Trip to Portugal - diary of the Italian students

13/04/2010
Nicola Mercurio:
Our first day started very very early.
We left Palermo at 6:30 and arrived in Rome at 7:30.
We had a walk around Fiumicino Airport and then we were ready to leave to Lisbon. However the flight was delayed for some technical problems (which were solved after some time, luckily).
Finally at 12:30 we left Rome and after a 3 hours’ flight we arrived in Lisbon.
In the afternoon we visited Lisbon, the new and the old city. We strolled down “Rua de la Libertade”, we stopped at the “Hard Rock Café” where we did a lot of shopping. After that we took the “mythical” tram number 28 and we went up the old town where there are some places where you can get wonderful views of the city. We saw the delta of the river Tago and we had dinner in a typical restaurant.
Unfortunately it rained all day!

Andrea Catania:
On 14th April: we finally met our partners! We had missed them a lot and now we could hug them again. We visited Lisbon all together with the bus. We saw this big city and we liked it a lot. First we saw San Geronim’s Monastery: it’s a magnificent building, built in 1544; then we saw the Belem Tower, where the sailors used to set sail from. We tasted some of the delicious Portuguese cakes in the oldest “Pasteleria” of the city. We had lunch together in a restaurant; we had a typical Portuguese dish, octopus with smashed potatoes. Really good! After lunch we took the bus to Moimenta da Beira. It was an important opportunity to know all the guys from the other countries, like Poland, Turkey or Estonia. After a 4 hours’ trip, we finally arrived to Moimenta school to have dinner at the school canteen. Then there was an amazing party. It was a karaoke party! Vincenzo sang with the Portuguese guys and the other Italians sang an old Italian song. It was very funny! Finally we went home and we met the families. We went to bed looking forward to another great day.

15 Apri
Carmelo Lupo:
We met at school at 10:00 o'clock; at school we saw the show of the Portuguese students, it was very funny!. After the show, we visited the school. That week, the school celebrated the cultural week; students and teachers from all classes showed their works in the classroom and in the labs. After lunch we visited the town hall, we had a walk around the town. We visited a monastery and the library. Thenwe went up to Lapa, where there is the sanctuary of Our Lady of Lapa. The sanctuary is in a cave, the statue of Oue Lady is at back of the the sanctuary. There is a very narrow passage that joins the place where the statue is to the other part of the church. According to the legend sinners can't go through the narrow passage. Luckily we all managed to go through!!! We had dinner at school.

16 April
Claudio Baiata:
In the morning At 09:20 we met at school and after ten minutes we took the bus to a historical place where there is the monastery of St Joao Tourica.
The monastery is very big. Only the church and the tower remain, because both the walls and the building where the monks slept are more or less destroyed.
Halfway the main and only aisle, our guide explained to us, on the left and on the right there were the wooden chairs where the monks sat during the Mass. One funny thing is that because the singing took a long time, the poor monks found a way to be seated. They built tiny
stools at the back of the chair seats, so they could pretend they were standing up when in reality they could get some rest in a half-seated position.
Near the altar there were two big mosaics that described the period before and after the construction of the church. Another funny thing is that in one of these mosaics there was a man with glasses. The man who made the mosaics in the 18th century forgot that at medieval times glasses hadn't been invented yet.
After the monastery, we visited the cellars where they make spumante wine. In the afternoon we went to Villa Real. We met the mayor of the city at the town hall, a beautiful bulding which was a hospital before becoming the town hall. Then a kind young guy guided us around the town. Finally we went up to San Leonardo from where we could enjoy a beautiful view of the Douro Valley and River Douro. We ended our visit in Lamego where there is a beautiful sanctuary.

17 April
Riccardo Campo:
On 17th April we went on a cruise along the river Douro.
We left at 10 o' clock.
We took a nice, big boat; we had breakfast and lunch onboard. The landscape along the river was marvellous, we took pictures of the wonderful scenery and we spent the time singing and chatting.
The boat had to go through a couple of dams. To reach the other side of the dam, there is a mechanism that makes the water level go down.
At 5 o' clock we arrived in Porto.
In Porto we visited the cathedral a beutiful church in Roman style.
Unfortunately there was a thunderstorm and we couldn't go sightseeing.
In Porto there was a union strike. The protest was a bit “funny”and very noisy: lots of cars kept going around the town hall square blowing their horns!
We went back to Moimenta da Beira by train.

Claudio Mancino
18 April
We woke up , ready for another fantastic day , at 09:00 . We met at school at 10:00 and we took the bus to Guimaraes , we arrived there at 11:00 . Guimaraes is a marvellous Portuguese town situated in the district of Braga . The town was founded by count Vimara Peres . It was the first capital city of Portugal . Guimaraes is known as the place where the country was born . The Historic centre of Guimaraes was declared a world Heritage site in 2001 by Unesco , due to its middle age historical monuments . Guimaraes has been choosen by the Portuguese government to be the European Capital of Culture in 2012 . We visited the remains of the castle and of an ancient chapel, then the guide then took us to the historical centre and we went around the ancient, narrow streets

19 April: Viseu
Viseu was an intresting town for the teachers but for the students it was quite nice the shopping center where we bought a lot of souvenirs, presents for us and our relatives.

20 April
We met at school at 10:00 and we worked with the other students on a phrase dictionary . In the afternoon we went to a wine farm when the owners explained to us how they make Porto wine and table wines.
21 April: Coimbra, Fatima
On the way back to Lisbon we stopped at Coimbra where we visited one of the oldest university in Europe and than we strolled down the backing street to visit the cathedral and the town center.
The second stop at Fatima sanctuary but we stayed on the bus only the teachers got off the bus to visit this holy shrine.

22April: going home