Portugal and Pastries

It was a very early morning wake-up call, but we were able to drag ourselves out of bed and made it to the Dublin airport with plenty of time. The flight to Lisbon was less than 2 hours. It still amazes me that you can be in a different country in less time than it takes to drive from LA to San Diego! I guess I never explained why we went to Portugal. Marco had to attend some meetings there, so I decided to tag along since I always wanted to visit Portugal.

The Lisbon airport was quite modern and gave us a good first impression of Portugal. We needed to take a train to the north to Porto, so we stopped at the visitor information office to find out the best way to get to the main train station. The guy there very confidently said to just go outside and take the #44 bus and we would be at the Oriente Station in about 10 minutes. So, we waited about 10 minutes and hopped on the #44 bus. After about 10 minutes, Marco decided to ask the bus driver just to be sure. He shook his head and said we should have been on the #44 that goes the other direction! Our first tiny misadventure. :) We got off at the next stop and crossed the street to wait for the other bus. As soon as it rolled up, Marco saw a sign that said they didn't allow luggage on that particular bus! Well, what in the world?? By this time we were so frustrated that we decided just to take a taxi. So, we crossed the road again and found a taxi. It amazed me that Marco, with his Spanish, was able to communicate fairly well with the Portuguese speakers. Although they were clearly speaking different languages there are enough similarities to understand each other. Luckily, taxis are MUCH cheaper in Portugal than in Ireland. We would later find out that everything was much cheaper than in Ireland. Anyway, our taxi driver was very nice, as were most of the people we met during our visit. Coincidentally, he was born in Mozambique, which is where my dad has been working for about the last 9 months! We made it the the station and bought tickets for the train. We found a little shop, where we bought fresh baked baguettes and some cheese for lunch.



The train ride was about 3 hours through the countryside, so it was nice to see something outside of the big cities. We arrived at the Campanha station in Porto and decided to take a taxi right from the start since we were a bit tired. Our hotel was right next to the university, where Marco's meetings would be. Luckily, there was a metro station just outside, so that was extremely convenient. The public transport system in Portugal was great and made us wish we had a metro in Galway! I can't believe I haven't mentioned the weather yet.....it was amazing!!!! Blue skies and about 70 degrees every day. It was such a treat for residents of Ireland, where that would equal the best day of summer. So, while Marco checked in with the team at the university, I headed down to the grocery store just to see what things cost. I know, I'm so silly, but that kind of thing is actually fun for me. I quickly discovered that everything is about half the price compared to Ireland. The biggest surprise was that wine costs almost nothing! Seriously, I saw a bottle of wine for about 1 euro, which is just a little more than $1. Even the good brands that I recognized were about 4 or 5 euros!!! Now that's my kind of country. :)

The next day, Marco headed out for a whole day of meetings and I set out to explore the city. Porto is situated right on the Douro River, which creates a beautiful setting. You can see in some of the pictures that the old part of the city sort of crawls up the hill above the river. It was really fun exploring that part of town and getting a bit lost on some tiny little streets that weren't on the map! The place is full of steep hills, so my legs were just burning after about an hour. It was fantastic exercise, but very tiring. I walked past most of the big sights and then decided to take one of the "hop on-hop off" tour buses. It's a great way to see a wider range of sights and parts you might not reach on foot. It was quite beautiful, especially this long stretch along the coast that was pretty spectacular. I stopped for a light lunch at a cafe on the river and then found my way to one of the may wonderful pastry shops!!! Then it was back to the hotel for the night. When Marco came home he told me a funny experience he had during the day. He went to the bathroom and noticed that there were 2 stalls. He entered one of the empty stalls to pee, but didn't lock the door behind him.....I guess it's a guy thing. After he came out, he quickly realized that it was a unisex bathroom.....one stall was for women and one for men!!!!! The funny part is that when he came out he realized that he had used the wrong one. :)

Our second day in Porto Marco had more meetings. I ventured out on my own again to try and find some of the places I didn't see the first day. Luckily, Marco's meetings didn't last all day, so we met up later so that he could see a bit of the city. Later that night he took me out to a really romantic dinner at a place right on the river. We ordered a steak dinner that was supposed to be for 2, but I swear it could have fed 4!!! We were just stuffed, but it was absolutely delicious. We walked quite a while after dinner to try and digest the feast before heading back to the hotel.

