Lisbon, Porto, and Copenhagen

After spending a few days in London, Mark, Britt and I flew to Lisbon, Portugal for the next couple of days. Sadly, this would be the end of my travels with them, but we made the most of it. We also had a few more friends meet up with us there. Mark’s cousin, Grace and his childhood friend Wes, who I’ve gotten to know over the years on his visits to New Orleans and random weekends spent in Boston.

Lisbon is a beautiful little city, with very colorful buildings and sidewalks that are like giant black and white mosaics. We spent a couple days just wandering around the city, checking out the sights. We wandered around the Alfama district, which was very close to our Airbnb, went to Praça de Comercio, Radio Square, the Belem Tower, and some other areas I can’t fully recall anymore. We were back in warm weather in Portugal and quickly learned that Lisbon is built on a group of 7 hills, so there was lots of climbing and descending and ultimately, sweating and breaks for a beer and a snack.

The food in Lisbon was excellent. We went to this restaurant called the Prado on our first night there. Pretty sure they have a Michelin star, and for good reason, it was probably the best meal I’d had on my trip thus far. And in case you haven’t noticed, I’ve been eating quite well throughout haha. It was also pretty reasonably priced, so we ended up ordering basically everything on the menu, which was amazing. My favorite dish looked like a pasta, but when you took a bit you realized the noodles were made out of squid 💯. We also had a bunch more delicious seafood, octopus rice is a specialty there that I indulged in more than once. Lisbon is also famous for these little cream tarts that you can find at every bakery around the city, pasteis de nata.

After Lisbon, I was back to being solo again to wrap up the last couple days of my Eurotrip. My next stop was a few days in Porto, Portugal. A beautiful coastal city located a couple hours north of Lisbon.

I spent my time in Porto doing much of the same as Lisbon, wandering around the city and eating my face off. One of the things Porto is famous for is the francesinha sandwich. This sandwich contains ham, two types of sausage, steak and bologna, and cheese between 2 thick pieces of bread with a fried egg on top and beer gravy poured over the top of it along with french fries intended for dipping in the excess gravy. It was like breakfast, a sandwich for lunch and a poutine dinner all wrapped into one. Staying true to the analogy, I ate one on my first day there and it was my only meal for the day. And damn, was it worth it.

The next couple days in Porto were pretty low key and we’re spent checking out some sights around the city and also doing some reflecting on my amazing 3 month Eurotrip that was coming to a close in just a few short days. I spent some time hanging out at the Cais da Ribeira, which is the area along the riverfront full of little shops and restaurants with a beautiful view of the Douro river and Luis I bridge. I climbed up to the cathedral, checked out some nice plazas and parks around the city and drank some port, as one does in Porto. Have to say, I still didn’t have any luck finding one that I liked. It’s just too damn sweet, not my thing I guess.

You want to know something I have found very interesting on this trip? Every single time I leave a city, I get really sad, even though there is another amazing city coming up next. I think everyone is familiar with the end of vacation blues, when you’ve reached the last day of your vacation and it’s time to go back to reality after an amazing trip. I always thought that sadness was due to the fact that it was time to indeed go back to reality and work (womp womp). But now I’m not so sure, as I still experience it roughly every week on this trip, and I’m sure as hell not going back to reality (yet…haha). I’ve realized that it has more to do with the amazing connection you make with a place, and the friendships and memories you from there. Now don’t get me wrong, the sadness quickly wanes as I start to familiarize myself with my next destination and start this process all over again. But it’s definitely there, every single time, even if just for a few hours. What an emotional roller coaster 😂. Well it definitely hit a bit harder as I was closing out the Europe chapter of this adventure despite my excitement to get back to the states for a few weeks for my little brother’s wedding and to see lots of family and friends. Champagne problems, I know, I know 😃.

After a few days in Porto, I had to make my way up to Copenhagen to catch a flight back to the US for my little brother’s bachelor party and wedding. If you think it’s weird I went from Portugal to Copenhagen to catch a flight to America, I’d have to agree with you. You see, I booked that flight a few months before, thinking Copenhagen/Scandanavia would be a cool place to check out but not really thinking about the weather in October or my other trips with friends. My parents had offered to pay for my flight home as my birthday present and they aren’t really onboard with my whole last minute travel methodology. So, I had to plan ahead and failed miserably, as it’s not really one of my strengths.

En route to Copenhagen my connecting flight in Amsterdam got cancelled and I got rebooked on a flight the next morning. Which gave me another 12 hours in Amsterdam which I wasn’t really upset about. Found a nice little hotel near the train station and spent the afternoon/evening wandering around the city before an early morning departure to Copenhagen. Unfortunately this left me with really only 1 day to explore Copenhagen. I wish I would have had more time, because I really enjoyed the one day I was able to spend there and packed in as much as possible. I got to my hotel around 8 am dropped off my luggage and didn’t get back to properly check in until about 10 pm that night.

In Copenhagen, I went to Nyhavn, which is the waterfront area surrounding a canal with colorful houses that you always see in pictures of Copenhagen. Fun fact, it’s also where Hans Christian Andersen lived for many years, in a couple of different houses along the cabal. I also went to Rosenborg castle and the beautiful gardens surrounding it, the botanical garden, the Church of our Savior, which is famous for a spiral stairway that wraps around the exterior of the steeple. I also sampled a bunch of Danish cuisine, which was great. I found this great gourmet food hall called Torvehallerne with lots of different individual food stalls. One thing Denmark is famous for is the Smørrebrød (pronounced “smurr-brull”, or something like that). Which is an open-faced sandwich on rye bread with all sorts of different fillings on top. I had one topped with octopus and another with a fish cake on top.

I also checked out Christiania while I was there, which is an anarchist village that was established back in the 70s inside of an old military fort. Very interesting place, as you walk in you are greeted by a sign saying “you are now leaving the EU.” There was really cool street art all over the place and there is a street with all these makeshift booths selling weed and hash to passersby out in the open. There are 3 rules in there- no photography, no hard drugs, and no running, as apparently it is frequently raided by the police and running incites panic. It’s pretty centrally located in the city, so I found it very interesting that this little community is at least tolerated by local authorities. If you’ve seen the HBO show, The Wire, it was like a real life version of Hamsterdam.

After a long day of walking the streets and braving some much colder weather than I was accustomed to, I headed back to my hotel for an early morning departure back to America for a few weeks of traveling, Americana style.