Day 1, Part 2 So once we finally checked into our hotel rooms...five hours after we had first arrived there...everyone took a nap for a couple hours. And then me and my hotel roommate got up to explore the area some more.
People make fun of how Asians slaughter the English language--you can see examples of this at websites like Engrish. But Asians aren't the only ones. We were extremely puzzled at the meaning of this graffiti. It made about as much sense as the t-shirt I'm wearing in the photo.
Some heavily tagged underground passage. A couple people on the trip commented that the tagging and graffiti in Portugal wasn't very good...but to be honest, I don't think most of the tags I see around NYC is "good" either. Even by NYC standards though, we were all pretty surprised at the amount of graffiti up around Lisbon.
Waves crashing against the seawall. Pretty.
I thought this fisherman had caught something and he noticed me taking a photo. He shook his head in the universal sign of "no." He had caught something, but instead of fish, he hooked himself some random sea trash.
I met up with the rest of the fellas at the casino! Supposedly this place was Europe's largest casino, so I was definitely very intrigued at seeing the goodness that awaited inside. Note the very pretty park leading to the casino--in the U.S., that'd be a big parking lot. If there's anything I learned from my previous relationship, then that is, I learned I loved to gamble at casinos. Visiting this place was at the top of my list and I got a couple others stoked to check it out as well. The casino inside was really small--compared to the few I've been to in the U.S. Also, there were no craps tables which is what most of us played.
These two guys really did well at the casino. One of them had never gambled before--and walked away with an additional 150 Euros in his pocket while the other one converted his 70 Euros into 500 Euros--all at roulette. Needless to say, the casino rookie, previously skeptical, is now hooked. Myself? I tried blackjack for the first time and ended up doubling up my money in 15 minutes. Not too shabby either. Needles to say, this craps veteran and blackjack rookie, is now hooked on blackjack. Most of us all ended up winners and enjoyed a celebratory drink or two or three or more at the casino bar. We also got the "in" on the hot club to go to that night from one of the cocktail waitresses.
Craig shows the love back at the hotel.
It's really bizarre, but at every restaurant we went to, at some point a waiter would walk through the place and try to sell roses to the customers. The guy above who won 500 plus Euros at the casino decided to be the big winner by buying roses for all the ladies in the restaurant--and apparently a couple guys as well.
After dinner, we all headed over to a pub with all the Brits, natch. A few of the Brits decided to get into an arm wrestling match, which led to...
...a freakin' arm wrestling tournament. UK vs. USA.
Alexis doing his best to represent for the US.
And then Alexis and Rory went at it. Their version of talking trash to one another was to talk about how hot the other's mom was. And in case you're wondering, yes, I did destroy ALL the dudes in the photos above--with my left arm.
Okay. This photo was probably snapped....about six hours after the arm wrestling extravaganza above. About eleven of us, including the guys above, decided to finally head over to the club..."Coconuts" near the hotel. Along the way, we met some...interesting people. Anyway, once we got to the club, which had no line and honestly, looked rather lame, we got the big brush off from the bouncer. In retrospect, I guess most clubs would have a problem with eleven dudes showing up, but they immediately felt threatened because suddenly more and more bouncers started showing up outside. We were all more calm than they were--and we tried to patiently explain that there were girls from our trip who were already inside and more were coming later, but they didn't really seem to listen to us. And more bouncers started congregating in front of us and finally one of them came over and started pushing some of us, and that just pissed everyone off. One Brit wanted to bum rush the entrance. The next morning, he saw us and said, "Oy, I realized today that there were probably three bouncers for each one of us...maybe it wasn't such a good idea to attack them. Thanks mates. Cheers." And then he went and had himself some fish and chips. So after we all finally drunkenly left the club, while yelling insults at the club, we then tried to go into another lounge--but none of us wanted to pay the cover there. So we made our way to the next bar, which was a pub, but they were closing down for the night. Finally, me and Alexis made our way back to the previous lounge and had a few drinks. More people ended up there, but after awhile, I was bored and walked back to the hotel where I proceeded to wake people up on my floor, including Pam--which as you see in the photo above, is a bit sleepy.
I also got Hector up. "Come on Hector! You gotta RALLY!" Which he did. And then we all went and chilled out in some Brit's room.
Rory appeared out of nowhere and joined our impromptu party as well. He later had no recollection of this photo being taken or where he was at the time.
And that concludes the first day of a long day of a short trip.