On Thursday morning at 5am my two flat mates – Kristen and Nikki – and myself rolled out of bed and into a taxi to Heathrow airport. After a little over two hours on the plane we landed in a different world. We were based in the main city of Lisbon and had an amazing apartment complete with walk in wardrobe and ensuite! Oh lala! We had 5 days there and we were all talking about coming back before we left. This trip has really opened our eyes to seeking out the smaller countries or towns around Europe as they have so much character and culture and barely any tourists – we stood out like sore thumbs but hey what can you do!
We found Lisbon incredibly reasonably priced – we were so used to the expensive big cities in Europe that we were shocked at the prices – bottles of good wines for 2 euro!! (I bet Mum will be booking flights over before she finishes reading this hehehe!!) So between us we spent 9 euro each which got us breakfast for the next four days, dinner for that night, and a few bottles of wine! Day trips on the train are about 4-5 euro return and thats an hour journey there and back – you would pay £40 minimum to go an hour or so out of London without booking months in advance.
So we would have breakfast at the apartment and either lunch or dinner out – you can get lunch and a jug of Pimms or a few cocktails each for 20 euro easy, if not less and the meals are so huge that you don’t need dinner (or you can just get some nibbles somewhere). I budgeted 50 euro a day which is pretty standard but went over a little bit… more like 60 euro a day but that’s mainly because we went for a beautiful gourmet dinner that had a live Portuguese show of dancing and singing so it just depends what you want to do there. Plus you have to think about taxi’s to and from the airport in London and at your destination – it all adds up. For example I spent 25 euro each day over the first couple of days but then a big lunch and night out the next day cost 80 euro so it balances out most of the time!
The Portuguese are so friendly and everyone can speak English – its always helpful to learn a few words like please and thank you – they are so happy and appreciative when you try their language. Also I highly recommend getting a small travel book like in the picture above – I find that the big Europe books are quite over whelming with lots of small txt and just too much information. These books have great recommendations of the best places to go for day trips, must see landmarks, a bit of the language, bit of history etc so we found this book really helpful!
We arrived back at midnight and got to bed round 1am to be up at 6am and get ready to go to work – fun times! Apparently the weather was just awful all weekend in London, we literally took one step off the plane and got wasted with wind and rain!!! What a shock… we actually stood there squealing! All in all we had such a fantastic time, a long weekend filled with exploring, relaxing, drinking and good company!
No comments:
Post a Comment