My trip to Lisbon

A couple of weeks ago I visited Lisbon in Portugal on a study tour with my class. We were living in a nice hotel in the centrum of the beautiful city. Lisbon is a very colorful place and there is tags, graffiti and street-art everywhere – on walls, on the street and on entire buildings which is covered with the colorful, beautiful, funny, and at times meaningful art, performed by professional and very talented artists. There were small sculptures and paintings in every corner and edge of the city and if you looked very closely, you could recognize the different artists work through the city in shape of small tags, drawings or other characteristic marks.

There was a certain calm atmosphere in Lisbon. It was like all the local inhabitants had all the time in the world and had no need for hurrying. Even though the row of people standing in line in the supermarket got bigger and bigger, the salesmen took as long time as they needed without stressing even slightly. It could be a bit stressful when you are from Denmark and used to a rush and a hurry all the time. But it wasn’t just at the supermarket. It was every were in the city that there were this calm and relaxed atmosphere – it was really a nice place to visit. The hotel we were staying at were placed on the middle of a very steep hill, and there was a beautiful view from our hotel room. – The only drawback was that we had to carry our heavy bags up a lot of stairs and down the many, many stairs when we were going home.

It was a really great trip, and we were presented for Lisbon and the history behind the fantastic city with the numerous colors, mighty churches and the calm atmosphere. We were on guided tours where we learned about the slavery that was in Lisbon in former times, about the street-art, and how it developed from tags and graffiti, and about the Jeronimos convent (Mosteiro dos Jeronimos). We did also visit a castle. And to get into the castle you had to walk on a bridge – and when the big waves hit the bridge, the water splashed up on the people on waiting to get in. And if you were unlucky the waves hit so hard into the bridge that the water splashed up really high, so you ended up getting all soaked. That unfortunately happened to me – but luckily for me, the weather was warm that day, and that helped on the whole situation.

The weather in Lisbon was very changeable, and switched every fifth minute. It was impossible to figure out, what clothes to wear in the morning. – But in the last two days the weather was just fine. It was warmer than the former days and the sun was shining.

I had an amazing trip – and it is my intuition that it was a feeling that the whole class shared. And Lisbon is an incredible city, so if you get the chance – Go visit it and notice all the small details in the corners.