Taylor Swift in Lisbon

August 7, 2024September 13, 2024 / Maria / 3 Comments

It’s been a very eventful year for me from a traveling perspective. I went to Patagonia in mid-February with Seth and then 3 months later I took another 2 weeks off to go traveling with Emily. Our original plan had been to go to Greece last September, but then something came up and we cancelled that trip. So I ended up with two major trips back-to-back, which was somewhat overwhelming, but also awesome, so I can’t complain.

The reason we cancelled our original trip is because Emily got tickets to see Taylor Swift in Lisbon! Like most people, we failed to get tickets to see Taylor on her US tour and couldn’t afford the resale tickets, so Emily signed up for a ton of presales in Europe and managed to score 4 tickets in Lisbon! The tickets were for May 25, so we planned a whole trip around the concert. We had a little over 2 weeks and we planned to start in Lisbon for the concert, and then we each picked a destination for the subsequent 2 weeks of the trip. Emily picked the Azores and I picked Marrakech, so stay tuned for that!

But first off, Lisbon. We were traveling from opposite sides of Canada, but the easiest way to get there was for both of us to meet in Toronto and then we caught a direct flight to Lisbon. It was an overnight flight, so we got as much sleep as we could and arrived in Lisbon around noon. It’s only a 3.5 hour time difference for Emily and she managed okay, but it was an 8 hour time difference for me, so my body had no idea what was going on.

As soon as we landed in Lisbon, you could feel the energy. Our pilot welcomed all the Taylor Swift fans to Lisbon and our uber driver started off by saying, “the traffic is really bad today! I don’t know if you heard, but we have a big concert happening this weekend”! We got dropped off at our hostel in central Lisbon, where we had booked a private room. The temperature was around 24 degrees, which we thought would be perfect, but it’s quite humid in Portugal, so it felt a lot hotter.

We took a quick shower and then decided to go out exploring the city. We easily could have gone to bed, but that would not have helped the jetlag, so we pushed through. We meandered through the city and wasted no time sampling some pastries. Our cousins, Andrew and Emma, were using our other two tickets for the concert and were at the tail end of their Europe Trip, so we met up with them and toured the Lisbon Cathedral and went in search of dinner.

Taylor was playing her first show the same night, so as we walked around the city, it was easy to spot all the fans. The streets were filled with women dressed in glitter, sequins, and cowboy boots. Everyone was smiling and there was just a really great vibe in the city! Europe actually has ticket resale laws that limit price gouging, and Emily tried to convince me that we should get tickets online for night 1 too, but we opted to catch up on sleep to prepare for our concert instead.

The next day, we did a walking tour in the morning to learn more about the city. It’s actually my second time visiting Lisbon, but the first time was in 2012 and I honestly remembered nothing. We learned a lot about Portugal’s history, of which I didn’t know that much. Like most of Europe, Lisbon is a very old city and was originally settled by the Moors, which is a term used to apply to Muslim Europeans, Arab, and Berber people. Lisbon was part of the Kingdom of Portugal for a long time, until Napoleon invaded in the early 1800’s, and the Portuguese monarchy fled to Brazil. The history is already a little foggy, but it was a pretty short lived occupation, and the monarchy returned until revolution in 1910, when the last king and his heir were assassinated.

The most interesting thing I learned was that following the revolution, Portugal lived under dictatorship for 50 years between 1926 and 1974. It was the longest European dictatorship and it ended in 1974 when there was a military coup known as the Carnation Revolution. Since then, Portugal has been a modern democracy.

Lisbon is a very hilly city and we visited several historical spots. It was also interesting to learn about Lisbon’s history of earthquakes, the biggest of which was a 9.0 earthquake that occurred in 1755 and leveled most of the city. There is still some architecture left which predates this earthquake.

After the walking tour, we returned to our hostel to get ready for the concert! There were other Swifties on our walking tour and we’d learned that the previous night had been a bit of a disaster in terms of venue management. The concert was late starting because there hadn’t been enough security to process all the fans. People had to queue for 3+ hours in the hot sun to get into the stadium. So we decided to go pretty early to the stadium and were prepared with sunscreen, hats, and water.

We met Emma and Andrew on the Metro before the concert, but fortunately, we didn’t have any trouble accessing the stadium for our concert. They’d resolved whatever kinks had been present the previous evening and we were able to get in the stadium with no issues. Our seats were in the lower bowl and we were super lucky to discover that we had end row seats right next to the bathroom. Plus, our seats were under a bit of an overhang, so we had shade from the sun too! The bathroom situation at the concert is really interesting. At our stadium, all the sections were blocked off from one another, so there were only 4 bathrooms that we could use. 3 of the 4 bathrooms were male – the stadium has designated 1 of the male bathrooms as female, but fans seem to have made the decision that all bathrooms are unisex during the concert! We loved it because, of course, there’s a lot more women at the show.

