Lisboa

Had to get up early to catch a flight to Porrugal yesterday ... I flew here to play ice hockey , yes i know most of my travelling hockey buddies are a bit surprised to know that there is ice hockey here ! And I hope I can help bridge the gap for most of you to visit here .... Unfortunately yesterday was not a day on ice ... It was a rainy day :( 

When we arrived in Lisbon it was a bit of a pain collecting my gear as the oversize is way on the other end of terminal or so it seemed and you pass the exit going there but hey at least my gear showed up . We got into a taxi fearing the worst but we ended up with this funny female taxi driver who spoke English quite well and here is the kicker .... The airport is really close to the city centre !!! It cost us €10 with a tip ;) no joke , totally worth cabbing it at that cost lol . We were dropped off at Hotel Mundial which is a really nice hotel ( great choice Kathleen ) and we quickly dropped our bags and headed out for a quick look around . Lisbon is not hard to get around and we were a bit hungry , not knowing where to eat we just decided to eat some McD's . Yeah I know it's not the healthy choice but I will worry about that when I get back in the gym in Toronto . We scurried back to our room with our bounty , gobbled up and took a quick nap ... I really needed it . 

When we woke up we headed back out for another stroll ... This time to The Hard Rock Cafe as I had a craving for good chicken wings and on the way we noticed these small shops with people standing outside drinking ... These shops were really small ! They are Ginjinha shops , this is a Portuguese home made liqueur with cherries that are only found in a certain part of Portugal that can not be found anywhere else in the world (apparently) so we decided to join the mob of people and try the stuff ... It's not a shot but more like a sipping drink and it's super sweet and comes in a small plastic cup which you can wander around with ( unlike our liquor controlled bs back in Toronto ) . We took our sweet time strolling over as numerous drug dealers hassled us to buy their bogus dope :( no comment .... Anyways we eventually got to the Hard Rock and I got my wings which were fantastic and then we walked back to the hotel ... It rained all day and as the day goes by I wonder how we will play ice hockey outdoors here in Lisbon .... I eagerly wait to hear from IIHF Portuguese federation president Mauricio Xavier to find out the plan ... This is only gonna get better so stay tuned ;) until then keep your head up and stick on the ice hahahaha !