Swimming in the Atlantic While Thinking It Was The Mediterranean

So, here I am, back in Granada after a very long and exciting weekend in Portugal. I have a LOT of things to say about Portugal, about driving, about living in hostels, and about traveling to a country without any knowledge of its language or culture.

Let´s begin with Portuguese language and people, thats a good starting point. Well, the language can be imitated pretty easily, just say ¨¨ShlishShalishShloosh¨ Needless to say there is a lot of SH in Portuguese. One could describe it as is French and Russian had a baby, or if someone who speaks English tried speaking Polish. The language is pretty throaty but somehow is spoken almost like English in its harsher vowels. Needless to say, it is pretty funny. And also, pretty impossible to understand even with a base of Spanish. There were plenty of times where we just asked ¨Habla Español?¨and spoke in Spanish with people. I was impressed with myself when that happend.

Now, Portuguese people are very tan and very brunette. I would also venture to say very good looking. They are kind of what I expected Spanish people to look like. They are all incredibly tan with dark, romantic features. As always, my "porcelein" skin stood out in the crowd and being with people who were blond, you would get a lot of weird looks. It was pretty strange. Photos were taken of us foreigners just because we stuck out so much!

Alright, the food? Well, to be honest, because we were living cheaply so there was a lot of grocery shopping. WE went out to eat at two restaurants, one I mentioned earlier, the other a Chinese reatuarant which served American Style Chinese food but WORSE. Anyways, that I really can´t discuss in great detail. I can, however, tell you, that the bread is Portugal is better than the bread in Spain.

What else, what else? Well, I heard Nelly Furtado (who is of Portuguese decent) three times in POrtugal, which I deemed a lot considering she has no new music out. Also, I heard a surprisingly large amount of what America would deem Indie Rock. The Kooks were playing in the McDonalds, MGMT was blasting out the window of a house party, and I heard techno remixes of Santogold and José Gonzalez. I liked it.