Porto, Portugal

My trip to Portugal was all around pretty awesome. I should probably start from the beginning. Well, J and I woke up early Saturday morning, about 7, to catch our 915 flight. I don´t know really what happened, but we got to the airport a bit later than I had expected, but with what SHOULD have been enough time, if RyanAir weren´t total losers....

Conclusion 1: Ryanair sucks at life
I have come to this conclusion because of the following reasoning. I asked at the check in desk if what I had printed via internet should suffice as boarding passes. The woman told me yes. By the time we got to the security line and waited, we were then told that I needed some kind of stamp since I am not a european union member. So I went back to the lady, who basically was like, oops, I told you the wrong thing, go stand in this line, and get your boarding pass stamped. So I go in this supposed line. The line is for people who want to buy tickets. J asks if I can cut the people who are buying tickets to simply get a stamp, no one lets us. We finally after waiting get the stupid stamp and race to the security line. J gets yelled at for sneaking around some barriers blah blah, we race through security, race to our gate...

Conclusion 2: Totally valid that the MaCallisters lose Kevin in Home Alone.
After racing through the airport at top speed I was amazed I managed to arrive at the boarding gate with my passport, jacket and one carryon bag (another reason ryanair sucks, the one carry on bag, they make you shove it in that sizing thing, ugh). I was sweating like a nasty man and thank god our flight was a few minutes delayed, because we were still able to board, but it was a rather stressful morning.

After this debacle, we arrived in Porto fairly easily. We were able to find the metro, and after about 45 min we exited in Aliados, where our hotel was. We stayed in the Residencia Dos Aliados, which proved to be a nice experience. The hotel was located in the Plaza de Dos Aliados, where the city hall is. It sorta reminded me of Sol in Madrid, but bigger. We left our bags at the hotel, as it was too early to check in, and immediately went for coffee and breakfast. In our attempted spanish mixed with porguese, we ordered two coffees with milk and some sort of pastry with ham and chorizo which was actually quite good. It remained drizzling outside, as it had been doing since our arrival. Umbrellas in hand, we wandered down the city streets, passing some pretty architectural sights until we arrived at the riverfront. The area alongside the river is the touristy part of town, its called the Ribiera de Gaia and has shop fronts, restaurants, terrace seating, etc. We just kinda wandered and then decided to cross the bridge.

The bridge crosses the Duoro River. On one side is Oporto and on the other side is a different town, called Nova de Gaia. Alongside the river in this town is where all the famous wine cellars are. There are 6 bridges that cross this river but the most important is the giant iron one, which was Europes famous iron structure in the late 1800´s before the Eiffel Tower was built. I will post pics on facebook. We walked across the lower part of the bridge (there are two parts to cross, the high part or the low) and immediatly beelined towards the nearest bodega (wine cellar), called Calem Wine cellars.

For 4 euros each, we took the tour and tasted two port wines. In summary, the port wine, which is usually used as an appetizer or dessert wine bc its very strong, it has about 20 percent alcohol per bottle vs a normal wine has abotu 12 percent, can only be made in the Duoro Valleys of Porto, Portugal. There are 3 basic kinds white (branco in portugese), ruby or tawny. Basically all the grapes are harvested in september and then wine is then shipped to the wine cellars in Nova de Gaia to ferment in barrels. They used to ship the wine up the river in boats, now they use trucks. The wine can sit for anywhere from 5 to 20 years in the barrels, aging. If a year has an especially good harvest, they can make special ´vintage´port wine, which is aged longer and is obviously more ´special´. The white port is used as an appetizer usually whereas ruby or tawny is for dessert, or digestion. We took the brief tour in spanish and then tasted a white and a tawny port. Then we recrossed the river and went for lunch. J´s brother had suggested this strange lunch spot, an old movie theater turned into a buffet restuarant. We found it and had lunch there. It was a little odd but fun. I had codfish, bacalo in spanish, and bacalaho in protugese, which is the famous food of porto. It was good. I really like cod so I was excited to try it.
After the wine and lunch we headed back to the hotel for a nap. After racing through the airport and all the wine and food I was totally beat. Not to mention the rugged cobblestone streets of Porto, which seem to run uphill all ways, make for quite the climb. We checked into our room and fell asleep. Our room was cute, the hotel was very old fashioned in decoration, a little old, as some might think, but I found it charmingly cute.
We woke up to heavy rain and ran to the nearest restaurant recommened by the hotel. The food was incredible. I unfortunately never got the name of the restaurant, it was a hole in the wall place that filled up minutes after we arrived, as we watched the owner turn people away in the rain for the rest of the night, we felt lucky to have arrived just in time. For 6 euros, J and I shared an appetizer of mussels in this tomato and onion herb sauce, which was literally some of the best seafood I think I have ever consumed. Then I had steak and J had turkey for dinner, all while consuming large amounts of house wine. After a tawny port and chocolate cake, we raced home all while it poured down rain. Having been smart and bought a bottle of wine earlier that day, we called it night, drank some wine, and relaxed in the comfort of our warm and dry hotel room, all while it poured down rain.