The concert was obviously fantastic! It completely lived up to all the hype and we had the absolute best time! It’s just such a great vibe. Everyone is really happy and friendly. I’ve heard some European fans are mad about the number of North Americans coming to the show, but we didn’t experience that at all. We wandered the concourse trading friendship bracelets and generally had a great time talking to fans from all over the world!

Taylor’s stamina for the show is incredible. I barely had time to pee during one of the transitions, so I don’t know how she manages with all the wardrobe changes! It’s hard to pick a favourite era because they are all wonderful. I loved the anticipation at the start of Lover; the energy of Red; and the vibe of Folkmore. It’s also incredible to watch her perform her new TTPD songs, but the surprise songs were probably the highlight of the concert for me. Before the concert, we’d all fantasized about our dream surprise songs. Emily wanted anything from Fearless, Emma wanted Long Live, and I said I’d die if she sang You’re on Your Own, Kid.

She started with a mash-up of The Tortured Poets Department and Now That We Don’t Talk on the guitar, which was great. But I couldn’t believe it when she started playing You’re On Your Own, Kid on the piano!! I know she plays this song a lot, but I couldn’t believe I was so lucky as to get my first pick! I admit, I did tear up a little. Then she did a mash up with Long Live and Emma died a little inside too!

It could have been pandemonium trying to get the train home after the concert, but it was pretty orderly all things considered. We didn’t know that merch wouldn’t be for sale in the venue (only outside), so Emily and I lined up for merchandise after the show, but I’d recommend getting it before if you have the chance. Fortunately, we were right by the exit, so we beat most of the crowd.

I know it’s not affordable to see Taylor Swift in North America. We paid under $200 CAD each for our tickets in Lisbon, so pairing the concert with a holiday was 100% the way to go. I never thought I’d fly so far away to see a concert, but it was an experience and I would definitely do it again! It’s Taylor’s Summer for sure! Check back next week to hear about our experience in Sintra.

Relaxing in Santiago

June 19, 2024July 11, 2024 / Maria / Leave a comment

This is my last post about my Patagonia trip! It was a great trip, but I this point, I feel like I’ve been writing about it forever, so I just wanted to do a quick wrap up about Santiago before I move on to some more BC related activities.

To be honest, before the trip, I didn’t really care about Santiago. It was a convenient place to leave from, but I would have preferred to have more time in Buenos Aires rather than Santiago. I ran out of steam planning the trip, so I didn’t plan anything for Santiago and left everything to Seth for our last 3 days.

But I ended up loving Santiago! I’m hesitant to say I liked it more than Buenos Aires, because I only saw a small portion of Buenos Aires, but I enjoyed Santiago so much more than I expected. This is partially due to the fact that we had no strict schedule, so we slept in and ate lots of good food and drank lots of wine and pisco sour. There is definitely some petty street crime in Santiago and we were advised to keep our phones physically attached to us by a cord because phone theft is super common. But overall, Santiago is a very vibrant city. It has a lot artwork all over the city and it was surprisingly gay (which is a compliment!). We saw a lot of pride all over the city and many openly gay couples, which I just didn’t expect to see in South America, so it was a really nice surprise.

As usual, we started with a walking tour of the city to get our bearings and we learned a lot of really useful history. Apparently Chileans have a pretty “jaded” attitude in general, and have a history of being agnostic about religion and bitter about politics. They were under a dictatorship for 20 years in the 70’s/80’s, and as a result, Chileans are frequent protestors. They have a strong sense of justice and will march in the streets for whatever they believe in, which we definitely witnessed.

Our tour guide gave us a detailed history of Santiago, which I won’t share for fear of mis-remembering some of the finer points. But what was striking was Santiago’s economic situation. Chile’s currency is super stable compared to Argentina, and for a long time Chile was doing really well, but Santiago has hit a rough patch since the pandemic. 3.5 million people have migrated to Chile during the pandemic, but there’s been limited economic growth. All the shops in the downtown had been shuttered and in their place, a lot of street vendors have popped up with desperate people looking to make money.

It’s not really related, but our guide also highlighted how Santiago is somewhat lacking in a culture of its own. Santiago was conquered by the Incas and the Spaniards; followed by an obsession with the French (which is really obvious in the architecture), so a lot of their culture is just borrowed from elsewhere, which contributes to the sense of bitterness and indifference from the locals. At least, this was my tour guide’s POV, it could be that he is just the one who’s jaded! Feel free to counter this argument!

