Hang Ten

So we get off the ship tomorrow for Morocco and I was just like "Oh shit I haven't blogged yet about Portugal or Spain" So here's Portugal for ya.

I'll start with the day before we actually got to Portugal just so I can brag about how great my life currently is. Sorry. I got out of my Marketing class at 2 in the afternoon and was done for the day and it looked nice out so I decided to throw on a bathing suit and a tank  top and go up to the top deck where there's our little baby pool and a ton of lounge chairs. It was packed with everyone who was done with or in between classes. Everyone was laying around in bathing suits blasting music. It was so nice to lay in the sun and finally get a little tan, I'm still pretty pale though but we're working on it. It's going to stay fairly nice weather for the rest of my trip so I'm going to try to show up to class but can't make any promises. Am I studying abroad or on a vacation? I don't know anymore.
 
I guess technically Portugal is the homeland, I think I'm like 12.5% Portuguese although I really have no idea what I am I can never get a straight answer out of my parents (is there something you guys need to tell me??) The place we ported was absolutely beautiful, we could see all of the beautiful buildings, it looked just like I pictured it to look like. It was nice to have a different view than what we'd seen throughout the other ports in Europe which had all looked more or less the same. 

The day we got there I had signed up for a surf and yoga lesson. As you all know very well, I'm extremely dainty and coordinated so this was the best program for me to do for sure. The weather was so nice and warm, according to some of the locals it was actually a lot warmer than usual. 

The beach was so nice, definitely a lot nicer than what we have on the Cape, The sand was so soft and the water was pretty warm too, not tropical but definitely warmer than I'm used to. There were a bunch of students that did the trip so we split up into two groups, one doing yoga first and one doing surf, I did surfing. We put our wet suits on and they gave us our boards and we did some warm ups and practiced the technique to get up on the board. The waves weren't extremely large thankfully otherwise I probably would have severely injured myself. It was really hard to stand up on the board, most of the times I would get halfway up, then fall. I managed to fully stand up on the last wave. I didn't really take into account my bad shoulder so it was really difficult to lift myself up to stand. 

After the lesson I was exhausted and it was really starting to get hot out so I'm definitely glad that I surfed first. I figured it would be really nice to relax and do yoga but that wasn't exactly the case. Sand is really hard to balance on in the first place. Then take away one of my legs or make me do weird positions and I was done for. So I'm definitely not a yoga master like I had expected, weird because I can almost touch my toes. It was still fun though. 

Once we finished our lesson we had a couple hours on the beach to lay around or do whatever. I just layed out for the rest of the time since I had only been to the beach one time in the summer and I was going through withdrawals. 

We headed back to the ship afterwards and we decided to just eat dinner on the ship. Our friends booked a hostel and had two extra rooms for that night so we decided to stay there since it was right in the center of Lisbon and only 13 euros a night. It ended up being the nicest hostel we've stayed at by far. There was a girl around our age that worked there and she showed us everywhere to go and eat in the city and they were so nice and helpful, so much different than all the other places we've stayed. Plus it was super clean. If that wasn't enough they had bottomless sangria for 5 euros...amazing. 

In Portugal people don't go out to nightclubs until like 1 or 2 at night which is slightly outrageous. We met up with some of our friends at a bar in the center at around 12:30 and hung around there for a while. Then we went to a nightclub that was actually right next to the ship which was convenient. It was really cool, it was right on a beach and there were blacklights and they painted everyone's faces with neon paint. We stayed there pretty late until one of my friends suddenly came down with a stomach bug or something because she was throwing up, Don't worry I didn't catch whatever she had and we made it home alive.. 

We had a flight in the morning to Madrid so by the time we got back to the hostel it was really late and we went right to sleep.