The joy of airports

Photos of my last couple days in Lisbon. Belém Tour on the Western side of Lisbon and the ocean at Ericeira. Spent my last days relaxing and exploring more of the city. We also took a brief trip to Sintra where they have a nice town center as well as a castle and fortress. I went to dinner with Christoph and his friends from class. Great Italian meal with at least 5 courses. It was so much fun even though they were speaking in Portugese most of the time. By the end of the night I was much better at understanding the language. We got home at 3am. I have to say that although I rarely got 7 hours of sleep at night, I managed to make it through the next day without crashing. I think the massive amount of coffee that we drank in one day had a lot to do with it. Between Italy and Portugal, I will be addicted to caffine again.

The trip from Lisbon to Milano was eventful. As if it wasn't bad enough to be stuck in an airport traveling by yourself. First the plane was over an hour late leaving. And because you can't use your cell phone one the doors shut, I couldn't even tell Bene exactly when I would get there. A little bit of turbulance over the alps that caused excitement amongst the passengers. Felt like a roller coaster ride for about 15 minutes. So I arrived in Milano tired from traveling and late. Of course the first thing I did was text Bene, but I heard nothing back, so I waited around at Terminal 2. He took the train in from Perugia that day, so I thought he was just late coming in. Finally after almost 40 minutes of hearing nothing, I decided to call from my cell. He had been sitting at Terminal 1 since the time I landed. Oops. My cell phone never received the SMS that he sent telling me where he was. As a result, we got into Milano really late and found our hostel even later. Still, it was so great to see him and we stayed up a bit to hang out and talk. Wandered around the area around our hostel--nothing too exciting. As it turned out our little exploring helped us the next day. There was a metro strike--welcome to Italy! Not only did they only strike for one day, but they actually had a schedule: 8.45 til 3pm and 6pm until end of the night. Who strikes on a schedule?? Classic.