Portugal - Porto

We got into Porto late, which in a way was good since Pete could come and meet us at the bus station. We walked around a little bit to see some of the bigger sites and then headed back to his house. He lives in an Erasmus House, which is where students studying abroad within Europe (usually) live together. Kind of like a dorm, each student in Pete's house has their own room, but most have to share bathrooms on the hall. There is also a large kitchen and laundry room, which everyone has access to. Amazingly, Pete lives with 22 other students.

The night we came, they were actually having a dinner for some students that we leaving the house. We got to chat with them a little, but since they mostly spoke Portuguese with each other, it made it harder. After that, we ended up going to a popular student bar/cafe. It was crazy how many people were there, not only in the locale, but also all over the street around it. Porto definitely seems to be a much more student/university based city than Lisbon. From there, we ended up at another bar, where there some interesting folk dancing going on. Still a hip place, we ended up folk dancing for a little while, even though we had no idea what we were doing.

The next day, we got up early to see Porto. Since Pete had to work, he just gave us some tips about what we needed to do in city. We started at the 'Cristal Palace,' which was an interesting dome with gardens around it and nice views of the river. We even caught sight of some chickens and peacocks roaming the park.


[the park]


[peacock!]


[view of porto and the river, with a plaque showing it in earlier years]


[delicious pastry! "pastel de nata" an egg-custard cup of deliciousness]

From there, we walked through town down to the river. Porto definitely has a very 'old-Europe' feel, very different from Lisbon. The houses we old, fit together very interestingly and colorful.


[houses in Porto]


[big bridge in Porto]


[by the river]


[Annie and me... we don't just look tired, we were tired]

On the other side of the river, there are lots of Port (the sweet wine that comes from Portugal) distilleries. Since they need to do some sort of advertising, they almost all offer free wine-testing, and others have tours. We ended up going into one and getting an explanation of the different kinds of Port and then tasting a little. It was really interesting to get to learn about the wine rather than just drink it.


[One distillery, not the one we went to]

After walking around Porto and seeing the sites, we jumped on a bus to Lisbon with Pete in the afternoon; a bus ride that included some delicious sandwiches that we made. Pete was on his way down to southern Portugal to spend the weekend with some French students on the beach.

Annie and I spent our last night in Portugal reflecting on how much fun we had in such a short amount of time and enjoying the last moments of our vacation.