June 4, 2007

LISBON, Portugal -

Day 8 - Cascais and Sintra, Portugal, Photo Gallery

By: Janelle Harris

First off, today was a really good food day. I probably had the best food of the trip today. By far our breakfast this morning was the best out of the three hotels we have stayed at. There we such a huge variety of fresh fruit and meats. It was so good.

Before, I get to lunch, let me first tell about what we did today.

Today we went to two cities, Cascais and Sintra. Each was totally different. Sintra is in the mountains, while Cascais is on the coast. Through our travels of Portugal we have traveled across some of the longest and tallest bridges in Europe. All of them are really beautiful.

Sintra is the home of the Royal Palace of Sintra, a residence for many Portuguese kings, and is also known for its cork trees. The cork from the stump of the tree is scraped off and made into shoes, purses and post cards among other things. All the handcrafted items from cork is sold in the many stores in the city.

In Sintra, we saw the castle walls that were built by Muslims. Terri, Michelle, Andre and Monica went into the palace museum, but most of us just shopped around Sintra. While there, I grabbed a snack. It was the first time I had tried potato chips in Portugal. Since I can't read what it is on the bag I just went for it. The chips turned out to be spicy, but I liked them.

After Sintra, we spent two hours in Cascais, another beautiful city on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. While we were in Cascais, Jasmine and I decided to have lunch. I had chicken salad that had pineapple, corn and a homemade dressing in it and Jasmine had rice and fish. It probably was the best lunch I have had the whole trip.

Our sightseeing ended earlier today than yesterday to give us more time to prepare for the big rematch with the Portugal National Team on ESPN Portugal - just kidding. I think Terri was joking about that since the game time was pushed back to 9 p.m.

If tonight's game is anything like yesterday, it is going to be a battle. We were warned the refs were going to be more lenient on foul calling, and probably favor the home team more often than not. Well, last night's game was a perfect example of that. There was probably five straight Portugal possessions where the refs called foul on us. It seemed a bit sided that Portugal was able to score 10 points off free throws. If it was that bad last night, I can't imagine what it could turn out to be tonight. We just need to play our game and come out playing hard. It will be intense tonight and I know we are all hyped to play.

After the game last night, we went to Hard Rock Café - the only place that was open when our game was over at 11 p.m. It was a pretty interesting scene because there was a live band and it was LOUD! We couldn't even have a dinner conversation. There were a lot of bikers enjoying the band. It was so different than the one I go to at home in Detroit.

Overall, it has been a good trip and we have learned a lot and were able to immerse ourselves in the culture. Tonight we are going to end our trip on a high note and win this game! I can't believe we will be back in Milwaukee on Wednesday.

See you,

Nelly