March 2016 – adventuresofxmm

Obrigada Lisboa

So, after spending 5 days in Portugal, I’ve finally figured out that there are gender inflections in the Portuguese language. Males have the -o suffix but females have the -a suffix. For example, when people here say “Thank You”, males say Obrigado while females say Obrigada.

I also want to write about the Portuguese phonemes and vocabulary I’ve learnt over the past few days, because the linguist in me can’t resist it. For example, the letter S is phonetically realised with the ʃ quality. However if it appears word-initially or between 2 vowels, it’s pronounced like how you would normally say it in English. As for the letter R, it has the χ quality. My Portuguese vocabulary list is as follows:

Frango- Chicken

Peixe- Fish

Pato- Duck

Salada- Salad

Bacalhau- Cod Fish

Homem- Men

Mulher- Women

Saída- Exit

Linha- Platform

Olá- Hello

This is what I can remember at the top of my head, there might be more that I have learned but forgot OOPS hehe but as you can see the words I have learnt are largely skewed towards food-related nouns 😅😅Just in case you were thinking this is going to be a pure linguistics post, it isn’t HAHA.

Today’s the last day in Lisbon and I think I’m really going to miss this place, especially the Liv’in Lisbon Hostel- it has a great environment and it’s really inexpensive. The homemade pancakes every morning are also an added bonus. The best part though has to be the people here, whether it’s the staff or fellow travellers. We may come from different places, but everyone here is so friendly and open about sharing their respective cultures and stories, even when we have difficulties overcoming our language barriers.

Anyway, on to what I have done today. After sleeping in and checking out just before 12 noon 😅, I walked to the post office to mail Nicole’s pencil case back to Ireland because she left it in the hostel HAHA. It was one long walk and I had to go through certain dodgy alleys so on the way back, I decided to take the Metro instead. I mean as much as I liked the free cardio exercise I got from walking uphill and dowhill throughout Lisbon, covering about 100km on foot (according to the Health App on my phone) was sufficient in giving me terrible muscle aches all over my legs- I think my quads and calves are especially defined now HAHA. So I took the Metro from Intendente station to Colégio Militar/Luz station to visit Centro Comercial Colombo, a shopping mall that was recommended to me by the staff at the hostel.

It’s been ages since I’ve been to a large mall with a modern looking interior, so it definitely gave me a sense of comfort and familiarity. Before starting on my shopping though, I had to get some lunch so I went up to the food court located on the top floor of the mall. I ordered Douradas from this store called SelFish and it was amazing. The grilled fish was very fresh and not overcooked (I’ve almost forgotten how good fresh fish tastes because all we get is frozen fish in the UK 😢), the salad had a balsamic vinegar dressing that I really liked and the fragrance of the roast potatoes was enhanced by the rosemary. This meal was definitely worth the €10 that I spent.

I then spent the rest of the afternoon shopping in the mall. However, of all places that I actually bought stuff, it was from the Men’s section in Primark. HAHA I think after Cheery introduced me to buying men’s products, I have never looked back. I bought a pair of grey sweatpants and maroon sneakers.

£3 Slazenger sneakers that have lasted 100km

Cherry I know you’re reading this- so do I get the podiatrist’s approval?? I have finally thrown away my super cui shoes that were on the verge of splitting HAHA.

As expected from the glutton that I am, I went to get myself some afternoon tea. I was craving something creamy so I popped over to McDonald’s to get myself a Snickers Mini-Mcflurry. The mixture of caramel, peanuts, snickers chocolate and ice cream was absolutely heavenly 😍

Before heading back, I decided to pop by the supermarket called Continente, which looked so much like Giant in Singapore. After getting myself some water and a box of strawberries for dinner, I went back to the hostel to collect my luggage and departed for my overnight train to Madrid.

