I'm obsessed with Portugal

After we went to London, Carrie came back with me to Cáceres for the one day of class I had in between weekends. She stayed with my host family, and it was really cool to be able to show someone where I live. It's really hard to describe life here because everything is so slightly (or in some cases, drastically) different. I give Carrie major props though because she doesn't speak a word of Spanish and the extent of my host family's English is "niiiice to meeet yoo" and "goood mornink".

To give Carrie and opportunity to travel somewhere she wouldn't have gone (other than Spain) we decided to take a weekend trip to Lisbon. It was really great to get another chance to visit when it wasn't raining the whole time. We went back to Sintra as well, which was four times as beautiful with the nice weather. Carrie couldn't get over the fact that we could be only wearing sweater's in December. In Sintra we climbed up to the Moorish Castle, which although it was a steep climb, rewarded amazing views and a super sweet castle in the middle of the forest to explore.

Climbing...

On top of the world

Elizabeth exploring the Castle

We also hiked up to the Pena Palace which is one of the most beautiful buildings ever (so many tiles!!). This too was on top of a hill overlooking the amazing landscape. I didn't want to leave.

Back in Lisbon after an adventure with me not getting on the train with Carrie and Elizabeth in time and having to wait for the next one, we decided to show Carrie the Santa Justa elevator (if you don't remember from my other post, this was the 3 story elevator up to a fenced in view that then exited into a plaza on the hill behind it). This time we went in through the back entrance, avoiding the 3 euro fee to ride the elevator up 30 seconds. We also discovered that we had missed the whole second level of the tower (it might have been closed due to the rain). However, I quickly discovered that the spiral staircase up to the upper levels was something straight out of one of my worst nightmares. It as a very narrow and very steep metal staircase suspended very high up with nothing on either sides. Needless to say, the view from the top was cool, but I'm not sure it was worth it.

Much too soon, it was time to head back to Cáceres and back to classes and [semi] real life. Well, for a week anyway.