So we left on Thursday evening and had a stressful time trying to make our flight, but we did! Once we arrived in Porto, we were sooooo excited to be in Portugal! We then headed to the metro to get to our hostel and a nice ticket man named Diogo helped us out. The ticket purchasing system is very confusing, if you ask me, and the whole metro system there is bad. It's only been running for 8 years and it is not efficient AT ALL, as we quickly discovered. But, we made it onto the metro and knew which direction to go, but we accidently got off at the wrong stop, so we had to ask for directions. We hopped onto another train and made it to the right stop. Once we got off, though, we had no idea where to go, so we asked for directions and finally made it to Eden House, our fabulous hostel!
Once we'd settled in our rooms and freshened up a bit, we decided we wanted to go out and explore and eat dinner. We met a German boy our age at the hostel and asked if he wanted to come with us. He said sure, and asked if he could invite this Polish girl, Paulina, who he met in his room to come too. So we all ventured towards the riviera and walked down the river walk, crossed the bridge, and looked at some of the ports. Pretty much everything was closed or closing because it was a bit late for dinner, but we finally found a place that was open. Ashley and I split a typical dish called a Franceshina (pronounced "frances-een-ya"). It was DELISH!! After, we decided to head back home because it was getting late and we were tired.
The next day, Torben (the German kid) left for Lisbon for the day, so he wasn't around. The four of us went to a beach and Paulina went off on her own. The beach was a bit foggy and not the prettiest, but we were still excited to lay out and relax. After a few hours, we decided to head back. While sitting at the metro stop waiting for the train, we noticed a manicure/pedicure place and so we got spontaneous pedicures! ha. Only Ash and Fati got them though. The pedicurist spoke a little English and so we asked her about the shops we wanted to go to, but she said they closed already, and it was only 3pm!! Strange! So she told us about this mall that she actually liked a lot better and it was still open. We thanked her, hopped on the metro and made it to the mall. It seems that most malls in Europe have supermarkets/food courts in them, so we stopped in to eat a snack before beginning our shopping spree. We were there for a few hours and I bought cute black shorts for only 10 euros at H&M! The weather here in Spain is still pretty hot and I didn't pack any shorts, so I was in dire need. Before we left, we hit up the grocery store again because we wanted to have some inexpensive snack foods on hand.
We got lost getting back to the metro and went in circles 3 times until we finally asked someone and got on the metro. Once we got back to our metro stop, Trindad, we exited a different place than usual, so we decided to ask the policemen standing outside for directions. Bad idea. They only spoke Portuguese, so we did our best to understand, but we got lost, per usual. It took us about 45 mins. to get home and we were still in our swim suits and carrying a bunch of heavy groceries. Finally, we made it home and found Paulina crying so we cheered her up and decided to have a girls night and went out to dinner and checked out Porto's nightlife. We went to this interesting club that had sand instead of a regular floor. We were pretty tired, though, so we didn't stay out late.
The next day, we went to Bulhao (sp?) which is a touristy shopping area. There was a restaurant called Cafe Majestic there that we went to and got coffee and cheesecake. It is supposededly a famous cafe in all of Europe. Once we had been in that area for a couple of hours, we made our way to beach #2. We had to take the metro to one stop and from there, take a 20 minute bus ride to the beach. Man! But this beach was WAY better than the previous one. It was the rockiest beach I've ever been too, but it was beautiful (this is the Atlantic Ocean, by the way). The water was freezing, but we laid out and got good tans. Paulina came with us this time too. After, we got dinner at a restaurant by the beach. To sum it up, it was the WORST and slowest service ever. Never again!!
Once we finally made it back to Trindad (the metro stop near our hostel), Fati and I wanted to hurry and run down to the port to see if we could make a boat tour/wine tasting before it closed. We practically ran down to the port, but found out it had closed an hour ago. We were sad, but made a plan for Sunday, our last day, and on our way back to the hostel, we bought adorable hand-made bracelets from a man with his little artisan stand on the ribiera. We ran into Ash and Regi on our way back (they wanted to change first before going to the boat tour, but Fati and I didn't want to take the time). Ash and Fati went to eat and karaoke while Fati and I went home. When we got back, Torben was home and the four of us, Fati, Paulina, Torben, and I all hung out and chatted. Gui, the guy that ran the hostel along with his wife Ana, came in and chatted with us too and Fati and I asked him about where to go on Sunday.
Our hostel was MUCH better than the one in Barcelona. It was clean, safe, and the people were very friendly! Gui and Ana had a precious baby girl named Ema and we loved playing with her! She was blonde with blue eyes and looked like she could have been mine! So cute!! We loved our little hostel family: Gui, Ana, Ema, Paulina, Torben and the 4 of us! That really made our stay in Porto a lot better!
On Sunday, we got up to go take the bus to a museum called Serralves, but the bus on Sundays ran very infrequently and we discovered that we'd have to change buses sever times to get to the museum. We just didn't have the time because we had to make it to the airport by 3ish. So we (the 4 of us and Torben) went down to the ribiera and got on a boat tour of the Rio do Duoro with a wine tasting at the end. YAY!!! It was so much fun and on our way back to the hostel we got delicious gelato--which Fati spilled all over herself 3 times! Then we ran back to the hostel, grabbed our stuff, and ran to the metro to get to the airport. We were running late...again. Torbs came with us because he had nothing else to do, and said goodbye. It was really sweet. We made it right on time, just as they were in line to board the plane and an hour later were back in beautiful Madrid.
Porto was definitely an adventure. There were parts we liked and dislike (like the horribly inefficient public tranportation system), but overall, it was an amazing adventure! We were glad to be back in Madrid, though!
Here are some pictures:
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