Porto, Portugal

Hola! I'm back from visiting Porto, Portugal. It was fun and definitely a different experience there than in Salamanca. We arrived Friday night around 6 (and gained an hour from Spain time) and left today just after noon. It took us awhile longer to get home because despite the fact that we were using a GPS, we still managed to get lost a bit. The positive part of getting side-tracked was that we took a new route back that took us through the wine country! I've never seen anything like it--beautiful! (See pix).

Friday we went out to dinner down by the Douro River and walked around by all of the shops. There were a lot of people out shopping at that time. After that we came back to the hotel and crashed after such a long day. We woke up early Saturday morning and ate an awesome free breakfast at our hotel. Portugal has good food--especially pastries! After breakfast we took a tour bus around the city and stopped by the river again to take some pictures and walk around. The buildings and houses there are very white and even though I've never been to Greece, it reminded me of it. It's was beautiful! We then went on a boat ride down the river, got off, and walked down this VERY narrow two way street up a hill to go wine-tasting at Graham's. You know how in the movies they show people dancing and smashing the grapes with their feet to make the wine? It takes 5 hours non-stop to do that, and the people that used to do that would spend the first part of the day picking the grapes and then carrying them in these heavy baskets. I guess it's not as fun as it looks, but I would still like to try it someday :) Oh yeah, and the Port wine was yummy too--sweet. On our way back on the tour bus, we saw a ton of guys getting ready to jump off the big bridge into the river--locos! That was really high up.

After the wine tour we went out to eat and hit the breezy beach. It was pretty chilly, but nice. Needless to say, we didn't swim. I wonder if it would have been better if we went earlier in the day. For dinner we went to this pizzeria/gelateria, creperia and tried a little of all three things. Yum! They even offered a pizza with banana and ham or something.

I just realized that this is my LAST Sunday here. Next week at this time I'll be home...