Friday morning we packed up and took the metro back to the Campanha train station. We made the trip back to Lisbon and navigated the metro to our hotel. We quickly discovered that Lisbon had some hills just like Porto and our hotel was at the top of one! So we pulled our suitcases (on wheels!) up the hill and checked in. It was a decent hotel and within 10 minutes walking to the main part of town. One funny thing was how small the elevator was. It's really only big enough for 2 or 3 people to stand close to each other. It was also quite loud, which unfortunately we discovered after we went to bed. :( But we were so tired that once we fell asleep we didn't notice a thing. But since we arrived early afternoon, we had plenty of time to get out and explore Lisbon. We found our way to the main square and chose a cute sidewalk cafe for lunch. The food was not great, but the setting was perfect, complete with street musicians to entertain us. After lunch we decided to do the bus tour thing just to see the main sights and help us decide what we wanted to visit the next day. Near the end of the tour, we decided to get off to get a closer look at the Tower of Belem. It was built in the early 16th century and is one of the more famous sights in Lisbon. We got there to discover that the tower was closed to the public as the employees were on strike! Luckily it was just before sunset, so the views were pretty spectacular. We had a drink at a small cafe and watch the sun go down over the ocean. We then waited for the next bus and made our way back to the hotel. Since we didn't have much time to recover from our trip to the US, we were pretty tired every day. We settled in for a nap to recover some energy. Once we woke up, we wandered around our neighborhood to find something for dinner. We found a little local restaurant where we grabbed a sandwich and decided we were more than ready for sleep!

Our last full day in Lisbon we decided to do more exploring on foot. On a side note.....during the trip I can't remember how many pastries we had, but it was a lot and they were all delicious!! Back to the plan.....we discovered lots of neat neighborhoods and, of course, plenty of hills! We visited the Castle of Sao Jorge, which was built on the highest hill of the historic city center. This meant lots of spectacular views of the city of Lisbon. After that we found our way to the Se Cathedral, which is the oldest church in the city. It had beautiful architecture, but the most interesting thing was an archaeological dig they have undertaken in the rear of the church. They have discovered remains from as early as the 4th century B.C.!! After we left the cathedral we were pretty hungry. We wandered around and found a little restaurant that was full of locals except for us. We both enjoy that much more than the tourist type restaurants. The owner was really nice and the food was much better than what we had the previous day. One thing we learned is that in Portugal you get charged for bread, butter and anything else they put on the table to eat. They bring the bread and butter and sometimes other appetizers and if you eat it you pay. If you don't eat it, you don't pay! Interesting. We went back to the hotel for a little rest as we were planning to go out for a nice evening. We learned about this area called "The Docks", which used to be sort of industrial, but has been revamped into a row of restaurants and clubs. It was a really cool place with lots of restaurants to choose from. We ended up in a little Italian place and had another romantic dinner overlooking the water. We didn't have enough energy to stay up for a wild night of dancing (we are getting old!) so it was back to the hotel to turn in.

Sunday morning we packed up and headed back to the Lisbon airport. We had a fairly uneventful trip back to Dublin and eventually home to Galway. It was really nice to be home!!! We could finally begin to unpack all of our suitcases from the US and settle back into life. But before long we'll be packing to leave again. We are heading to South Africa to visit my parents for the holidays for about a month. We are really excited to see them and to have some warm, sunny weather for Christmas! It will be summer there, and we could certainly use an escape from the cold, damp weather that is Galway!!