The next day we woke up to more rain and ventured out, visiting the clergios tower to start. It´s the tallest point in Oporto. We climbed the narrow, winding 285 steps to the top for gorgeous views of the city, even with the the wind, rain and fog you could still see for miles. It was very reminscint of the sagrada familia in barcelona-if anyones ever done that climb it was similar. Our next stop was the Cathedral. It was mainly Gothic architecture but had a bit of Romanico as well. It reminded me of the gothic cathedrals in leon and burgos, and it was built around the same time period the 12th or 13th century. After a large amount of history and even more rain, I was ready for lunch, so J and I found a reastaurant. I of course ordered cod and J meat, I enjoyed mine but J´s wasn´t so good. It had started raining even more heavily by the time we finished lunch. We crossed the bridge and arrived completely soaked but ready for more wine at the Sandemans winery. After a brief tour, this time in English, we tasted some more port. I loved the Sandemans white. We then found a little wine bar, had a few more glasses of port, but unable to drink off the fact that we were cold and wet, we headed home in the pouring rain, stopping at mcdonalds for some dinner on the way back. I know its cheesy to get macdonalds but with this rain, J and I didn´t want to venture out again! So we had another low key night at the hotel.
Day 3-finally, no rain! Yay! We woke up and went first to take a boat tour along the river. Most sat outside but we of course sat inside, away from the wind and near to the bar. 1 dollar for a glass of wine, we couldn´t go wrong! After the cruise we had some lunch a a cheapie tourist place, which sorta made me feel sick, and then headed to cross the TOP of the bridge. After one zillion stairs I felt a little off, so we stopped for a pick me up coffee and I felt better. We then went to croft winery and had a tour and more tasting. They make the only pink port in the world, but we didn´t have a chance to try it, unfortunately. We decided for dinner to head to that wonderful place we ate at the first night, since we enjoyed it so much. The food was equally good!.
Finally to end up on day 4, we went to the famous cafe majestic for coffee, its one of the top ten best cafes in europe. The architecture was beautiful, very ornate but also simple, not overdone. It was a lovely atmosphere. J and I then walked around Rua Catalina, the main shoppìng street, before we hopped on the metro to the airport. I made sure we had plenty of time this time to get to the airport, no running occured!

Conclusion 3-portugal is awesome
I figured if it can pour down rain and J and I could still have fun, we must be in a pretty cool place. I found it exciting that I could understand portugese, however J totally ruled in this category, he understood everything. We mainly spoke in spanish and for the most part they understood us. They spoke back in portugese. I got some of it but I found it much easier to read than to understand. It´s so weird saying obrigada instead of gracias or thank you. I figure as Brazil is soon going to be a world superpower, I should probably really start learning portugese, so I am going to work on it. It´s mostly the prouciation thats different from spanish, one main thing is they pronounce their ´s´ like an ´sh´sometime, which is interesting.

In any case, Porto is a beautiful city which I highly recommened for a long weekend. Pictures to come soon!

signing off,
L