For our last two days in Portugal we stayed in the Lisbon Central Park Hotel. On the first day we visited the Bernardo Collection where there was tons of modern and contemporary art. The guided tour lead us through most of the second floor, but the museum was so huge there was no way we’d finish it all. The tile museum was our next stop, and here we painted our own tile before walking through and looking at MANY different designs and colors of tiles. Of course, we went off for some serious shopping after this and then dinner and a semi early night compared to the rest of the trip. We were all so exhausted from the week. The next day we headed out at around 9:30 to another collection of a super rich Armenian guy, whose name escapes me now, but he collected tiles, Chinese vases, Japanese wallets and a ridiculous amount of other pieces. After walking through with our tour guide we came out to the vast gardens that surrounded the building and there were some very strange birds living with the little ducks that had taken over. Another museum was on the same grounds, but a separate entity and had many more pieces including sculptures and some beautiful work from a few Portuguese artists. One last stop was on our agenda at a section of the museum of design which was all over the city because of the construction in their main building. This exhibit was composed of tattoos… directly on human skin. Literal cut outs of skin from the chests, backs and arms of deceased inmates from 1912. The staff there were very insistent on NOT taking pictures. It was pretty gross. Once we left, we ended up wandering through a festival in the city for a while before we headed home to rest for our early taxi ride to the airport the next morning. The airport was crazy as usual, and it didn’t help that our flight was pushed forward so we were supposed to leave even earlier. A brief sprint through the terminal and some intense maneuvers through passport lines and security got us to our gate on time. From there life was easy, and we came back to Logan after a stop in Philadelphia. I’m happy to be home, but I will miss Portugal dearly. This experience was life changing and I will definitely be back to Portugal someday soon!