Portugal 2017; Day 4

Day 8; March 30^th, 2017

I do the morning walk and David the tour guide’s English isn’t as good as Nuno’s but he takes us through the old part of the city and points out the best place to get the city’s dish, franceshino, which apparently is a croque-monsieur on steroids with about a billionty extra calories due to layers of sausage and a fried egg.

After the tour I have a little time to look around but then I’m off meeting up for the Port wine tour.  The odd thing about Port wine is that it is produced in a valley over a hundred miles away, and then it is stored in cellars in the city across the river from Porto, Gaia, but it got called Port because that’s where the customs house was when it got shipped out around the world and everyone saw the customs stamp of Porto and here we are. 

We do seven tastings and the weather goes from sunny and 70 degrees to 55 and pouring rain as it finishes.  

But I’m in Gaia and it’s raining and I don’t have an umbrella and I'm wearing shorts and boat shoes and I’m pumped because this is going to suck and I head out into the downpour and get thoroughly soaked and walk the three miles across the bridge and up the hill to the hostel and I shiver and I slosh and slide in my shoes and it’s great.

My flight is at 10am tomorrow and I have to drive 300 miles down the country, so my plan is to go to bed around 8pm and wake up at 2am to make the drive.  I get in bed, but then the downside of hostel staying happens and the horrid, inconsiderate harpies in the room with me decide that the room is where they want to cackle and converse and I toss and turn and finally start loudly coughing and grunting to get the point across and they finally get quiet around 11pm. I get very little sleep, blessed sleep.

Portugal 2017; Day 3

Day 7, March 29^th, 2017

I get the car and head north.  I would be so, so, so screwed trying to get out of Lisbon if I didn’t have the built-in GPS in the car. How did people attempt this before GPS?  The Portuguese are like the French in that the signs are put in the perfect places if you already know how to get where you’re going.

The landscape becomes hillier along the drive and finally, they get proper trees, instead of the scrub brush looking sad little things pretending to be trees. I think these proper ones are cork trees.

Getting into Porto is Chaos, but I get parked and to the hostel, right in the downtown area.  I have time to sign up for a walking tour, dinner at the hostel, and a port tour tomorrow and then I’m off for the walking tour.  The guide, Nuno, is gregarious and he takes us through the various sites of the more modern part of the city (the morning tour does the medieval part, the afternoon does the 19^th century forward).  He explains how Portugal has had legal abortion for 80 years (ever since their dictatorship took over) and gay marriage since 2001 and decriminalization of drugs for twenty years or some such.

I’ve not mentioned it so far, but I’ve been hassled about “smoke? Marijuana? Cocaine?” throughout being here.  Nuno says that those people are selling fake crap, and then offhandedly mentions that the park we’re in, The Plaza of Virtue, is where people get the real stuff. Ha.

Then he finishes the tour by showing us a statue of Henry the Navigator and revealing that history books don’t tell the full truth, but that Henry was openly homosexual.  Then the tour is over and Nuno insists on a hug. Real progressive place they got here.

I wander a bit, but I saw a doner kebap shop on the main square, and even though I’m doing the hostel dinner at 9pm, I say hell with it and get a doner and a beer and enjoy sunset.  I had a doner kebap stand around the corner of my flat in Germany (Doner by Klaus!). Life has its moments.

Then it’s back to the hostel and they have draft beer in the lobby and I have some pints and chat with folks and then the dinner happens and there are more pints and a group is going out on a pub crawl, but I have no interest in feeling like hell tomorrow when I know I have a lot of walking, so I wander back to my bunk and sleep, blessed sleep.

Portugal 2017; Day 2

Day 6, March 28^th, 2017

I got up and I got after it. My plan was to attempt to get to eight or nine different sites that require twelve miles of hiking to get to in the shortest route.  There’s not a lot to say other than that I ended up walking maybe half of that and taking buses, subway and a taxi to get to seven of them.  

It was a big day, to the point that when I got back to the hostel at 6:30pm, I cracked open a few beers and spent time contemplating my throbbing feet and wondering if they hurt because of the leg injury from a couple years ago, the weight I’ve carried the past couple years after the injury, or that I’m just getting old and the miles are piling up.  I suspect all three.

No fado for me. I crawled into my bunk relatively early and sleep, blessed sleep