Obrigada Lisboa, thank you for having me the past 5 days and letting me fall in love with you ❤️

These are a few of my favourite things

Day 4 in Lisbon and time feels like it’s flying by. This vacation has been great this far but today’s the last day Cherry, Nicole and I will be in this city together

Nevertheless, we wanted to make full use of our time together here, so we set out pretty early to Belém- another district in Portugal. In there, we found our favourite place in Lisbon. Mosteiro dos Jerónimos was by far the most beautiful place that we have been to. The exterior was already pretty grand, but we were blown away by the interior. The minute we stepped in, we sat in the middle of the square and tried to soak in the whole beauty of its architecture.

We also met this other tourist that took this amazing photo of us- as featured on my Instagram hehe. He has mad skills I swear.

After being wowed by this attraction, we moved on to the Padrão dos Descobrimentos- a monument that was located close to the monastery. Unfortunately, as we didn’t have any guide with us, we didn’t know what it signified and left after we snapped some pictures.

Time flies when we’re having fun and it was soon time for lunch. We went to this place called À Margem. It was a little on the pricey side, but the food was incredible.

Cherry also tried the Gazpacho- a cold soup that’s only served from March to September. It tasted good, but it was much colder than we all expected. The salads looked really good as well, pity that none of us ordered it.

After lunch, we went to check out the Tower of Belem. It is supposedly a UNESCO world heritage site, but it was rather underwhelming because it couldn’t match up to the Monastery and it’s value laid in its historical context more than anything else.

Before leaving Belem, we made our way to Pastéis de Belém- a bakery that made THE BEST Portugese Egg Tarts in all of Portugal. You know it’s good when even the locals recommend it. It was the first warm Pastéis de Nata we had, the crust was flaky and crispy which was a nice contrast to the creamy custard that wasn’t too sweet. All in all, we agree that it really is THE BEST one in this city.

Unfortunately for us, the good sunny weather the past few days didn’t last and it poured while we were walking back to the city centre. We took refuge in MUDE (the fashion and design museum) and hobo-ed in H&M after. We were so desperate to sit that I pretended to try on shoes while we rested in there.

When the rain subsided, we had to find a place for dinner, so we went to check out ALDEA Restaurante. First, the guy at the door was way over enthusiastic in getting us to eat in his restaurant. He basically kept us standing outside in the rain and cold, introducing the ENTIRE MENU to us. He also kept repeating “LADIES” to get our attention (as if we could pay attention to anything else) and used “FOREVER MORE” in place of “further more repeatedly. He was getting on my nerves and I only nodded to eating there because I was growing impatient at his long windedness and it was really cold outside. Unfortunately, dinner was pretty bad because our portion sizes were really small and the chorizo sausage we ordered to share was excessively oily and salty. With all of us being healthcare/medicine students, we could not bring ourselves to finish it. The worst part of the dinner was when the waiter overcharged Nicole for her mango mousse and the bread and butter served to us in the beginning actually cost more than my main course. 🙄🙄🙄 so a word of advice: DON’T EAT THERE.

Other than the minor negative incident at the end of the day, today has been pretty wonderful and I think I am going to miss Lisbon so so much when I leave for Madrid tomorrow. I didn’t expect to love this city as much as I do now but Lisbon has really grown on me. Thank you for having such wonderful people, food and sights- I had the best Portuguese experience I could ever ask for.

/lɪʃbəʊʌ/

Day 3 in Portugal:

We started off the day with a walking tour by Sandeman’s which took us around the city centre. Even though I had seen most of the places that were being introduced, I still found it extremely interesting because our guide was immensely helpful in explaning the various historical/geographical contexts of the different monuments.

Largo de Camões- meeting point of Sandeman’s tours

Although they are advertised as a free walking tour, the guides earn their keep by collecting tips from their tour group. The amount given by each individual is entirely up to your own discretion, depending on your budget and how enjoyable you found the trip.

On the tour, we managed to go into São Roque Church, where there was such a stark contrast between the plain exterior and grand interior. I’m so glad I didn’t miss out on this hidden gem because of the closure on Easter Sunday.

Our guide- Rui Pacifico
even brought us to a place near the Elevador that really reminded us of Lord of the Rings:

The similarity to LOTR is at the top where the arches are

I felt like I’ve learnt so much from him today, because he kept introducing Portuguese words to us as well as teaching us the phonemes of the Portuguese (which explains my phonemic transcription as the title of this blog post hehe).

