Yesterday I got my bus ticket to my next location and walked around the city a little. When I got to the ticket counter I had an idea of where I wanted to go, Portimao. It has a good location on the Southeastern coast and I thought it’d be nice to relax on a beach for a day. So that’s where I’m off to. Since getting the ticket though I’m not so sure that it was a good choice. The rooms are very expensive, there aren’t very many hostels, and the hostels that are good value are far from what I originally wanted to go there for. So anyway, I really wasn’t in the picture-taking mood yesterday, so I don’t have many things to show. I did take some photos from my hotel room of some military function going on, and a night shot as well. Generally though, not many photos from yesterday.

Today was my third day in Lisbon, but since the first day doesn’t really count, I’m on my second full day. It’s been nice here. I’m not sure if it’s me or it is Lisbon, but there is a slower pace to life here. The cars move fast, there are huge amounts of people everywhere you go, but for some reason I just get this feeling that life is slower here. I think that’s a good thing. In some ways it kind of reminds me of Helsinki, Finland, only with much prettier architecture.

It’s about 2:30 right now and I’m back in the hotel to rest a bit before I go out again. I started at about 10 this morning with the plans to go away from the more touristy places that I’ve seen already. I did start in the touristy place though, I just wanted to see if I’d missed anything when I was there before, but after that I headed along the coast, or riverbank–I think I remember seeing on the map that Lisbon is on a river. I think for the most part it was the right decision because along the way I saw a still a beautiful Lisbon, but it was much more rundown and generally in poorer shape. There are two parts to most tourist cities, the parts that have been restored for you to take pictures of, and then there are the other parts, usually the parts where most of the people live. Some of these cities the tourist parts are the only thing that is left from history, but here in Lisbon, and as far as I can tell, the whole city has ornate buildings, cobblestone alleys, and steep hills. Except for not being as restored as the touristy places, it is still beautiful.

With no real destination I made my way through alleys and along streets, any street would do as long as it was going in my general directions. There were times that I just followed people, yeah, and it so happens that sometimes those people were cute girls. I went up a few hills and stumbled into a huge market. It was more like a flea market than anything else so I didn’t do much shopping. I continued to follow the vast majority of people and eventually ended up at viewpoint overlooking the city. It was very picturesque but not quite perfect. From my vantage point though I could see another viewpoint a little bit higher, and not that far away from where I was. I got there after about 15 minutes, and still it wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough. By then though my legs were burning and I wanted to get something to eat, so I decided to come back to the hotel. I stopped for lunch at a fruit market and ate as I walked.