today is the day to get all caught up on homework before school starts again after a week-long vacation. most of which was spent in Portugal. first lisboa and then lagos. both were really cool. but lagos was definitely my favorite. it is a much smaller city (you can walk the heart of downtown in about five minutes knowing where everything is) and the coastline is packed with so many little beaches that are made semi-private from the geography. britt and i decided to stay for an extra day cause the weather was so nice and the city was so relaxing.
It was interesting though cause when looking at portuguese written it seems like i can get the gist of it with how similar to spanish it seems, but the way they speak it it is a different story and the different pronunciations made it impossible to understand. But luckily just about everything was usually put in about five different languages. (especially the tourist stuff but even all menus and everything).
Close to Lisboa we also visited the little town of Sintra. it was an hour train ride. among other ancient structures, this was an incredible palace perched on the top of a rocky hill. we hiked our way up and it ended up being about 4 miles longer than we had expected but we made it in time to visit the Pena National Palace while there was still sun.