Day 18: Thursday – The trip goes to Lisbon.

At the morning (7.30am) we caught the first train leaving to Lisbon. It took 2.5 hours before we were at Lisboa (sta. Apolónia) where we caught the Metro towards Colobombo (West Europe’s biggest big). After visiting the place we head backwards to the city (Restauradores st.). It’s nothing like Denmark/Copenhagen at all. On every 10th corner you would find a homeless man/woman, and you could see that they really were poor, not like the homeless in Denmark with Nike shoes etc. (some homeless in Denmark are fakes). They basically lived at the streets with their blankets. It makes me wonder what happened to those peoples’ family. Did they just abandon their old mother? Well Danish people aren’t much better… It happens that they just leave their old ones at the rest home, which is by the way financed by the government and our taxes.
I don’t know why, but we saw a lot of African-American people at the street that day. They were talking in big groups at the city, and it seemed like they knew each other very well. So I suppose they do it often.
At Lisboa we also visited the ‘Elevador de Santa Justa’ which is an elevator made by Raul Mesnier du Ponsard who was trained by Gustave Eiffel (known for Tour de Paris of Paris).
While walking the streets of Lisboa we found an old church, a simple edition of the Notre Dame at Paris. It also had an exhibition part inside where you could what they have been digging op from the garden behind the church. It was quite cool to see that.
After that we headed towards the city again, and my mate asked a girl where to find any malls. She told us how to take the bus, but it was so ridicules close that a real Aveiro’nese would laugh the distance… At the way home we walked the way, and it took us like 15-30 minutes to walk the way.
After that we went towards ‘Oceanário’ which should be Europe’s biggest aquarium. Unlucky for us they just closed, but then we took a ride on the air carriage (I’m not sure what they are called, but it’s basically a cage tight to some wires in the air that you can use as transport).
At the evening some hours before the last train departure, we went to one more mall next to the Oriente Station. It was a quite nice looking mall, and it matched the train station very well.