BIRD!! (Spring Break) || March 12, 2018

Friday, March 9

Welcome to Porto!

We have no idea what we're doing!

Coming in there was a lot of turbulence and the plane had to stop its descent, fly back up, and circle the area to wait out better landing conditions. Because of this delay we barely, just barely made it onto the last metro of the night. Which we only knew was the last metro of the night because a worker came over and said that we only had four minutes and we needed to leave NOW. Unfortunately, before that we mistakenly bought a "5 title 24 hr ticket" so five one day tickets. Right? Wrong. It was actually one five day ticket, so it looks like we'll be coming back tomorrow to try to return it. But for the meantime we all quickly bought our own tickets, had to run back to validate them, and just barely hopped on the train before it left the station. YIKES! But on the bright side we stopped at a little coffee place on the way out (although in retrospect, if we'd known the last metro left at one we definitely would have skipped this pit stop) and I got a delicious little custard tart which I'm looking forward finding again over the next few days.

Monday, March 12

Hello from something thousand feet! I'm currently on a flight from Porto to Ponta Delgada and although I'm ready for our next stop, I'm also super sad to be leaving. Porto has probably been my favorite destination so far despite the off and on rain and ever-present high-speed winds. Our first day there was especially cold because we were naive enough to believe we wouldn't need our jackets and umbrellas. It was nice and sunny when we left the airbnb which made the temperature in the high fifties feel quite nice. Unfortunately, the sun did not last long and we found ourselves being chased by angry rainclouds every so often until we took shelter under a bridge, store awning, or restaurant to wait it out. Also, the wind was nearly strong enough to sweep me off my feet and chilled me down to my core so I always felt cold, even when we went inside. Nevertheless we happily wandered up and down the hilly streets, bridges, and riverbank for hours searching around for cool things to see and do. Each narrow, cobblestone street offered a new type of beauty, whether it be the colorful house fronts, skillfully crafted tile mosaics, or the iconic work of architect Nicolau Nasoni (seriously, it’s like he designed all of the iconic buildings in the area). It's also impossible not to mention that the views overlooking the river and surrounding buildings were AMAZING. I wouldn't have minded sitting at an overlook the entire day, rain or shine. And as an added bonus to the view, the river came with a crap ton of seagulls! They were so adorable and easily my favorite photo subject. After our time around the city, we went to a grocery store near the airbnb and got the ingredients to make dinner for the night. Then we headed off to the beach! Since the waves were very rough and crashing over the pathway to the lighthouse we wanted to see, it was closed off to visitors, but we still got to enjoy the view. Shortly after sunset, it started to storm again and we returned to the airbnb. Shannon and Jack tried to start making dinner immediately, but the stove was very finicky so it took forever to actually do so. We even ended up having the host come to the apartment and show us how to work it, but he wasn't helpful at all and we just had to figure it out ourselves. Thankfully though, they did and the food was delicious! We finished out the night by doing laundry and watching Jumanji, ready for day two.

Random things:

-Pastel de Natas & a really delicious purple fruit juice

-Porto is extremely English friendly—it seemed that everyone we encountered was multilingual and could speak Portuguese along with English, French, and/or Spanish

-much love for the orange rooftops

The next morning/yesterday, as we were walking along one of the main downtown streets, Shannon and I decided to pop into a store that sold the cutest little handmade, wooden trinkets. And thus began a 30 minute souvenir buying session! This was a good thing because I haven't really shopped for gifts at all since I've been in Europe. Usually when I go on trips I buy a keychain for my collection and that's about it, unless something just really calls to me. And as we all well know, objects tend not to speak so that doesn't happen very often, hence a severe lack of offerings to friends and family back home. Once my debit card was sufficiently screaming at me to stop, we headed on to get a viewpoint from atop the city. So up and up the narrow staircase of the Clergios tower we went until we finally reached the top, home of a narrow balcony and cold, powerful winds. There were a couple points where the wind seriously could have knocked me off balance, but even if it had there would be no real harm done because the railing was quite tall. After a round of photos we headed back down and into the museum area of the building. I didn't find it all that interesting but the church area was quite pretty with not only the standard beige and grey building materials but also two tones of pink marble. After the church we made a little gelato stop, and wandered the streets some more (can you tell we like to wander?) until we eventually entered a beautiful garden area. We spent a couple of hours there just having fun and taking lots and lots of photos, mostly of birds if we're being honest. The seagulls are just so beautiful and there are tons of them! I even managed a selfie which is one of my favorite photos from the entire trip. We decided to leave when it started raining, headed back to the hostel, had dinner, and watched the Incredibles. All in all a pretty solid night if you ask me.

And that brings us back to earlier today. Much like yesterday and the day before, we wandered around quite a bit. This time we went across the Dom Luis I bridge, which I quite liked the design of, and then down along the river on the opposite side. The riverfront was very picturesque with the colourful buildings of the city across from us contrasting against the adorable small boats docked on our side. There were also a lot of little stands selling trinkets and things as we walked along that were very hard to resist. We had to check out from our airbnb around 1:00, so after that we went back to pick up our stuff then headed to the airport.

Pro tip: Do not wash your clothes in a humid location if you don't have a good method of drying them.... air drying is not as effective as you’d think! We left ours out for two days yet I was still forced to wear and/or pack away my cold, damp clothing when we moved on to the next place.

Pro tip #2: Do not travel with Shannon or me to a place with lots of cute birds. We will announce every one and annoy the crap out of you.