl last night at the bar. Now I'm a football fan, but I don't usually get too excited about a game not involving da bears, even if it is the Super Bowl. However, when the national anthem played and the game got started, I got a bit of a chill up my spine; not in an uber-patriotic way, but more in a "this feels like home" sort of way. Or maybe I just had a little too much to drink. Either way it was a lot of fun and a great game (I was rooting for the Colts, sadface). It was also sweet that we were watching it with Brits, especially since once they got the hang of the game, they really got into it.

One other point of interest, I will be playing for the Queen Mary ultimate frisbee team, which is going to be fairly sweet I think. I mean, I can throw the disc around moderately well and there were some epic matches in high school, but it'll be interesting to see how I do in a more competitive environment (especially with my well-known avoidance of physical activity). Apparently the team isn't especially good though, so there shouldn't be too much pressure. It will be a good opportunity to travel around the UK for tournaments and meet some more people though. We'll be going to some small town called Chichester next weekend for a tournament, which should be a great time. The following weekend should be supremely awesome as well, as I'll be headed to Portugal for a week of fun in the sun (its actually only a little warmer than here, but at least its not cloudy and raining all the time), so look for a nice long post on that stuff coming up. Mmm, good couple weeks coming up, I'm excited. Peace.

Cockles in the Club

Well folks, last week was moderately eventful. There was some sightseeing, some clubbing, and a trip to Wales that could be described as interesting, to say the least. Starting at the beginning though...

The week began of course with a trip to Draper's for Monday's calling, nothing to out of the ordinary there. Tuesday however, introduced me to London's club scene with a trip to the famous Ministry of Sound. Now, I am by no means a clubbing person, despite what you may think from my exquisite drunken dance moves, but still, the Ministry was pretty fun. The music was extremely loud, it was completely packed, and I was about 30 seconds from pissing my pants after waiting in line to get in, but at least the drinks were cheaper than I expected (have I became a 60 year old man? possibly). I suppose the key to the club scene then is to be as shit faced as possible, yet still able to function. Words of wisdom.

My night out on Thursday was definitely an improvement. We went to this Irish-themed bar called O'Neills, but it was so packed that the theme of the place didn't really matter. They had a live band that played covers of some of my favorite jams (Green Day, Blink 182, Blur, even some Sweet Home Alabama) which was pretty sweet, and the area around the stage devolved into a sort of mosh pit, which was awesome. It was definitely more my scene than a club.

Friday, after doing a little sightseeing around Buckingham Palace and Trafalgar Square, it was time for the Arcadia arranged homestay weekend in Swansea, Wales. Myself and two other Americans from my program were placed with a woman and her young son (and their free roaming tortoise) for the weekend. After a miserably long 7 hour bus ride, over 2 hours of which was spent getting out of London in Friday evening traffic, we arrived at our family's home around midnight, and thus promptly went to bed. I managed to secure a bunk bed for myself, thus achieving one of my greatest desires as an 8 year old. Check that one off the list.

Saturday was all about seeing the local sights. The first stop was Mumbles, a small seaside community which may or may not be considered part of Swansea, I'm not sure. The origin of the name Mumbles is one of my all time favorite fun facts, a supreme Did you know, that Coach Connor himself would enjoy. Its believed to have been named by invading English soldiers during the Middle Ages who thought that the rolling hills around the city looked like women's breasts. Mumbles is medieval slang for tits, get on it Elmhurst. Anywho, we walked around the beach and checked out the pier before grabbing some coffee and hot chocolate at the pier cafe thing. It was pretty neat. After Mumbles, we were taken to Rhosilli beach, which my homestay mom described as "the prettiest place in Wales", and in my limited Welsh experience, its hard to disagree with her. On the drive there, we saw plenty of sheep and idyllic countryside scenery that you might see on a post card, and the beach itself was even cooler. The beach was beautiful and the cliffs and promontories and shit were gorgeous. Overall, definitely worth seeing if you're ever in the area. The final stop of the day was Swansea market, where we were treated to traditional Welsh cakes and cockles, which were both delicious. Cockles are type of tiny shellfish. Cockles.

After the market, we headed back home, where we played some Wii with young Matthew, the 7 year old Welsh terror we were staying with, before a much appreciated home-cooked meal prepared by our mom for the weekend, Nicola. Then, it was off to meet up with everybody else and experience the glory that is Swansea nightlife. Now, we picked up some hints on what Swansea is all about while we walked around the market earlier in the day, as many of the young women were suspiciously orange for cloudy Britain. That night confirmed our suspicions, as Swansea appeared to be the Jersey Shore of the UK. Muscle bound men in tight shirts with too much hair gel and orange girls in the skankiest of outfits abounded. Many of the young ladies seem to think that Halloween is a year round event, as they were dressed up in all sorts of slutty costumes. It was definitely a fun/hilarious/terrifying experience. The end of the night came, and after returning to our weekend home, I promptly passed out in my bunk bed. The other two guys however thought that making a pizza at 3 in morning was a good idea and consequently received a stern talking to from Nicola. Just like a real mom! All was forgiven the next day once they bought a replacement pizza, and we left Wales after a fun weekend on good terms before returning home... after another absurdly long bus ride thanks to London traffic.

This week was the first in which I've had to do some real school work, as I just turned in my first paper at Queen Mary. It was only 2000 words, which isn't bad at all, but since the grading and formatting is a little differently over here, I spent more time researching, writing, and editing it then I usually would, just to make sure I didn't completely fuck something up on my first attempt. Thats done now though, so time to do some raging. My next trip is a week long journey to Portugal from Feb 19-26 (during reading week, so I'm not skipping any classes). We're going to be spending 3 days in Lisbon and 3 days in Porto, and I am super excited about the trip. It'll be cool to go to a big, fun and historical city that isn't necessarily a major tourist destination like Paris or Rome.

Thats it for now, gracias for reading.