Lisboa [Lisbon] Portugal

February, 2018: It had been at least three- if not more-years, since the four of us girls had last seen eachother. Two of them were travelling Europe from Canada, one was studying in Amsterdam, and I had just moved to Munich. Some real "omg let's meet up in Europe one day!!" cliche-type stuff, that came true.

So girls-trip to Lisbon, it is. One week of adventuring alleyways (yes, I love my European alleyways... unlike in Canada where it's a place for convicts, stray-cats, and dumpsters), cheap wine (no, life is not too short to drink cheap wine - we had a bottle with us at all times), a crowd of attractive German men on a bachelor party in our hostel (I earned major brownie points for choosing this hotel), a flea-market with various items (some good, some bad, some plain ugly), many talks (we had 3+ years to catch-up on), dancing, eating (a pasteis de nata a day keeps the doctor at bay), peeing in places we shouldn't (I take blame), endless amounts of tiles, tiles everywhere, and just all-around soaking in eachothers awesomeness (I was the "travel dad" in this group with my dad-jokes).

Another cool thing, we did a day-trip outside of Lisbon and one point during the bus-trip we were at the western most point on continental Europe!

I was in San-Francisco once (twice? more?) back in the 90's when I was a little babe, so no remembrance but have been told Lisbon holds resemblance to San-Fran in terms of its mountain steep city hills, trolley carts, and a bridge designed by the architect who receives credit for the Golden-Gate bridge.

OHH!! And due to a favourable language barrier one evening in a bar, we managed to score three fancy cocktails for free! I don't remember the details of the mix-up anymore...maybe a sign that the cocktails were that good ;)

P.S. I have never met a group of girls who can rock a pair of Bluntstones on the streets of Europe like my three girls did (I was the odd German one out in my adidas ;) ).

View from our AirBnB looking out onto...an ALLEYWAY! I still hold a grudge over this man for being a thorn in my eye.

Lisbon's oldest district, Alfama.

Even the buildings are covered in tiles! Amazing.

It's a great holiday when one of the main decisions you are faced with is which direction to continue walking in.

My geography is gone here, but I still enjoy the image.

Me, continually posing.

Lemon-trees and more exquisite tiles. I guess graffiti is part of the deal.

One of our favourite pastimes in Lisbon included sitting by the water, drinking wine, and chatting from A-Z.

Some Portuguese culture at a glimpse.

One of Lisbon's many tiny general stores. On this trip I rediscovered my taste for corn-nuts, yes scoff all you want.

Another enticing alleyway.

One partially collapsed-lung later, we arrive to a glorious sunset over Lisbon.

This was in a small town just outside of Lisbon (girls, I'm blanking on the name?!).

I believe this to be one of the only photos with almost all four us in a photo together. Also, these were the free drinks we scored! And for some reason they were all different cocktails.

Some old relic.

A questionable Portuguese lunch...the wine we brought for ourselves made it all better.

We never did end up going to this bar. However on this street was a real good taco-restaurant. I don't remember the name of the street so that tip really is of no use, sorry.