Bom Dia!

ciao a tutti!

Bom Dia! (hello)

i am in love with portugal. i've only been here a few days but i know i will want to stay longer. the only problem is that i have been having difficulties finding rooms. i guess april is the month for schools from everywhere to take over all hostels. it kind of sucks because if (and thats usually a tough if) i can get in, the environment is quite different. so, the solution (as to not sleep in too many train or bus stations) was to book way in advance. i'm not a huge fan of this because it makes things a lot less flexible, but, oh well.

i don't know why, but portugal just feels really good to be in. every interaction is always fun and full of smiles--if we are able to understand each other or not, it doesn't matter). yesterday i tried to catch some sort of musical concert thing, i don't really know what it was, the paper was all in portugese; it turned out to be a few more miles away than i thought. i came much too late, but the place it was at was full of art and music. the people that really know me, know that i like the acoustic meaningful music, and portugal caught on to the cool acoustic music trend quite a long time ago. (for anyone that has seen The Life Aquatic, those david bowe songs sung in portugese--thats the kind of music that is all around. it even has its own name--"Fado").

the fun part of portugal is that most of the streets are nearly parallel. key word being "nearly." so, when you think you are just one street off of where you need to be, depending on time walked, you could actually be far, far from where you want to be. on saturday night, in porto, i tried to get to an irish pub to watch the local soccer game. i walked in the door just as they turned the tv off, due to my tardiness from a 4 kilometer detour. no worries though, about 10 minutes later some guy with a guitar started playing good portugese music.

i did a few days in porto and now im in lisbon (lisboa) for a few more days to do some day trips to different towns around here, and then i'll go to the southern coast for some beach towns. then its spain! i was thinking about going to morocco for a day or two, but i have decided against it. vatican city and san marino (both incredibly small countries) are one thing to go to just to say, "yeah, i went to those 'countries'." but i think my real reason of wanting to go to morocco is to say "yeah, i went to africa." thats a lame reason, so i'll wait and do a proper visit later.

i wish i could write more about how cool portugal is, but my internet time is up.

have a good day
your friend

chad