So I have not had the time or access to be able to update this everyday, so I will quickly catch everyone up to speed.

March 6th- I went to Fatima. I took a 2 hour bus ride there from Lisbon. The place is, as you expect, way too touristy, with souvenir shops everywhere. I saw the place where our Lady appeared. The chapel was nice and they have the 3 tombs of the visionaries in there so that was really cool. 2 of them are blessed (the 3rd isn´t becaused she died only last year.) For the most part though, it didn´t live up to the expectations I had for it. And they are building one of the ugliest, most modern churches right there. It is going to be huge, and looks like a sports arena. I did get to go to confession in English, though, so that was a blessing. I am not sure if confession is valid if you go in another language, but I don´t see why it wouldn´t be. Plus this priest´s englsih wasn´t too good. I think I could have told him I killed someone and he would have given me the same penance. I went back to Lisbon at about 8 and walked around a bit before going to bed.

March 7th- I took a train to a local little gem called Sintra. It is only 45 minutes away by train, but it looks like a totally different place. It was all foggy when I got there, but you could still see a pretty good distance. The town was spread out, lush, and large old mansions dotted the mountainside. I went into the National Palace, which was the nicest I had seen so far. This is where I took the photo of the blonde, so that whole adventure made the tour quite memorable. After that I hiked about 2 miles up a twisty mountain road. The fog made the walk very pleasant and was a nice complement to the greenery that was all around. The point of this hike was to reach a palace, the Palace da Pena, which was at the top of a large hill. Unfortunately I couldn´t see the great panoramic view from the top because it was so foggy. I couldn´t even see the tops of the towers from the entrance to the palace. They had kept the rooms original, and even had original furniture in them. This palace definitely had more of a medievil feel to it than the last. After that i went back to town via a different route and checked out some Moorish Castle ruins. The castle was used to defend the area back in the 11th century. The walls were still well intact.