Welcome to Lisbon, would you like to buy some illicit drugs?

I wrote this about a week ago and just now published it, sorry for being behind, but I put up three posts today to make up for it. It is raining here and I am so pleased about it. When we were preparing to go to Lisbon they told us it would be cold and windy because it is so close to the ocean, so I packed warm. Big mistake! Lisbon was at least 85 degrees and I was dying of heat! I´ve been sticky and hot for the past three days. And Alcala isn´t much better. Once we got off the tour bus we had to walk ten minutes to the plaza where the internet cafe is, carrying all of our bags from the trip, and sweating like crazy. It is terrible. But it was okay that we were hot because Lisbon, or as they call it Lisboa was so beautiful! I don´t know if it was becaue we were in their capital, but it seemed a lot nicer than Spain. Cleaner, less grafitti, just overall better. And everybody there speaks English! It was so nice, because we definitely don´t speak Portuguese. There was one thing that was way worse though, and that was the people who prey on tourists. They are a lot more common and more bold in Lisboa. Wherever we´d go, there would be a gypsy woman selling scarves, some creepy guy pushing sunglasses, old women shoving fans in your face, all of then yelling and approaching you to buy things. It was TERRIBLE when we went out to have free time. I guess we were in a fairly touristy area because there were people trying to get your money everywhere. We were sitting in an outdoor cafe, and every so often gypsies would pass by and hold out a cup for donations. One time they did it in teams. A man with sunglasses and a woman with a donation cup passed on each side of the tables at the same time. These women cracked me up because most of the time, people have a gimmick to get your money. They sell you sunglasses, play the guitar, are horribly crippled in some way, or they even steal it, but these ladies had nothing. They didn´t even try to inspire sympathy by wheeling by in a wheelchair or wearing dirty tattered clothes, they just expected us to hand over our money because they shoved a cup in our faces as they walked by. They didn´t even hang around annoyingly so we would pay them to go away. I guess they wouldn´t do it if it wasn´t profitable, but I never saw anyone give them money. There was this other guy with a recorder that was pretty terrible too. He would wander around playing, but when people passed him, he would stop playing so he could follow them and harrass them. And he had long scraggly hair and was really dirty, so he wasn´t the kind of guy you´d feel comfortable approaching you. He would have done much better to sit and play. There were also a lot of hobos in this area, but they were surprisingly unenthusiatic. They just laid around listlessly on the steps of this old cathedral and didn´t even try. They looked kind of asleep, but I was trying to avoid all eye contact so I couldn´t be sure. We did see a really cool street performer though. We were walking down the street, and if there hadn´t been people gathered around him, we never would have seen him. He was standing in the middle of the street on a podium and he was painting and dressed like an old-fashioned bronze statue that had greened with age. He would stand perfectly still and then bow to whoever gave him coins. We were so intrigued that we staid to watch him for about 15 minutes at least. His eyes are closed when he waits for money, but he obviously noticed us all standing their giggling, so he would often smile or look at us after he had bowed to whoever had paid him. I gave him 5 centavos for his efforts, but people were giving him money left and right, so I´m sure he made it out fine. Oh, I almost forgot! Not only would people walk up to to sell normal things like sunglasses, t-shirts, fans, etc, but there was also a fair amount of people selling cocaine! With no shame at all, they would offer it to you as you passed and they didn´t even try to hide it. You could see the drugs in their hand 15 feet before you passed them. They were pretty nicely dressed, too, so I guess the coke business is pretty lucrative. I wonder if it is illegal.