I arrived in Lisbon at 7:20 AM as scheduled via the night train from Madrid. I slept for maybe 2 hours, but was ultimately just pumped to be in Lisbon. I got off of the train at the wrong station, slept through the one I was supposed to get off at and woke up at the end of line, luckily for me it was still in Lisbon. I then hit the streets ready for the day.

The streets were quite hilly. But made navigating much easier.

This place was the fuckin’ bomb, food was cheap n’ tasty and the atmosphere was epic, and the coffee was good and strong, stopped there both mornings I was in Lisbon for breakfast.

I finally checked into the hostel, it was the sickest one that I have ever stayed in. Bunks 3 high with 20 foot ceilings in a building that was from the 1700’s, only in Europe!

Chris, my brother, finally arrived. We went to the hostel dropped his shit off had a few cold ones and set off for dinner.

Funny aside here, while cheersing my brother there was a sleeping Russian in the bed we were standing next to… He must have subconsciously heard the opening of alcohol because as we clinked out glasses together there was also a bottle of vodka thrown into the mix. He did a fat pull and was back sleeping before we could even get his name…Russians hahaha

Anyway I convinced this happily married with two kids 34 year old software engineering brother of mine to stay in a hostel with me!

Found a sweet place that overlooked the river. Had croquettes, tasty mains, and cider on tap, I was pretty pumped about that. The night was pretty uneventful as we were both exhausted from traveling.

Woke up the next day had breakfast at the hostel. It was pretty random we got talking to a girl, (Ria from England) that was teaching English in Portugal for the past couple of years, she asks about our plans and where we have been. She says that I actually looked really familiar. Turns out that we were staying in the same hostel in Nice, never actually talked to each other she just remembered the beard, yes I’m now recognized by my beard I can die happy hahaha.

After breakfast Chris and I went out on the free walking tour that was put on by our hostel. There ended up being about 20 people on the tour, Chris and I managed to talk to just about every one of them over the 2 and a half hour period of exploring the city.

An artist went around the city and took photos of residents and placed them outside of where they live…Timing is everything haha

After the tour me, Chris, Mark (from Iowa), Santiago (from Colombia), Ellie and Ruki (from London) and Elise (from Chile) all went and had lunch (above photo). It was great.

Then Sanitgo and Mark went a museum so the rest of us walked around and grabbed drinks, we talked about religion, guns, and politics it was great!

Rooftop bar

Then we walked around, grabbed more drinks and made plans to meet up that night for….You guessed it, more drinks.

Chris and I show up to their hostel, as the rest of the group was staying in another hostel, we intended on doing the pub crawl put on by their hostel, however, there was word that it was kind of lame and someone had heard that there was a sweet bar that was on top of a parking garage that all of the locals went to. So Chris and I said lets do our own pub crawl to that bar.

 

The first picture in that video is a literal translation, the second was just some rad street art both from the walking tour that day and the last was our fellow pub crawlers. By the time we ended up leaving there hostel we had 20 people in our group…a successful beginning to the 1st ever Butterfield Pub Crawl. The only problem was no one actually knew where the bar was and there was no signs, advertising, or anyone with a good enough phone to get maps to load. Somehow someway we made it to the park bar.

 

Santiago bought a entire bottle of Patron.

Debautchery soon ensued.

The crew stuck together all night and ended up having a ton of good times together. Chris drank at least 12 beers at the bar alone. That’s a lot for married man, he was tanked. The bar itself was incredible, it was literally just on top of a parking garage, great views of the city, cheap drinks and a good mix of music. They would alternate between groovy American classics and current tunes from all genres.

 

The next morning was rough… Chris was literally sitting in that chair staring at the wall and debating life for at least 15 minutes….hahaha.

Still didn’t phase my bottle per day routine. We made it to Porto that day by train. It was supposed to take about 2 and half hours….But we got stuck at a station for over an hour, just sitting on the tracks with no escape. Apparently a train going the other direction smoked some dude. They had to clean all that up and investigate what had happened before we could pass. The translation of what had happened was really quite gruesome, “there was body on both sides of tracks” was a line a distinctly remember.

In a way it was good that we were extremely hung over and feeling like a bag of asses…Had we not have been feeling like hammered dog shit, the hour delay sitting on the train tracks would have been very frustrating, instead we just slept it off and eventually made our way to the hotel. Oh, before we got off the train Chris had managed to yack his brains out in the bathroom on the train haha poor fella…

Staying in a hotel was a nice change of pace for me, nice to not have to wear flops in the shower or sleep in a sleep sack, it was a luxurious break. That 1st day in Porto it was hard not to just lie in the hotel beds and let the hangover melt away naturally.

