Took the Midnight Train going.....What a Journey

Ok guys I´ve got plenty to blog but only 20 mins limit.
1st excuse spelling mistakes and punctuation as the keyboard is broken and excuse no videos uploaded yet as there´s no way to access the SD reader here!

BUT the important things:

Having ´worked my magic´in the comon room the evening brough us an American and 4 Romanians to´goplay with´ in Barrio Alto in the bar district of Lisbon. The Romanians, Jonny, his girlfriend,Ellie and Millie were all fluent in a number of languages so getting around wasn´t a problem.Except the journey to the bar disrict brought with it a vertical hike up the steepest tramline in Lisbon to the very top of a hill. It also brought the same joureny on the way back down and I surprised there are not more drink induced deaths with steeps like that to navigate after a few too many gjiners (local liquor made with ginger,sered with a cherry in a chocolate shot glass and as delicious as it sounds).
So,what can I tell you that is interesting? How about the bar district was about as dead as any UK town on a Sunday night -it is clear that Sunday is the day of rest foralmost ALL hungover Europeans.The district, a set of tiny, narrow interlaced streets were crammed with bars on either side but all wereemptyand boarded up. BUT in true party goer style,at 12.40am (typical starting timefor a night out for the locals) we finally stumbled across a few streets that bucked the trend and two bars in particular.The more lively of the two was the size of a shoebox (In Portugal,due to the weather, peoplebuy drinks at the bar and head to the street to drink them - why the venue was so small) but filled with latinospirit as a vocalist, a hand drum,andan electro-acoustic guitarist filled the night with music from retro UK classics and Portugese favourites - even an acapelo ´Mercedes Benz´song cameto the fore! The barmen instantly took a shine to our group and at 2 am after limbering down with the locals we found ourselves in alockin as they closeddown ad then onto a club where they knew the owners. Phil´s chavvy addidas styleleggings denied him entry, but he was allowed to be smuggled in because of the barman ´Rasta Mini- Crabman´s´(My Name is Earl reference here) big smilesand friendliness with the doormen. Rasta Crabman was awesome-singing La Bumba as we strutted down the street, passing round free shots and smiling andlaughingall the time! He was also rather short at about 4ft 1-aphenomenonnotoo rare in Lisbon!
The club we eneded up in played VERY hard electronic tunes with extra beat and was the polar oppositeof the rythmic latino style music ofearlier. Filled with smoke (the ban does not exist in Portugal) it was an experience and the type of characters in the club were something towitness - lookalikes for both Luigi fromMario Bros and the old withered lady fromEmmerdalewere both breaking it down like they were in a Rave!
At 4amwe realised we had done 24 hours awake in Lisbon, a goodmoment.Reutrn to the club tookus till5am, an exchange of numbers with the crazy Romanian cutie Millie, an offerofsomewhereto stay in Romania, and with plenty to see the day after, sleep was kept to only3 1/2 hours...

Yesterday was a blur of typically touristy sitesand although Icouldmention them all you woudn´t appreciate the listof names. The cultureofaplace is defined by its people more than its attractions in my eyes. Nevertheless we ended in Belem to see the Tour of the same name and found ourselves having lunch in the nearby Park. Spying an orange tree heavy with fruit brought me the most pleasure of the site-seeing as I tried to pick the fruit off the branches.Told by a local the tree wasn´t weight bearing I tried to throw a stone to knock the oranges but to no avail (but some great camerafootage). Eventually, a leg up the tree lead to our prize bt a stern telling off fromtwoolderPortugese ladies (what I can onlyassume was such).
The camea died at this point having not been charged for two days so missed the wonderfultraveller incident of getting lost...Both Phil and I were (a) too tired to stay awake from theprevious night and (b) had noidea what wewerelookingforso when we tried to see the Oceanarium that evening,we over-shot intoa totally new district of Lisbon! Onlythe sympathy /scolding of the worl´s most stern Portugese helper brought us back on track and towards the Oceanarium. Phil has taken about a thousand photos (I thought he was trying to enter Photographer of the Year) and I shall be stealing thm to demonstrate the size of the tank we saw. The size of 4 olympic swimming pools should give you some idea.

Eventually, we said goodbye to Lisbon via the night-train. Some video footage will follow of this, but its fair to say this was a sardine can for humans aptly named a ´train hotel´. Although cramped, it had all ´modcons´including a sink and some coat hangars to go with our brown mlitary style bunkbeds.. To be honest though, none of this mattered as it has brought us to Madrid where e have already gone on a tapas tour and are going out with the guide, especially, later tonight :-).
Viva Sangria, more to follow soon x.


OK - The evening