Lisbon

I've promised to tell you all about our city trip to Lisbon. It was wonderful, and we were very lucky that it was much warmer than usual. On Sunday, we had almost 24 degrees! I am sure you can imagine how we enjoyed this. We arrived early in the morning on Saturday and the plan was to see Melissa first. The moment we landed, I received her sms to tell us she could not make it because her 1-year-old son was ill and she had to go to the doctor. So, we went straight to our hotel to check in and leave our stuff there. 

We bought tickets for the hop on/off bus and off we went. You really get a good impression of the city travelling in an open bus. We stopped at Belem to see the important tower and, of course to eat Belm's most famous pastry.

 I don’t know exactly how to describe them, They're’s filled with a kind of yellow pudding and with a crispy crust what you should sprinkle with cinnamon and powdered sugar. It was indeed very tasty!  Almost all tourists are going there to taste them and when we went there, we had to wait in a queue for almost ten minutes, so busy it was. (I will try to find the recipe to try to make them myself.) We went further with our tour and around 19.30 hours we found a nice terrace and stopped for a small meal. We were both tired of the long day and went back to the hotel by metro. After a shower, we fell asleep. 

The next morning we woke up early and started with a nice breakfast. Our city tour went further along very beautiful buildings and nice white houses with the red roofs. We saw the castle and tram 28, the one you may not miss when you are in Lisbon. To be honest, we saw so much in such a short time that I almost can’t remember everything. The last day, we went to Sintra. This is a very beautiful small place near Lisbon. It’s on the Unesco world heritage list. There are very old castles, palaces and particularly beautiful parks. Too many to see them all closely. 

Time for an update

What has happened in the last few weeks? First, I have started with an extra speaking course to get my level one grade higher. I really enjoyed this class and I was very sorry to miss two lessons due to illness. Or a better description because of suffering from afterpains after removing my last wisdom tooth. Although I have missed lessons, it was very helpful and in the end, my speaking has improved. However, I am not convinced it is a C1 level yet. For that, I need to improve my vocabulary much more. We're done now, and we all agreed, 8 weeks, is too short and we all would like to extend the course. As for the wisdom tooth I can only tell you that the removing part itself was difficult but luckily not painful due to the sedation. After 45 minutes, the tooth was gone and I had a numb jaw. That numbness can stay for a long time; I read on the internet there are people who still have problems after more than a year. I refuse to feel this numbness longer than necessary and I have made an appointment with an acupuncturist to see if he can speed up the healing process. This morning I had my second session and it is feeling much better already. Unfortunately, it has not gone yet!