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So the first days in Lisbon are over. The course is actually quite demanding – the name “intensive course” is 100% correct. Hours of interesting lectures and finally exploring the city. Currently the wetter is really nice, but during daytime, its hard to survive without air conditioning… Cause its like 35°C and quite high humindity. When it gets to dinner time, it gets really nice: No need to wear a pullover! Perfect weather to just drop into one of the countless street cafe’s or bars.
Yesterday we got the afternoon of, so my fellows from Erlangen and me decided to visit the famous Lissabon Oceanarium. The Oceanarium is located at the former Expo site located in the north-east of Lisbon. The site is easily reachable by metro. We were quite amazed, that the Lisbon Metro is so, lets say clean and well organized. Its just a 15 minute trip to get from Cais do Sodre (Ferry Terminal) to the other side of the city using Green and Red Line.

The Oceanarium was worth visiting. Actually the entrance fee is quite high (8 euro for students), but the big bassin in the middle of the Oceanarium “pays” back for it. Some very nice fish are in there: Most impressive is a large Manta Ray with about 2 meters wingspan. Also some school of white fish were in the. You could just sit down and relax… We spent there some time but afterwards we went to the closeby shopping mall “Vasco da Gama” in order to get some IceCream and drinks.

Cause of the weather we decided on wednesday to get to the beach, which is just 15 minutes away from university using the bus. Costa Caparica is supposed to be the “City beach” of Lissabon having nice sand and beach bars Although we arrived the quite late (like at 1800), it was warm enough to jump into the Atlantic Ocean with its refreshing surge. Later on we decided to skip the official dinner in Lisbon in order to drop into some beach bar having some wine and fish. Enjoying this great beach view and the nice meal (mussels and cod) we finally got back to the youth hostel…