Day 3

Monday July 30

7:30am GMT - woke up shortly after 7. Woke up once around 3am and though I was screwed, but managed to fall back asleep so all in all not bad! My shoulders kill from my backpack and my butt hurts from sitting on the plane so long, but otherwise I feel better than I expected to. Unfortunately last night I had uploaded the day's pictures and was just about to submit them on Flickr when the internet died and is still dead. Not sure what the problem is, I hope I didn't do something to mess it up LOL! I wasn't doing anything except uploading pictures, I swear! :P

Our room faces the back, so it's really quiet, even now on a Monday morning.

8:30am GMT - breakfast was lovely. Fresh OJ, some fruit, cereals, etc. The coffee was made fresh for each table with a french press and was delicious. We both had scrambled eggs, which were good but A HUMONGOUS portion, and hashbrown patties. Amanda had toast and her beloved mushrooms, I had "bacon" but it wasn't bacon. It was some kind of ham that had been fried, and it wasn't very good. So I won't get it tomorrow, and we asked for half portions of eggs. No need to waste! It was really really filling though, which was cool because then we spent very little on lunch.

9:00am GMT - went on a walk, the gift shop at the Shakespeare birthplace was open so we browsed and were amused at all the different Shakespeare paraphernalia. I bought a hilarious magnet that is like a little shakespeare - really funny. Then we found and walked down to the street where there are a lot of restaurants and down to the river, which was all apparently flooded a week or so ago but was fine today. Just walked across the footbridges and took some nice pictures. We sat by the Swan Fountain til the guided walking tour at 11.

11am-1pm GMT - Town walking tour - for 5 pounds, our guide John took us on a 2 hour tour all throughout the town. He was quite funny and informative, showing us the really old buildings and all that stuff. We went into the big church where Shakespeare is buried - quite beautiful really. Because of the tour, going to the grave was only 50p instead of 1.50 pounds. Hurray for saving money (plus we would've gone to the church anyway so it was as if the tour cost just a little bit less, I suppose)! Then we were hungry

4:30pm GMT - So like I said, after the town walking tour, we went in to this little supermarket (which is the only one besides convenience stores that we've even seen!) and got some light stuff for lunch and went back to the little free public gardens at New Place (see the pretty pictures), next to John Nash's house where Shakspeare had once owned a house but it was torn down at some point. We had a little picnic and enjoyed looking at and photographing the interesting statues depicting scenes from Shakespeare plays. We wandered a bit more, looked at a few menus for our remaining meals and came back to the B&B for a bit of a breather before setting out in a while for dinner. And the internet works again! Woohoo! Maybe it's just at night when the owners turn off their computer or something. aaaaaanyyyyyyhoooooo

8:45 GMT - at around 6pm, we went to dinner at a little Italian place in the town centre that was recommended by Keith, the owner of the hotel. We had marinated olives mmmmmmm. And each had a pizza. Was pretty good, normal really thin crust made in a wood oven. Total was 19 pounds for 2 people so can't complain. Not really a whole lot left to do so we came back to the room and are just catching up and watching tv and relaxing. Earlier after the walking tour and lunch, by the time we got back to the B&B my feet were really starting to hurt, but after we relaxed for a couple hours and I changed shoes, I felt ok. Plus tomorrow and the next day shouldn't be huge huge walking day so I should be good to go for heavy duty walking through Lisbon's old streets on Thursday!