Porto for the Weekend

I had Friday off this last week and travelled with some friends to Porto, Portugal for the weekend. It was pretty crazy, first of all to be travelling to Portugal for the weekend, but even more so because we were a group of 11 and really had no idea what there was to do in Porto and decided to just take it as it came. We ended up having an absolute blast and it was definitely one of the more memorable weekends of the semester! Travelling as a group of 11 definitely presented some challenges and for us it started very early on.

Most of our group decided to take a train to the airport because it's faster than the city bus that runs there and it's free. Our plan was to meet at the train platform and all get there together. Most of us got to the platform with about a minute to spare for our 8:10 train and hopped while my friends Mari and Melissa were late. We thought they had missed the train and would have to find another way to the airport but soon after leaving, we realized we were actually the ones who got on the wrong train entirely. The 5 of us on that train asked around and found out that our train was actually headed to Tarragona, a city about 40 minutes south of Barcelona. Even worse, the train didn't make any stops until getting to Tarragona. Fortunately, we began talking with a woman who spoke good English and she was able to get on her iphone and call a van to take us to the airport from Tarragona. After our initial panic we started to calm down and realized we had plenty of time to make it to the airport even with the additional 40 minute cab ride. It was a rocky start to the trip, but we were soon laughing about it when we finally made it to the airport and met up with the rest of the group!

Our plane landed in Porto at about midnight on Thursday and after about a 30 minute metro ride, we had arrived at our hostel, The Garden House Hostel. The hostel was right in the center of town and was a great hostel with a really nice kitchen, living room, patio and lots of big bunk rooms. After getting all checked in, we immediately went to bed, it was an exhausting few hours of travelling! The next morning, we were all up and at the hostel-provided breakfast at about 10 and ready to see the city. We found out at breakfast that the hostel offered a free, 2 and a half hour walking tour of he city and decided that it would be a better alternative to us wandering aimlessly around the city to see sights. The tour ended up being a perfect way to see the city. Our group of 11 ended up pretty much having a private tour since we made up most of the tour group.

This is a picture of the main square where the tour began, it was just a couple minutes walk from the hostel. The tour took us all through the city. It was actually pretty tiring, Porto is very hilly so we did a lot of walking up and down hills. We saw a lot of the small squares and learned a bit about some of the statues and monuments in them. One of my favorite things about the buildings in the city was that many of them had blue, ceramic tiles on the facade. Our tour guide told us the tiles are very characteristic of Portugese buildings. The were so beautiful and gave the city a very unique feel.

A couple other highlights of the tour were seeing the cathedral, the bridge and the Lello bookstore. The Lello bookstore is a beautiful book store (unfortunately they didn't allow us to take pictures inside but here's a link to some http://www.top10portugal.com/lello-bookstore-porto). The bookstore was incredible, our tour guide told us that J.K. Rowling did some of the initial work on Harry Potter while living in Porto and Lello was her inspiration for Flourish and Botts bookstore. It was incredible store, I'm really happy we got to see it. The views from the bridge were also gorgeous. The bridge is about 50 meters over the river and provides a view of the city going down into the river valley. All of the buildings where Port Wine is stored are also located down along the river because it made it easy to transport the wine from the vineyards further upstream.

The tour ended up being a perfect way to see the city. Porto is small enough that the 2 and a half hour tour allowed us to see pretty much the whole city, so we decided to find some lunch after the tour. We walked down next to the river in search of a restaurant that served franceschina sandwiches, a signature meal in Porto. These were some serious sandwiches. A franceschina consists of a sandwich stuffed with beef, ham, chorizo and cheese, then it's smothered in melted cheese and covered in a gravy-like sauce. It was an absolutely delicious sandwich, but we definitely all should have taken our tour guide's advice and split them. The walk back up the hill from the riverside was pretty brutal after that lunch and it didn't take any convincing to get our whole group back to the hostel to take a nap.

After our siesta, we decided that we were all still too full from lunch to do much for dinner so we went to a grocery store just down the street and bought a bunch of wine, bread, brie and crackers and drank and ate snacks at the hostel. The hostel also offered a pub crawl and port tasting that night so we all decided that's what we wanted to do. The port tasting was allright, I didn't love the port, it was very sweet. We had fun though and then had an absolute blast on the pub crawl. We ended up going to two different bars and a club and were given drinks at each place. The street the bars was on was packed with people drinking outside and it was just a fun, block-party like atmosphere to be a part of. Some late night cocoa puffs at the hostel was a perfect ending to the night.

We were off to a pretty slow start on Saturday, we all wanted to sleep in a bit and relax at the hostel after eating breakfast. We eventually left at around noon and went to go walk up the Clerigos Tower in the middle of town. The tower was about 240 steps up and provided an amazing view of the city. Luckily the weather was beautiful as well (it was supposed to rain all day but ended up being very sunny) and we could really take in the views. We could see the whole city, the river and even out to the Atlantic Ocean.

After taking in the views and taking some pictures, we walked back down the tower and decided to head to the beach. After wandering around a little bit, we found our way down to the river and found the bus that would take us over to the beach. The ride to the beach took about 20 minutes and followed the Douro River until it reached the Atlantic. We were starving when we got there, took a couple pictures at the beach and then set off to find a cafe for some lunch. We found a small cafe and had a long lunch outside, there were all sorts of delicious pastas that most of us ended up getting. After lunch, we walked to a nearby grocery store and bought some Super Bock (Portuguese beer) and some ice and then headed back down to the beach for the afternoon. The beach was gorgeous, it was very sunny and there were all sorts of large, jagged rocks that we could watch the waves break on. We spent the afternoon sitting on the beach, taking pictures and talking, it was a great time! After a couple hours, it looked like rain was approaching so we hopped back on the bus right as the rain hit.

We decided we all felt like cooking dinner that night, so after getting back to the hostel, we pooled some money and went to the grocery store to buy spaghetti, chicken, garlic bread, salad, more brie and more wine. We all split up the cooking and made a huge, delicious meal. Five of us had flights to catch at 6:30 Sunday morning, and we decided that instead of sleeping, we'd pack our stuff, go to a pub and leave right from the pub to the airport. We figured out how to get to the airport (had to catch a 4am bus) and all headed out to the pub to do some St. Patrick's day celebrating. After a few pints of Guiness and some Irish Car Bombs, we did a surprisingly great job of finding the bus to the airport and made it to our gate with time to spare. The flight felt like it took forever, but it was good to know I'd get back to Barcelona and have the whole day to nap and relax outside. It was a great weekend, Portugal was gorgeous and we had a great time!

It's going to be a pretty busy upcoming week, I'm headed to a soccer game on Tuesday night (I can't wait!) and then my parents and Clara get here Friday morning and we're heading to the Costa Brava for the weekend, it's going to be so great seeing them and showing them around Barcelona! Adios until then!

I haven't uploaded my Portugal pictures yet, but I'll be sure to post a link when I do!