But eventually we left the room and explored the narrow and winding labyrinth of streets that make up the city of Porto. It it a very cool city and the weather was perfect.

The Civil Engineer in me even got to geek out over the construction of their bridges a little bit. We had dinner and called it an early night.

The next morning we did the same thing as we had the previous day, just wandered the streets and found ourselves inside some pretty amazing buildings.

Chris is standing on a bunch of bodies in this picture…I tried lifting up the wooden pieces on the floor, snuck a peak and am pretty sure I saw bones.

Yup, that’s a lot of bones.

Chris would know the exact stat here, but there was some insane amount of gold that smothered the inside of this church. God is good, gold is better I suppose.

And finally I got Chris back on the wagon. If that’s how the saying goes, I don’t really know. The wagon would have contained all the booze back in the day, so I would assume you’d be drinking on the wagon.

 

We were on our way to take a tour of a Port cellar and noticed a truck leaking some dark viscous fluid that was being pumped into the ground….

Turned out to be  glass and aluminum conditioned port, got it before it hit the oak barrels, but after they had added the brandy, had a pretty sharp flavor. Not too bad for being free!

Tasting room

Port Cellar

Port Cellar

The wheels of the wagon were certainly back in motion at this point, tasted my way through a few samples.

Then we met up with the Legend himself, Santiago, he had made his May to Porto as well. Via plane, which was also delayed… Didn’t obtain a reason for the delay… Another smoking??

Walked the streets

Photoed the streets

And some rad street art

Tres Amigos

City of Porto

It was at this point that Santiago told us to join him for dinner at his hostel at 9:00 PM…and to just maybe do the pub crawl…Chris agreed to dinner, but Santiago can be very persuasive.

 

Reporting live from “YES!” Hostel Porto, Lisbon, shit was just starting to get real, for me at least. They even lit the bar on fire, I was all puffed up!! Chris was still set on going to bed at 11:00 PM at this point in the evening.

A few beers later, it was well past mid night and he was as happy as a clam.

“That’s a lotta dudes” haha must’ve been standing in the wrong place…

From this point forward and probably an hour prior to this my memory of what happened is quite jumbled and somewhat useless. Photos can replace my words.

I wish the blonde’s face (Sofia, better known as Latvia that night) wasn’t blurry, then I’d give the photo an A+, but it captured the moment and vibes of the evening quite well. Grade: A-

This is Santiago unleashed and in his element.

 

“OHHH DAAMMNNN” is right, who knows what the hell is going on here and where I am.

At one of the 3 bars we crawled around to that evening there was cake on the bar, I mowed down 3 pieces in about 30 seconds, I bet I looked wonderful. I would have asked the bar tender for milk, but my Portuguese isn’t the best. I was just some drunk honkie with cake all up in his beard. I hope it conjures the same imagery for you as it does for me. Hahahaha

Sad to say I am missing from this photo…I am sure I was doing something fun. This was the “YES!” hostel’s pub crawl in Porto…It topped the Buttery Pub Crawl we put on a few nights prior in Lisbon.

At one point Santiago and I had girls dancing on our shoulders, body shots were had, long pours of rum were waterfalled into awaiting mouths from Latvia standing on the bar, I dropped a chick from the Netherlands flat on her back…it was entirely her fault, to be fair, and everyone somehow knew this, so I didn’t look like a dick, stoked on not looking like an ass for something that was out of my control.

The last stop was a club. I had no idea how we got from one place to the next or where the places were/are, but that didn’t matter. Chris left about an hour before me, around 2:30 AM so much for 11 PM haha. I eventually found my way back to the hotel, luckily it was easy to find.

After brunch the morning after the pub crawl we caught the train back to Lisbon. Wandered around a bit, dropped the stuff off at the room and went out to eat.

I love Tequila!!!

The place we ended up eating in was called, “Time Out Market.” It kind of looks like a food court, however it is much better. Restaurants from all over town have little micro kitchens that pump out a few of their signature dishes in this Market, so if you find you like it you could return to their actual restaurant somewhere in town. It was awesome! Packed with friendly people, we just sat down on one of the long benches and ended up having some great conversations with a few people from Germany.

The night ended with a rad sunset and that was my experience in Porto and LIsbon, 2016

-Con-style.