Obrigado Porto: Portugal part 2 (plus Uncle Jack comes to London)

So where we left off after my last post was we were just getting on the train from Lisbon to Porto, and thats where things started to go haywire. The train ride itself was miserable, all three of us came off it feeling sick. I dunno what it was, but it was just misery. Not the best start to our journey. It also didn't help that upon arriving in Porto, it appeared to be just a shittier version of Lisbon. Liza had apparently been feeling sick the night before and the train ride pushed her over the edge. She felt too sick to finish out the trip, so for the next two and a half days, it was just me and Adrienne, kicking Porto's ass. That night though, we did go to a pizza place, which was a very welcome change of pace after all the seafood. I even got a free half beer out of the deal when our waitress knocked mine over when I had already finished half of it. Huzzah! Our hostel wasn't particularly nice, but it was much more sociable than the other places I've stayed in Paris and in Lisbon. All the guests kinda hung out together watching tv, eating, drinking, etc. which was pretty cool.

The next day, with Liza gone, Adrienne and I set out to take on Porto. We walked around the riverfront area, which was actually very cool. Narrow old alleyways/streets filled with slightly creepy, though friendly, Portuguese people. Next, we climbed up the 250 steps of a church tower for some fantastic views of the city. We then walked across the Duomo River and did a Port wine tasting. Port wine, if you hadn't guessed, is named because it originated in Porto. It is actually grown and made up the river from the city, but its stored and shipped out of Porto. We went to Taylors and got two free glasses of the stuff, along with some Coach Connor worthy Did You Knows. For instance, did you know that Port wine was created/made popular by English wool merchants in Portugal in the 17th century? Because their constant wars with the French cut the Brits off from their supply of French wine, they turned to their Portuguese allies as an alternate source for their vino. However, because the trip from Portugal to England is longer than the trip from France, the wine would go bad along the way, so those crazy Brits added more alcohol to the wine to make sure it could last the trip. They also added sugar to make the stronger alcohol content more palatable. Voila, you have a stronger, sweeter type of wine used as an apperatif or as a dessert wine, called Port. Share that with your friends at parties, they won't care. It also isn't very good in my opinion, too sugary.

Anywho, Adrienne and I decided to save some cash and stop at the grocery store to buy food for dinner, as many of our fellow hostel-stayers seemed to do, rather than go out. We made a delightful spaghetti bolognese. I also picked up some beers, as I was determined to get drunk at least once in Portugal. Luckily for me, some of the other hostel folks planned to go to a blues/jazz bar to see a live band. So we joined them, and though it turned out there was no live music that night, everyone just ended up just getting drunk. It was Adrienne, a crazy German named Tobias, two Americans who lived/worked at our hostel in Porto, two Australians (one also crazy, more on him and the German later) and then two French people who didn't really speak English. After everyone was sufficiently drunk, one of the Americans decided that since it was 2 in the morning, that was as good a time as any to move on to another bar. Unfortunately, Porto's night life scene does not quite match up to Lisbon's, especially on a Wednesday night. So after an hour or so of wandering in the pouring rain, we decided it was time to give up and make the trek back to the hostel.

The next morning Adrienne and I took a historic looking old electric street car (full of obnoxious German tourists) to the beach. It wasn't quite swimming weather, but it was sunny and I could even wear short sleeves! The waves were huge, and we walked up the beach and grabbed a drink at a cafe. It was all very nice until a random 20 minute thunderstorm ruined it. We also toured an old fort built in the 1500's to guard the mouth of the river. Pretty schnazz. After watching the Winter Olympics for the first time and once again making our own dinner. I stayed in and drank with the crazy Australian and German and one of the Americans who worked at the hostel. After some drunken conversations involving 9/11 conspiracies, our respective nations racist jokes (the German thankfully stayed silent), and the particulars of Australian wildlife (kangaroos taste delicious). The Australian pulled out a bottle of Scotch he had picked up in Scotland, and proceeded to tell us about the crazy parties they had in the bush. Outrageous fun!

The next day, Adrienne and I bid Porto adieu, and finally made it back to London after a 2 hour flight delay thanks to the goddamn French and their stupid airline workers strike. After some initial problems, Porto turned out to be pretty legit, and I really enjoyed it. It is sort of just a shittier, smaller version of Lisbon, but its definitely got some things going for it.

Finally, this past weekend, my Uncle Jack was in London so I hung out with him and showed him around. You may think that he flew 5000 miles from Denver just to see me, but actually he was making one of his regular business trips to Switzerland and decided to make a quick stop in jolly old. So the first day, I showed him around some of the major touristy stuff (Big Ben, the Eye, Trafalgar Square, the Cabinet War Rooms, etc.) It was also nice to have someone with a little money around to pay for meals. Then on the second day, he came out to my hood to marvel at my flat and the glories of Mile End: the chicken shops, the canal, the Pakistanis! I also took him over to Brick Lane to see a slightly less touristy London attraction. After dinner at an authentic English pub, he headed back to his hotel before his early morning flight to Switzerland. It was nice to spend some time with Jack, especially since he's lived in Colorado since I was a little kid and I've never really known him particularly well, though he does love Northwestern athletics alot, probably more than I do.

Well, thats all for now kids. It seems that March will be the month of school work and visitors, as I have three huge papers due in the next few weeks, and there'll be several people coming into London all month, so that'll be stuff. No trips planned for this month, though I did just book Barcelona, Madrid, Amsterdam and Dublin for April, so that'll be awesome. Ta Ta for now though, thanks for reading.