One day after school a couple weeks ago, I was rambling about my students to Levi again, bubbling with excitement over something that had finally clicked in the little brains of my first-years. Two of the girls had that day been giggling to me about boys they liked and another had said, in perfect English, “We love you Savi.”
When I finally stop my gushing, Levi says, “Sav, I’ve never seen you this happy. Do you want to stay here?”
It just felt right, and by the end of the week we had both extended our job commitments an extra year. We’ll be here until June 2012. Both of us love this little place, and our leaving felt rushed and premature. There’s so much more of Spain I want to see, there’s more of the language I want to master, we have great jobs and friends and a nice apartment. We weren’t ready to leave.
(NOTE: This gives all of you one whole extra year to come visit me. DO IT.)
So with the money no longer set aside for Turkey, we bought bus tickets to Lisbon. We couchsurfed with a guy who lives in a trendy downtown district and spent four days sightseeing, drinking port, and eating fish and pastries. Lisbon is, with very few close rivals, the most beautiful city I’ve ever seen. Downtown sits just uphill from the waterfront and the city radiates behind it across a series of steep hills. Trolleys haul tourists and commuters up and down these brutal inclines through narrow, ancient stone streets. At the pinnacles of the highest hills the view is stunning; the dozens of levels at which the place is built create layer upon layer of terra cotta rooftops, white stucco, and entire buildings tiled in brilliant greens, blues, pinks, and yellows, set against the waters of the Rio Tejo and the Atlantic beyond. From the lowest points, the dizzying view up through these layers culminates at the Castelo de São Jorge, a Moorish castle built on the highest of the hills.
On our second day, we took a forty-minute train ride to Sintra, a ritzy town-turned-tourist-trap on the Atlantic coast. Moorish rulers, British aristocrats, and Portuguese royalty have all occupied this far-flung suburb and made some amazing and bizarre marks on it. The Moors left one of the biggest castles I’ve ever seen, a ninth-century crumbling masterpiece of turrets and ramparts and an enormous curtain wall. 
Atop a neighboring hill is the Palacio da Pena, the Disney princess palace built by a bored king in the mid-nineteenth century. Because he and his wife couldn’t agree on the style, the place is a confused jumble of the round and the square, the Arabic and the Romantic and the Iberian, with splashes of all the colors of the rainbow. It only served as the royal family’s summer home for forty years before revolution drove the monarchs out of Portugal. Now it’s crawling with tourists, all eager to see this strange and gorgeous monument to the powers of excessive cash.By Day Three we were
exhausted from all the hills and decided to give our legs a bit of a rest, taking the metro to two of the outlying neighborhoods of Lisbon. To the northeast sits the site of the 1998 World’s Fair. It’s all glass buildings and metal modern art sculptures and skyrides overlooking the river and the gardens. After walking along the pier for a while and posing for some pictures with some chatty Brazilians, we took a bus to the far opposite side of waterfront Lisbon, Belém. 
We went to a modern art museum and an old monestery before seeking out our real objective, Pastéis de Belém. It’s a famous café and bakery that’s been open since the 1830s and is known for having the best pastries in Portugal. Pastéis is the Portuguese for ‘cakes,’ although I’d be more apt to describe these things as pies, or as HOLYSHITDELICIOUS. They’re crunchy little pastry baskets filled with a fluffy custard that’s been torched on the top like créme brulee. In short, they warrant their reputation, as well as the mile-long line we braved to get to them.
Our last day in Lisboa was Fat Tuesday, Carnaval. We went to the central square and watched the parade, getting ourselves good and doused in confetti and streamers before the rain came, sending us back to the warmth of our host’s apartment with a cheap bottle of port.It was a perfect vacation, but I was excited to be back in Spain. I love my life here. I feel so lucky to have landed in such happy cirumstances in such a wonderful place. I’m in no hurry to leave.
