Last Impressions of Portugal

Unfortunately we only had 3 days in Lisbon, and they went by so fast!! Our last day in Lisbon was July 15, and we had a train ticket for Madrid leaving that evening.
Before talking about our very last day in Lisbon, I think I should tell you a bit about our experience with some authentic Portuguese chorizo sausage.
On the evening of July 14^th, our 2^nd last day in Lisbon, on our way back to the hostel we decided to stop and buy some food at a small shop. A Portuguese man, who only spoke a few words of English and some of French, convinced us to buy 1 kg worth of chorizo by exclaiming “C’est bon! C’est bon! It’s good! 3 Euros!”. I suppose we were pretty easily convinced, mainly because we were so hungry!
Chorizo is a sausage, made in many parts of the world, and can be either cooked or uncooked. In Portugal (and Spain) it is a fermented cured smoked sausage made from pork, fat, and lots of salt (and a few other ingredients that I’m not too sure of), and it is eaten without cooking. This makes it very heavy and hard to digest if you aren’t used to it.
Anyway, we got back to the hostel with our Portuguese chorizo and ate a few full sausages each. Needless to say, it was the worst decision we’d made all trip! I spent the rest of the night, and the following day feeling sick to my stomach and was in some pretty unpleasant pain. Chad on the other hand, with his stomach of steel, felt amazing after consuming the massive quantities of chorizo.
Since I vowed never to eat it again, we decided to give the hostel owners the rest of our chorizo. We explained to them how I got so sick from eating it, and they asked us how much we had. We causally told them we had a few sausages each and their mouths dropped in shock. After having a good laugh they explained to us that you are only supposed to have a few very thin slices of chorizo at a time since it is so heavy, and consuming a whole sausage (or multiple sausages) is not normal and definitely not recommended!!
They convinced us to keep the chorizo, and explained a technique of “cooking” it to make it less heavy. It can be cooked using a shallow pan by covering the bottom with rubbing alcohol and cotton balls. You put a grill over the pan and put the chorizo on top. Then light the cotton balls on fire, and they will burn very slowly, cooking the chorizo. Apparently this technique lets the chorizo keep the flavor, but reduces the fat content, therefore making it easier on the stomach. We have yet to try this technique.
Changing the topic back to Lisbon, we spent our last day in Lisbon at the Lisbon Oceanarium. It is the 2^nd largest in the world and opened in 1998. It has 8,000 animals and plants and has a huge central tank with enough water to fill 4 Olympic sized swimming pools. Within the central tank we saw a pretty cool looking fish called the Ocean Sunfish.

Here are a few other photos from the oceanarium:





We learned that some sharks lay eggs! Here is a photo of shark eggs:

After the oceanarium we did a little bit of shopping and walking around the town before heading over to the train station for our overnight train to Madrid.
We both bought Euro-rail train passes to give us access to all the train routes across Europe. But even with a train pass, you still need to reserve your train tickets and pay a reservation fee. The reservation fees differ in price depending on the type of seat you want on the train. Since it was a 10 hour overnight train we thought we would go all out and reserve a private room with beds, one of the more expensive options, rather than just a seat on the train.
Our room was tiny, and there was only enough space for one of us to stand at any given time!

We were pretty happy with the service. The room came with free bottled water, and each one of us got a (purple) cosmetic bag with a toothbrush, toothpaste, hairbrush, razor, soap, Kleenex, sewing kit and a few other goodies. On top of the freebies in the room, a very nice breakfast (eggs, bacon, pastries, orange juice and coffee) was also included with our train room.

All in all a very successful trip from Lisbon into Madrid, Spain, and well worth the extra cost of the privacy, security and comfort of a private room.