The tour was then concluded by drinking cherry liquer from chocolate cups:

For €1.65 we got the cherry liquer in the edible chocolate cup which entitled us to a second free refill!!

After the tour, we proceeded to explore the district of Alfama- the “older” part of Lisbon that escaped unscathed from the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake which essentially ruined the rest of the city. From a distance, Alfama looked really picturesque with its colourful buildings, but upon closer inspection, it was actually pretty run down. The flea market there fell short of our expectations and the hilly winding alleys made it much harder to navigate around the area as well. Thankfully, there was a silver lining, for we managed to find a fantastic lunch place- Crisfama, using Cherry’s TripAdvisor skills. The food was amazing, except that we had to rely heavily on body language, since the owners weren’t really proficient in English and we had a very limited Portugese vocabulary.

On the way to St George’s Castle, we passed by a few other monuments as shown below:

However, being gluttons, we stopped by
for Pasteis de Nata before reaching the next attraction. (I swear if I lived here I would get morbidly obese because of the amount of tarts I consume)

Eventually, we did make it to Castelo de S. Jorge. It is supposedly the highest point in Lisbon, so we could see the entirety of Lisbon when standing atop the castle. The view was great, albeit the bad lighting at the time of the day which left our photos with much to be desired.

The archaeological site was pretty underwhelming at first, but after we decided to go for the free guided tour, the boring looking site made so much more sense. Knowing the backstory also gave us a better appreciation of the history behind the site.

We left the castle in search of the Cathedral of Lisbon, but somehow we managed to chance upon another set of ruins:

The 3rd cathedral of the day was Sé de Lisboa. Like the others that we’ve seen, it’s architecture was beautifully intricate.

I also managed to capture this postcard worthy photo (at least in my opinion) of Tram 28- a recommendation for all tourists as a means to see the city but we felt like it wasn’t really worth the hype.

For dinner, we made our way to TimeOut market and the range of food choices was simply amazing. The portion sizes were also pretty substantial so the 3 of us shared 2 dishes. The Pato à brás tasted better than the Bacalhau à brás I had the day before- mainly because the cod was pretty tough (which was understandable since it’s easily overcooked). The burger was equally delicious, but the best part was the mayo that came with the fries. Normaly I hate mayo with a passion so this one really set the standard.

The Sangria I ordered was pretty disappointing though, I felt like the one I had at the Sunday street market was so much better.

After checking the Health App in my iphone, I’ve realised that I’ve walked about 80km in the last 3 days- it’s no wonder that my legs are aching so terribly. But I guess this justifies the amount of food that I’ve eaten in these 3 days right? 😅 Time to have an intense gym schedule when I get back to Reading, but for now I’m just glad I can rest my legs.

Do castles make the princess?

Portugal Day 2:

Since I had the whole day free, I decided to make a day trip down to Sintra- a small town that’s located 40 minutes (by train) away from Lisbon. At first glance, Sintra seems to be a quaint little place but the more you explore it, you will come to realise that it has so much to offer- a day trip really doesn’t do it justice.

The first place I checked out was the National Palace of Sintra.

The first part of the palace near the entrance is pretty boring, unless you’re interested in things like art history I suppose. So I quickly skimmed through those areas and moved on to the main rooms of the palace. I found them interesting because they were named according to how they were decorated. These decorations on the ceilings and walls were so intricate, I cannot fathom the amount of time and effort needed to put them up- especially since technology wasn’t as efficient back then.

But my favourite room has to be Blazon Hall. The grandeur of the place is mind-blowing. I think I spent 5 minutes standing there, trying to wrap my head around everything that I was seeing.

After which, I had lunch at Restaurante Tarvena and I ordered the “typical Portugese dishes”. The cabbage soup was pretty good but the Cod with chips and egg was abit on the oily side. It was still interesting though because the cod was actually fried together with the potato and egg, which is different from the typical Western style where you would expect all the components of the dish to be presented separately.

