One Man's Trash

Olá from Portugal!  I am so, so glad Semester at Sea decided to go to here!  Portugal is such a unique and beautiful country, one that is definitely different than the United States, a refreshing sight after most of the other European countries!  The streets here in Portugal are just full of brightly colored buildings, palm trees, painted tiles, and hills.  It seemed like the whole city was built on a hill, which made walking around my workout for the day!  And, because Portugal is such a tropical country, it rained a lot, making walking up cobblestone hills even more difficult!  But my first day of exploration was a lot of fun, most notably in the Alfama quarter.

The Alfama quarter is the oldest neighborhood in Lisbon, having many streets and avenues that can only be seen on foot. Although it is such a cultural place, a lot of the homes, apartments, and buildings are in pretty rough shape, something I wasn't expecting to see while in Portugal.  And, I was told by a cab driver that 70% of Portugal is empty because everyone is leaving.  I'm not sure how accurate of a percentage this is, but it leads well into my story about empty apartment buildings.   

While I was walking around Alfama, my friend Sarah and I came to this little street with apartment buildings.  In a corner, there were a bunch of trash bags and boxes immediately caught my eye because there were beautiful paintings sticking out of the box!  I went over to look and came to the conclusion that someone moving out of their apartment decided not to keep the paintings, leaving them on the side of the road.  So, I may have done just a teensy bit of garbage picking in order to get the paintings since I couldn't let these beautiful paintings go to waste!  They're probably going to be the cheapest and most unique souvenirs of my entire voyage!   And the saying does go, "One man's trash is another man's treasure."  My Portuguese paintings are most definitely a treasure and made for a very memorable first day in Portugal.