Over our 3 days in Santiago, we visited a lot of attractions. We took the funicular up to the top of San Cristobal Hill and we visited both the National History Museum (wouldn’t recommend), and the Pre-Columbian Art Museum (would recommend). Museums are a bit tricky because a lot of them are only in Spanish, so plan accordingly.

Our favourite part of the city was St. Lucia Hill, which was conveniently located right next to our hotel. Our tour guide referred to it as the “gem of Santiago”, and we would definitely agree! It’s just a hill/park in the middle of the city, but it has all kinds of fascinated infrastructure scattered around it. The most obvious thing is to hike up to the top of the hill, where there is a tower lookout and a great view, but if you have the time, just let yourself get lost in the space, because there’s all kinds of different pathways and structures. It’s a fun place to explore and we ended up going there twice.

Another small attraction that I really liked was Alice’s Room, which is a small Wonderland themed cafe. It’s super popular, so we were lucky to get in without a reservation one morning. You really go to this place for the decor, the food is great too, but they’ve completely committed to the theme and it’s just fun to look at all the little details. Highly recommend if you have the time!

Otherwise, our last visit was to the Concho y Torro winery. It’s a very popular winery and even I have seen some of their wine in liquor stores in Canada, most notably, Casillero del Diablo. The tour was fantastic and quite different that other wine tours I’ve been on. The most memorable part is that the winery has a tasting vineyard where they have planted all 24 different varieties of grapes that they use to make wine. Now obviously, it’s not ideal to plant all 24 varieties of grapes in one place, but they don’t make wine with these grapes, they just allow guests to wonder the vineyard and taste any of the grapes that they want. I’ve never actually done this and was surprised that a lot of the grapes actually tasted pretty good. It was cool to wander around and try chardonnay and merlot and pinot grapes.

But the coolest wine fact I learned in Chile was about the carmenere grape. Carmenere is a grape that the world thought to be extinct for a long time, but was randomly found growing in Chile in 1994. So the wine was revived and you can now get it only in Chile. We sampled a few different Carmenere’s in Chile, and bought some from Concho y Torro to take home with us.

So overall, it was a great end to the trip! Seth planned most of our activities, which was a nice break for me and I enjoyed the relaxing aspect of this part of the trip. We were on the go early and often for our hiking adventures, so it was nice to have a proper rest in Santiago before returning home. Patagonia was definitely a memorable experience for me and I feel certain I will be back to explore more mountains and maybe one day (hopefully), we might make it to Antarctica.

That’s all for now, thanks for following along on our journey!

Torres del Paine Backpacking Trip Part III

June 5, 2024July 11, 2024 / Maria / 2 Comments

Following up from Part I and Part II. The weather forecast for Day 3 was our worst while on the trail. There wasn’t any heavy rain in the forecast, but more concerning was the alert for 80km/h winds. It was only 11km to our next campsite, but we wanted to attempt the day hike up to Mirador Britannico, which is another 11km round trip, so overall, it was our longest day of hiking in Torres del Paine.

The clouds looked pretty foreboding when we left Paine Grande, and as anticipated, it was incredibly windy. But the moody weather produced some of the most striking photos of the stunning landscape! The dark clouds hung around the mountains, without always obstructing them, and occasionally the sun would break through, splintering rays of sunshine across the hillside. It was really pretty and we both loved the hike from Paine Grande to the ranger station at Italiano, which is where the day hike starts.

We arrived around lunch time, so we ate at the picnic tables as it started to rain. There’s a washroom with a big overhang for bag storage, so everyone leaves their backpacks while hiking up to the mirador. We re-packed our bags, putting everything we didn’t need in Seth’s, and everything we might want in mine. A lot of people just do the hike with a water bottle, but conditions were marginal and it is a remote trail, so I’m glad we brought all our essentials, as we did use them.

I struggled with the hike to Mirador Britannico. I think my biggest problem was that I’d heard from other hikers that it was an easier-than-expected trail. Even though there is 600 metres of elevation gain, I heard that it was pretty gradual and I didn’t properly manage my expectations. A large portion of the hike is a gradual incline, but it’s not the full story. The first kilometer of the trail is pretty flat, but then it gets quite steep very quickly and is surprisingly technical, with lots of tree roots and boulders. It was raining throughout the entire climb and I started overheating in my rain pants, so I got pretty cranky, despite gorgeous views of the surrounding glaciers.

After a while, the hike definitely flattens out, with one steep push to the top at the very end. About halfway to the summit, the rain transitioned to snow, so the visibility was pretty poor. I definitely questioned turning around, but couldn’t quite bring myself to do it. I picked up a lot of the slack for Seth on day 1 (giving him my hiking poles and carrying a bunch of his gear), and he came through for me on day 3. He ended up really liking this section and carried our shared pack most of the way there. On day 5, we transitioned again and I carried the pack for our sunrise hike when he was struggling, so overall, I guess we do make a good team!

