Spraang Brakeee Pt. 2: A City full of Port(o)raits

First stop in Portugal: Porto. Flying into Porto was perhaps one the scariest landings I have ever experienced.  With our luck, we traveled to Portugal during a tropical storm, and for whatever reason, Ryanair decided to not cancel the flight.  Well, long story short, I thought we were gonna die, especially when we were about 10 feet from the ground and a strong gust of wind almost blew the wing into the runway. Once safely on the ground, we took the metro to the town center, which was only a 5 minute walk from our Airbnb.

After sleeping in late, we walked into the old town to begin our Portugal exploration.  When I walked outside, the weather was so pretty that made the stupid decision to leave the jacket behind and walk out with a short sleeve shirt. The first part of the morning consisted of wandering around the old town, exploring the old narrow cobble stone streets and the old castle overlooking the Douro River down below. As we began to make our way down the hilly narrow streets towards the river, the wind picked up ten fold and dark black clouds rolled in out of nowhere. Thus, we stopped in for a quick lunch in order to let the storm pass. When we walked back outside, it was sunny again, so we continued to walk along the river. Porto is probably my favorite city that I´ve visited in Europe thus far, due to its completely different architecture from the rest of Western Europe. In addition, it is built into the side of a canyon with the river running through it, so in between the red roofed houses was lush green grass and palm trees. Finally, spanning the river is the iconic Ponta Luis Bridge which is a beautiful double decker tress bridge. Unfortunately, we didn´t have too much longer to walk around before the clouds rolled back in and it began to pour.  Thus, we hopped on the convenient metro and headed back to our Airbnb to let the rain pass. Sure enough, the rain did let up, so we headed out in the evening to watch the sunset over the ocean. This was absolutely spectacular, with the sun casting brilliant rays through the thick rain clouds off in the horizon. We sat down right in front of a lighthouse, which was closed off due to the massive storm waves, but we were able to get some amazing photos with the waves crashing around it with the sun setting behind it. 

The weather Sunday morning turned out to be not as nice, but it was not raining when we woke up, so we headed into the city and tried to see as much as we could see before we got socked in. We were thankful for any non-rainy moments that we could get, because we were expecting a hurricane this weekend. After getting caught up in a shopping store for almost an hour (thanks to Shannon and Lexie), we climbed the steps of the tallest tower in Porto (Clerigos Church) to overlook the city. The sky was cloudy, but it was still a gorgeous sight. In every direction, there were red roofed buildings, with stone cathedrals scattered in between and the river off in the distance, separating the two parts of the city. While we were up top, we got hit with a wall of rain, so we headed back down and into the church museum. The rain cleared up quickly, so we ventured out to grab lunch. On our way to lunch, we bought traditional Portuguese cod cakes, which tasted like crab cakes filled with cheese. After lunch, we walked across the town to visit the Jardin do Palacio de Cristal, a tropical botanical gardens built on the top of the cliff overlooking the city, the river, and the ocean off to the west. We spent a good 2-3 hours wandering through the gardens, taking pictures of the flora, playing on the playground like children, and posing with the wild peacocks in the park. At some point, Shannon and I got separated from the rest of the group, and we spent the next 45 minutes looking for each other (I should add that it had begun to pour by this point). Just when Shannon and I were about to head back to the apartment (we had the key), we meet up, and realized that we had just been trading places in the circular shaped park in the process of looking for each other.  Anyways, due to the rain, we headed back to the apartment to dry off and cook dinner.  Shannon cooked some delicious chicken chili stew, but not without a slew of problems with the stove top not working.  We finally got our food made after 2 hours of turning it the stove on and off and calling over the landlord, but we finally got to eat. We finished off the night by watching the Incredibles in anticipation of Incredibles 2 coming out later this year.

Our last day in Porto was the prettiest of them all, with no wind and no rain. We were supposed to go on a boat tour down the Duoro River, but when we got to the tourist center, we were informed that it had been cancelled due to the recent heavy rainfall. We were initially fairly disappointed, as a boat ride down the river is one of the top rated tourist attractions in Porto, but it ended up giving us the morning to explore the other part of Porto across the river.  We ended up having lunch and Port wine(wasn´t my favorite, but I´m glad I tried this typical wine from Porto) in a small cafe overlooking the river and the Cedofeita (old downtown). After this, we walked along the river, stopping at handcraft souveinier stands, before hopping back on the metro to head to the airport. So far, Portugal is far better than I expected.  The weather is much warmer than cold, rainy Germany, the people are extremely friendly, and the food prices are relatively inexpensive compared with the rest of Europe. Finally, I´m sure I don´t even need to mention how absolutely gorgeous this city is- the pictures should speak for themselves. Although I am sad to leave Porto, our Portugal expedition is no where near over...  next stop: Sao Miguel Island, the Hawaii of Europe.