The funniest part about the lunch though was the waiter that was serving my table. We had a nice conversation, with him telling me about Portugal and me telling him about Singapore. At the end of my meal, he actually wrote me his Facebook and his phone number, and told me that Wednesday is his off day, so “we could go out for drinks in Lisbon”. He is pretty cute but nah I’m not THAT wild.

I had to walk off the heavy lunch I had, so I decided to go to Quinta da Regaleira – another Palace like place that is located about 15 minutes away. The mansion had such a beautiful exterior, it’s a pity that it’s interior couldn’t quite match up.

However, there was much more to this place aside from the mansion. I climbed the various towers scattered throughout, walked through Grottos (underground walkways/tunnels) and walked through the inside of wells. The whole time I was there felt like an adventure because there was always something new to discover.

On the way back to the town centre of Sintra, I chanced upon Igreja Paroquial De São Martinho De Sintra so I decided to go in and take a look. I might be a free thinker but there is something about churches that manages to bring about this sense of calm and peace. The moment I stepped in, it was as if I had entered a bubble that was insulated from all the chaos outside.

After finding my inner peace, I decided that I had some time to go up to the Mirradous and get a bird’s eye view of Sintra. Initially, I was going to stop there and head back to the train station but there was something really addictive about climbing. I ended up embarking on the route to see Castelo dos Mouros. The journey up was incredibly tough due to the steep inclination and rocky terrain. Coupled with the fact that I was only wearing sneakers, there were many times that I wanted to give up and turn back. But I guess travelling alone forces you to become your own cheerleader, so I continued to press on. Honestly, as long as you focus on taking one step at a time, there is nothing you can’t accomplish. And I am so glad I did because the taste of victory while standing at the top is priceless.

Standing at the top of Castelo dos Mouros

I had wanted to visit Parque e Palácio Nacional de Pena as well, but I was too tired and there wasn’t enough time for me to trek up another enormous mountain. Thankfully, I do have a picture of it (taken from the Moorish Castle)

Unfortunately, what goes up must come down and I had such a long walk descending the mountain. After taking the train back to Rossio station in Lisbon, I was so knackered I went straight back to the hostel. But it’s been a good day, so I guess the potential muscle ache I might get tomorrow will be worth it. Also, I can’t wait to meet Cherry and her friend in Lisbon tomorrow!! 😁😁😁

Not all who wander are lost

First stop of Easter Break 2016: Lisbon, Portugal.

Today has been absolutely amazing. I had to wake up at 6am to travel to Stansted Airport and catch my Ryanair flight to Lisbon, but it wasn’t too bad since the sun rose pretty early. And I slept through most of the flight anyway, so I had enough energy to see what Portugal had to offer. When we first landed, I felt inexplicably happy- probably because UK has been so cold and dreary, but the weather here is wonderful, it’s really sunny and the temperature stays around 12 to 16 degrees.

The first thing I had to do was to get myself a Metro card, as much as I liked to explore the city on foot, I didn’t fancy lugging my backpack over long distances. It was pretty straightforward with the self-service machines, the only problem was figuring out the layout of the Metro station- all the signs were in Portugese and I do not know a single word of this language HAHA. Thankfully, because George made us practice translating foreign languages to English based on the pattern of their grammatical morphemes, it didn’t take too much effort to figure out the main directions. (This is why everyone should take linguistics modules hehe)

I got off at Avenida Station, and used google maps to find my way to Liv’in Lisbon Hostel. It is situated directly opposite Hospital de Santa Marta, so with such a landmark, it shouldn’t be too hard to locate. Unfortunately, the entrance to this place is literally an inconspicuous brown door. I had to walk up and down the same street 3 times before I realised that this door was the entrance to the hostel HAHA. Other than that problem, this hostel seems great- the staff are really friendly and the whole place feels really cosy. (And they even lent me their adapter because I didn’t have the right one gosh this is customer service at its finest 👍🏼)

As it’s my first day in this city, I didn’t have really concrete plans as to where I wanted to visit (especially since there was already a whole itinerary planned out when Cherry and Nicole arrive 2 days later). I decided to just wander around by foot and take in the entirety of this city.

I started off by exploring the area around the hostel and I realised that Lisbon is really fond of having monuments and statues scattered all around the city.