We were pretty slow, but eventually we made it to the top! We didn’t get much of a view, but it was still a pretty cool experience. My new problem was that it was very cold and my pants were soaked through from the lack of breathability in my rain pants. This was definitely a flaw in my set-up, so I’m glad we had brought lots of extra emergency layers in our backpack and we layered up and enjoyed our snacks. Fortunately, my pants are quick dry, so they dried out really fast on the way down, which was helped by the fact that it finally stopped raining.

There were a lot of day hikers doing the mirador when we were hiking up, but somehow we got passed by almost all of them. We only passed a handful of people on our descent and by the time we got back to Italiano, there were less than a dozen bags remaining. So this wasn’t our swiftest hiking trip, but we stopped to take more photos and videos on the way down and my mood improved a lot.

We hiked the last 2km to Frances Campground, where we’d be staying for the night. There’s no big refugio at Frances, just some small dome structures, but they are expensive, so we opted to stay in one of the permanent tents instead. Both Frances and Chileno Campgrounds have elevated tents that you can book. They’re basically those platform tents that people set up on top of their cars, but in this case, they were elevated platforms in the woods. They were massive inside, so it was pretty cool, but a bit annoying to climb in and out of. We were later arriving to the campground than other days, so we quickly ate supper and went to bed!

Lucky for us, the weather started to shift on Day 4. There was still some wind and rain in the forecast, but it tapered off throughout the day. We had to hike 16km from Frances Campground to Chileno Campground. Chileno is a smaller site, but it’s one of the most popular because it’s the closest campsite to the Towers. We left Frances and had a pretty easy walk to Los Cuernos Campground, which is a bigger and nicer site than Frances. It has a proper refugio, unlike Frances, but it’s still smaller than Grey or Paine Grande.

The morning hike was mostly in the trees, with a short walk along the lakeside beach. It sprinkled rain for an hour or so, but it cleared up after that and we didn’t get any more rain on the trip. Most of the day was a slow ascent along the mountainside, which looks out over Lago Nordenskjold, an absolutely massive lake. The trail peaks after ~7km at Mirador Cuernos, and we decided to stop for lunch, it has a gorgeous lakeview, but it’s still pretty windy.

The weather improved in the afternoon and the clouds started to disperse as we continued meandering along the mountainside. Eventually you come to a branch and you can either continue back towards the park entrance, or take a connector trail up towards Chileno. It’s a great shortcut when you’re hiking the W-trek and it’s an absolutely beautiful section of trail. It’s mostly meadows as the trail ascends through the foothills towards the pass to the Towers, but the real benefit was that it was almost completely empty (we only saw 4 people)!

The sun finally showed its face in the late afternoon and it was the first time on the trail where we could hike in shorts and t-shirt. We took another break to enjoy the view, before continuing our trek up to the main trail. The trail merges just before Windy Pass, which is a high point along this section. It was surprisingly not windy in the pass and there’s a gorgeous view looking down over a canyon to the Rio Ascencio. The trail was much busier, but it was mid-afternoon, so not as busy as it would be in the early morning when everyone is starting their climb to the Towers.

From Windy Pass, you descend along the open canyon trail to Chileno Campground. It’s a really cool campsite in that it overlooks the river and has a nice bar where you can enjoy a drink after hiking the Towers. But it was the least accommodating campsite we’d visited. The refugio at Chileno is tiny, so most people who stay there, stay in the platform tents (which is what we did).

The problem is that this refugio is highly focused on profits – if you’re not staying in the campground, they charge you to use the bathrooms (which are NOT well maintained), and they want everyone to pay for meals in the dining hall, so they only provide one single 4-person table for everyone who wants to cook. It was extremely annoying considering we did pay a lot of money for a tent. Plus, you’re only actually permitted to use this table when they’re not actively serving dinner, which means there’s a blackout between 5:30 and 8:30pm. So we ate very early and then hung out before going to bed.

An early night was required because we were planning to hike up to the Towers for sunrise. We got some experience sunrise hiking on the Sendero al Fitz Roy, but the hike to the Towers is double the length of what we did in Argentina, so we planned for a very early rise. However, we got incredibly lucky with the weather. The clouds continued to clear all evening and when I woke up in the middle of the night to pee, I almost lost my mind over the star-speckled sky that greeted me. We were incredibly remote, so it was easy to see the milky way and I stumbled around in the dark enjoying the night sky before heading back to bed. Check back for the final story in Part IV.