April 26, 2018 

I stayed up until past midnight local time to trying to work my blog! Apparently I’ve reached maximum capacity of my “media”. I continued to get “unable to download” messages about the pictures, yet it took this (chemically enhanced) blonde a while to figure the official reason out. 

So, I slept in, had a late breakfast in the Airbnb, and finally sent out to the train station around 9:45 to figure out why my ticket did not work yesterday when I went to Sintra. Two days ago at 9:10 when I bought the ticket, it was a very short line. This morning at 10:10, there were hundreds of people in the train station! Luckily there were two lines – one for people using the machines, and the other for people going up to the actual windows. And surprisingly, it moved quite fast.

I happened to get the same guy who sold me the ticket two days ago – not that I would expect him to remember me with the many people who come through the line. Unfortunately, what happened is that I apparently bought a 24 hour ticket. When I tried to use it in hour 26, it had expired. €18 down the drain…. Pretty bummed about that, because I asked a lot of questions of the guy when I was at the booth, and somehow that 24 hour time frame did not come up.

When I arrived at the airport a few days ago, I plugged my Metro Card with some euros, so I was able to use that to embark to Sintra.

So, after waiting in the line for twenty minutes to find out that I was just out of the money, I ambled about and basically cast my net just further outside the parameters of the route that I have already been doing the last couple of days. The weather was awesome and my confidence high!!

I got back down to the waterfront, which I learned is the Rio Tejo, or Tagus River – as opposed to the ocean! I think a cruise ship must’ve just come in come because there were hundreds of people!

I meandered around through the old district of Alfama and I was so proud of myself that innately I navigated myself around the further perimeter of my previous wanderings and ended up back at my Airbnb!

I took a phone charge and potty break. Then I set out to cast my net further to the north. I had really wanted to find one particular restaurant, as well as the fado houses-similar to flamenco but without the dancing. Unfortunately somehow I missed that. But I did end up on the Avenida da Liberdade which I had wanted to get to, and thoroughly enjoyed myself walking along the way. I will share the history about the statue that is there in another post.

I decided to make it an early night, as I had a flight from the airport to Seville, Spain for which I needed to check in by 6:20. Unfortunately, the Metro does not start running until 6:30, so I had to arrange a private transport even though I still had money on my subway card… these are the details that make me nervous! But I am super excited to revisit Seville, where I discovered and Fell In Love with Flamenco!

The last three days, according to the heart app on my phone, I have walked 10.7, 7.8 and 10.6 miles, respectively!! All in my Keen flip-flops!