DAY 4

Sacramento State enjoyed its fourth and final day in Madeira, and departed for Lisbon in the afternoon. The Hornets are currently on a 12-day foreign tour that will see the team tour parts of Portugal and Spain. Below is the fourth installment of a series of blogs every Hornet player will write during the trip. Today, we hear from senior libero Caty Cordano.

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We are off to a new city today! Our travel guide, David Kniffen, sent us a text to be packed and ready to go by 10 am for todays' adventure. Our travel itinerary consisted of a few stops around the island before our 4 pm flight to Lisbon. My roommate (Karlie Spohn) and I woke up a little past our alarm this morning, which is a pretty typical occurrence with us. Once we got out of bed, we quickly picked our outfits, stuffed our suitcases, and sat on them to zip them shut.

I am so sad to be leaving the beautiful island of Madeira. The past few days have been jam packed with amazing experiences. However, I am very excited to experience everything Lisbon has to offer. Our first bus ride was to Ponta do Garajau to see the Miradouro do Cristo Rei do Garajau monument. It looks very similar to the Christ the Redeemer statue located in Rio de Janeiro. The outlook point was absolutely beautiful - there were miles of ocean views and hundreds of colorful homes on the edges of the mountains.

We left the point and drove 15 minutes to Santa Cruz. We were given two hours of free time to explore the city. The whole team started to walk around to look for food, but we were instantly distracted by the hotel pool on the other side of the block from the rocky beach and decided to head there. We lounged around the pool for an hour or so. The majority of the girls were tanning and reading, which was very relaxing after the last few days of sightseeing.

While we were at the pool, Greta (Davis), Kate (Doorn) and Mia (Guevara) walked in soaking wet from swimming in the ocean. They were telling us how fun it was jumping 15 feet off of a cement dock. Naturally, the rest of the adrenaline junkies went to the dock and started jumping in the water and then climbing back up the ladder to do it all over again. The group had to be back at the bus by 2 pm to head to the airport, otherwise we would've been on the dock all day long. We headed back to the bus suited up in our travel gear, and headed to the airport.

The airport was business as usual. Caitlin (Volkmann), Ellie (Tisko), Bridgette (Smith), Hailey (Plugge) and I stopped for lunch at this cute spot and got some delicious 'Toasties' as they call it here. We all boarded the airplane smoothly, which was a breath of fresh air considering Ashlynn (Archer) had trouble with her flight into Lisbon a few days ago. We now have a running joke that the city of Lisbon is not a big fan of our Arch Mama. On the airplane, I sat next to Greta and Kate. We talked the whole flight which made the time fly. Soon enough, we had landed in Lisbon! We landed around 6:45 pm and headed to the hotel.

The hotel lobby had a pink and funk theme to it. There was a foosball table right next to the front desk. Karlee (Soderberg) and I played together before we left and I beat her 7-1 (granted she scored on herself 3 times). We all got dressed up to walk around Lisbon.

The first thing we did was hop on the metro - you can only imagine everyone staring at our group of 30 people getting on a single train. We got off at Baixa-Chiado and stopped at Time Out Market. The amount of people walking around was insane. A complete 180 from Madeira. There were guys break dancing right when we got off the metro, and the Time Market had 20+ resultants in the building. If you have time, you need to Google it to check it out. There was every type of food you can think of - Burgers, Sushi, Pizza, Noodles, Donuts, Fresh Fish, Steak! Everything you could ever imagine. The girls all went to Crush Doughnuts and got so many different flavors. There was red velvet, Oreo, peanut butter, lotus! They were so colorful and filled with sugar ;)

We got to walk around for a bit after dinner and walked to Pink Street. It was so lively at night with all the people and music. The murals were so colorful and edgy. There were neon signs and umbrellas hanging from buildings. The streets were actually pink!! It was insane. Then we went back to the hotel and went to sleep. I very much enjoyed the first night in Lisbon!

Day 3 Blog - Kalani Hayes
Day 2 Blog - Bridgette Smith
Day 1 Blog - Caitlin Volkmann