Journeying through life with Jen and Tina: Picture Blog

As we told you in our last post, we had a couple of friends from Slovakia visiting recently. While they were here, we did a lot of "touristy" stuff in and around Lisbon. It was great for Jen and me since we still had not seen much of the city. We are now much more familiar with the public transportation and much more familiar with the layout of the city. As usual, I took a ton of pictures! Here are a few :-)

Stanley getting ready for his first trip to the center of Lisbon. For those of you who don't know the story, there is a children's book called 'Flat Stanley' in which a boy named Stanley is flattened by a bulletin board. He then goes on many adventures (flying like a kite, getting mailed to California, etc.). Anyways, someone I know teaches elementary school and mailed this 'Flat Stanley' to me so that his adventures can continue. You're supposed to take pictures and then send it back to the class so they can see everything that Stanley did on his "trip." :-)

Stanley's first bus ride. The bus driver was nice enough to let us take a picture :-)

Marques de Pombal

Katka, me, and Jen

Katka, Jen, and Marek

Marek came prepared with a guidebook

After getting a muffin from Starbucks. Jen has been eyeing those muffins for months!

In Portugal, they have a famous genre of music called Fado, and Amalia is one of the most famous Fado singers. This picture was taken in honor of our friend Amalia from Slovakia :-) We miss you! :-)

An elevator in the center of Lisbon...we were trying to take a creative picture :-)

Me, Marek, and Stanley

After walking for about an hour, Jen and I finally saw something that looked familiar :-)

We're pretty sure they put this red carpet here to welcome our Slovak guests :-)

Hanging out by the water on a beautiful day!

Starting to get tired from all the walking

On our way to Lisbon again to go to Mass. Things didn't really work out the way we planned. We all ended up making it to Mass but not at the same time and not at the same church...

Taking the metro

Following our "tour guide" Marek to St. Mary Magdalene Church for Mass in English - or so we thought!

Pretty lost at this point

Still lost...

After not being able to find St. Mary Magdalene, I said that I was going to go look at the Cathedral to see if they were going to have Mass soon. Since it was almost 7:00, I ran ahead (Jen wants me to clarify that I wasn't actually running....just doing my normal speed walking, but I was really moving!) of the group so that we wouldn't waste any time. I'm not exactly sure what the confusion was, but I arrived at the Cathedral just in time for Mass. I figured that the rest of the group would be joining me shortly. About ten minutes later, Marek came in and sat next to me. I didn't really understand why he was alone, but I figured the girls would be coming. Long story short, Mass ended, and we were getting ready to leave. I figured Jen and Katka would be waiting outside for us. Marek informed me that they had gone to Mass at a different church. I didn't understand why they wouldn't just come to the Cathedral since that's where I said I was going. We waited around for about 45 minutes thinking they would show up. Finally, Marek and I just decided to go home since nobody had cell phones to get a hold of each other. I can't even explain the confusion of this story, but when we got home, Jen and Katka were there waiting. It turns out that they had gone to Mass at a church about 30 feet from the Cathedral. They seemed to think that they were at the Cathedral. Jen promises that she never even saw the HUGE church (I'm not sure how she could have missed it, but I guess she did). Anyways, it was a little irritating at the time, but it was pretty funny to hear how every person had a different account of what actually happened and whose fault it was.