I then proceeded in the general direction of the city centre and I was not disappointed.

I don’t know why but I am incredibly taken with the beauty of this city. There’s just a certain charm that makes it more gorgeous than the other cities that I have travelled to thus far. The high quality of street performers probably helped in adding to its charm.

As I chanced upon the local markets, I talked to the stall owners for their recommendations which greatly increased my knowledge of Portugese food (that was previously only limited to Portugese egg tarts HAHA). The people here are all so friendly and helpful- they speak about their products with such pride and passion that you can’t deny their love for their culture.

All the glorious baked goods ft. Pastel De Nata

Venturing further, I found myself infront of the Elevador de Santa Justa- one of the attractions that I read about while researching on Lisbon at Joyce’s place last night. It was certainly a sight to behold since it’s structure was a stark contrast to the buildings surrounding it. Originally, I had wanted to go into the elevator and get to the top floor, but after seeing how long the queue was, I changed my mind and decided to explore more of the city instead.

With such a rich culture, it should come as no surprise that Lisbon is filled with museums. Unfortunately, because it was Easter Sunday, most of them were closed and I only managed to visit one- MUDE (Museu Do Design E Da Moda). Essentially, they have exhibitions on the history of fashion and design. The sheer ingenuity from the designs I saw blew me away (I only wish I had a fraction of the designers’ creativity) but what I loved most were the dresses on display. There were original works by people like Dior and YSL, and I was simply awestruck by how goregous the dresses were. It reminded me so much of my childhood ambition to become a fashion designer (which will never happen because I have no artistic talent). The 19th century cotton thread patterns were also really intriguing and I felt like it was one of the most memorable museum trips I have made.

Moving on from there, I had wanted to visit Igreja de São Roque (Church of Sao Roque) so I embarked on a incredibly long and steep hike up. The inclination was so high, I felt like I was doing my cardio work out for the day HAHA. Sadly, it was also closed because of Easter Sunday, so I didn’t manage to see how it was like on the inside 😦

But as they say, when one door closes another one opens- this meant that I had more time to explore more of Lisbon. And I’m glad I did because the scenery that Lisbon had to offer is breathtaking. The best part was that the sun only set at about 8pm so I had plenty of time to bask in its beauty.

Jardim de S. Pedro de Alcântara- Jardim António Nobre

To end off the night, I got myself a cup of Sangria and went to watch a live band perform at a bar. It was a truly unique experience because the audience was singing and dancing along with the band. The energy was too infectious and I found myself doing the same even though I didn’t know any of their songs. It was the first time I felt firsthand how the audience can be fully engaged with the performance.

It’s been a tiring but fulfilling day- a great start to my long awaited Easter Break.

Tipping Point

Apologies for making my blog so depressing but the stress is too real. Holding myself together so that I can be the strong reliable one for everyone else has never been harder. I am trying so hard to keep up with everything and I really feel like I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. I want to hide under my duvet and run away from all my responsibilities but that’s just not possible. Reports and essays don’t do themselves; proposals, emails and budgets don’t appear out of thin air. But no one likes a whiny brat- I just have to suck it up and pray that it doesn’t break me in the process. What a way to end Spring Term.

We keep this love in a photograph

My stress levels are at an all time high, mainly because of school work, especially with the coursework due at the end of Spring Break. Compounded with all my non-academic commitments, it’s just a recipe for disaster. I had to take a break from all my work and I ended up browsing through all my old photos. I really miss the old days, when we were all young(er) and more carefree. We were free of responsibilities, free of expectations to live up to, free to do whatever you wished. Now, I can only look back wistfully and reminisce the times when I felt all my emotions so strongly. I cried, laughed, got angry without any inhibitions. Now, I’m just tired and I wonder where all these emotions have gone. Is this what growing up feels like? Sigh, I hate feeling like I’m just going through the motions everyday, it’s pointless to live without feeling alive.

	Zan on Dragon Caves
	Cherry on Baking Spree (part II)
	lindaxm on Baking spree
	nghuiping on Baking spree
	nghuiping on Baking spree