Belém

This week I went back to Belém, which is a well known tourist area on the west of Lisbon. It's well known because it's where Portuguese explorers would leave on their voyages. 

This place is Jeronimos Monastery. It's a really good example of Manueline architecture, a style popular in Portugal in the 16th century. It was really beautiful.

This is Vasco da Gama's tomb. It's in the church.

This is called the Monument to the Discoveries. It has statues of lots of famous explorers, etc.

This is one of the main monuments Portugal is known for, the Belém Tower. It is also in the Manueline style.

 Yesterday I decided to be adventurous and finally eat caracois. It was the last Portuguese staple that I needed to try. I ordered a mini prato, the smallest size offered, and this came out:

About 100 snails. I only managed to eat about 10 of the small ones. The big ones had those antenna eye things still sticking out, and I couldn't handle it. (The small ones also had these eyes, but they were less noticeable). The snails were not delicious. They reminded me of the mushrooms in cream of mushroom soup, which will now make that difficult to eat. You have to pull them out of their shell with a toothpick. I pretended to eat more than I did so that I wouldn't offend the restaurant owners or anything. The plate on the left was my discard plate. 80% of those still had snails in them. A group of 3 or 4 people sitting next to me ordered about 300 snails and ate them in 10 or 15 minutes. I had tasted snails when I was in Paris, but only about 3 of them, and as much as I didn't really care for those French snails, these Portuguese snails were worse.

This place is near my house. I think the purple and blue together are amazingly beautiful.

P.S. I'm headed to Madrid this weekend all by myself. I'm nervous but excited.