Lisbon

It was quite an interesting time last weekend in Lisbon. It was a really cool city, I enjoyed all the sites, and I also ended up with a broken bone... but we'll get to that later.

I got in late on Friday so I didn't get started seeing the city until Saturday morning. I went first to Belem, a few minutes west of the city center by train. It was a quiet part of town but had some cool sights. One of them, the Belem Tower, was apparently where many of the ships set sail during the Age of Discovery (it was built too late for Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama, but was apparently around for Magellan). There was also the Jeronimos Monastery which had some really cool architecture going on.

Belem Tower

Jeronimos Monastery 

Lisbon's version of the Golden Gate, it was even the same shade of red

After that I headed back to the center of the city to wander around, specifically the Baixa and Chaido districts. I really enjoyed Lisbon because a lot of the city was really old and had a lot of character. There were San Francisco-style hills and old-school trolley cars, a lot of really old churches, monuments and other buildings, and a bunch of areas where the houses were just stacked on top of each other like pueblos. A lot of the narrow alleyways reminded me of Venice or Florence, which I guess makes sense since they're all kind of Mediterranean cities. After a bit of walking around I grabbed some food from this little whole in the wall place, which was pretty delicious.

Foz Palace and the Restauradores Monument

Rossio, with the National Theater in the background

I think this was an entrance to the central train station. Not sure, but it looked pretty cool.

The city center with Castelo de Sao Jorge on the hill

Arco da Rua Augusta and Praca do Comercio

Lisbon Cathedral, very Notre Dame-esque

typical narrow alleyway in the Alfalma district

On the way back to the hotel I stumbled upon a really weird-looking circular building. It looked like an arena except it was decorated in a kind of Middle Eastern / Arabic fashion. Coming closer I found that it actually was an arena and it was holding pro basketball games which I had seen on the tv in the restaurant for lunch. Tickets were only 5 euros for all day, so I decided to check it out... and it was quite an experience. First off, the arena was decorated in a really elaborate Arabic fashion, and I got the feeling it was probably used for bull fights at some point in time. Second, it wasn't even Portuguese basketball, it was Angolan (Federacao Angolana de Basquetebol). Apparently there are quite a few people from Angola in Lisbon because there were plenty of fans waving Angolan flags and everything, however there weren't enough fans to fill the arena, and they made everyone sit on the side opposite the tv cameras to make it look crowded (never seen that before...) Then, the cheerleaders basically just wore t-shirts and booty shorts, and during timeouts they danced in a circle with no routine or anything around half court - and one time one of the girls even grabbed a mic and started belting out a song, it was chaos. Lastly, despite being a huge basketball fan, I couldn't even figure out all rules. For every foul I saw except one they shot free throws technical style, with no one around the lane. Sometimes they got possession after the shots, sometimes they didn't - I couldn't figure it out. On top of all this it was actually an awesome game. The white team was winning big, but then the red team went into a 2-3 zone and the white team was pretty useless - they ended up tying and going into overtime with the red team pulling out a win in the end.

The arena

Doesn't quite look like Philips Arena or TD Banknorth...

and a half full crowd

After that I saw a couple more sights before resting a bit...

Elevador Santa Justa. Yes, it's basically just a freestanding elevator

trolleys

red roofs of the city, from the castle on the hill

At night I went to the Bairro Alto district of the city to grab some dinner and see what was happening. It's the place to be at night, as after about 10-11pm the streets become filled with people walking around, hopping from bar to bar and just drinking in the streets. The district is basically a bunch of narrow parallel streets that cover the side of a hill and are only big enough for pedestrian traffic. It reminded me of Bourbon Street in the way that it was just bar after bar and people were roaming the street with drinks, except this was a bunch of Bourbon Streets side by side. It was a really cool site, but unfortunately this was where my trip turned sour - while walking through the cobblestone streets I hit a spot with a hole and tripped and fell. I ended up landing awkwardly on my left hand in one of the crevices of the cobblestones and hurt it pretty badly. For a while I thought it was just a bad bruise, but after a couple days it was still really swollen and couldn't bear any weight, so I went to the hospital, they took some X-rays, and found out I had fractured a bone in my hand. So, now I get to where a sweet cast around, which makes work (and typing this thing) frustratingly slow. I made it back to Amsterdam fine, but obviously didn't do too much sightseeing on Sunday.

Tomorrow I go back to the doctor, and I'm really hoping I get a smaller cast or splint or something so it'll be less of a hassle to travel to Boston this coming weekend. Either way, it doesn't hurt too much, so that's good.

I don't have any European travel planned for a while, but I am going to Boston and some people are visiting in March, so I should have some good stuff to update on regardless.

Stockholm

Due to some cheap tickets and the suggestions of a few people who had been there, I decided to check out Stockholm this past weekend. I've never been anywhere in Scandinavia before, so I was excited to check it out. I was expecting bitter cold and wind and snow visiting there in February, but it was actually pretty mild with temps around freezing, not too much different than Amsterdam this time of year.

There were a couple things that really stood out about Stockholm. One was that it was freakin' expensive. Pretty much everything costs an outrageous amount of money, even a short one-way ride on the subway costs about $5. The second was the really varied architecture and coloring of the buildings.Some of them buildings reminded me of Vienna, some of Paris, some of Amsterdam, and some were pretty unique... really all over the map. But it was really cool to see all the variety.

The concerthouse - or Konserthuset - with market in front, otherwise known as the blue one

Jakobs Kyrka (Jacob's Church), otherwise known as the red one

Katarina Kyrka, otherwise known as the yellow one

Street in Gamla Stan, the old city center

Square in Gamla Stan - more crazy colored houses

no clue what this is, but it looked cool...

Cool view of Sodermalm, the southern part of the city, over the frozen river

There's also a ton of museums in Stockholm. I didn't have time to visit many, but I did check out the modern art museum (Moderna Museet) and the architecture museum (Arkitekturmuseet). They had a pretty good collection with some Picasso and Dali and obviously quite a few Swedish artists.

some funky sculptures outside the Moderna Museet

While wandering around the city I also stumbled upon a few military ceremonies/marches, just like in Athens. I was actually taking a picture of the entrance of the Stockholm Palace when a bunch of guards marched right in the middle of my picture, whoops...

Swedish guard at the entrance

Glad I wasn't actually in the way of one of these guys, their knives looked sharp

On Saturday night I met up with Lauren, another BCGer (from Dallas) who's doing the same program as me but in Stockholm, and we went with some other folks to dinner and then out on the town. I got to try my fill of herring and cloudberries (actually a real thing and not something from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory believe it or not) to complement the Swedish meatballs I had for lunch. After dinner we went to a bar where one of the Bulgarian girls knew the bartender, who was also Bulgarian. He played some old school DMB while we were there - I'm not sure if it was because he liked it or because he thought the Americans would like it, but whatever. After that we checked out the Stureplan area (apparently Stockholm's much downsized version of Times Square) where lots of clubs and bars are, before calling it a night.

mmmm, elk meatballs

Stureplan, the poor, homeless, very destitute man's Times Square (it was still very cool though) during the day

Besides meeting a BCGer from Dallas and some others who went to school in the States, I also met a couple Harvard Med School guys at breakfast in the hotel - small world...

All in all, another good weekend in the books. Glad I got to visit Scandinavia while I was over here and check out what Stockholm had to offer. Now it's time to nap so I can watch the Super Bowl (starting at 1am over here). It's gonna be a tired Monday this week...