Porto, Portugal

The weekend after getting back from Berlin, I was off again on another excursion out of the country. This time, I left on Friday with Vicki and Becca headed for Porto, Portugal. Porto Is a lesser-known Portuguese city, famous for its port wine and nice blue tilework. We were able to see both of these, and a whole lot more.
Of course, no trip can go without glitches here and there. For this trip, the glitch was pretty big. Our plane was supposed to take off at 9:20 in the morning. When I left my apartment that morning, there was nothing listed online about a delay or anything. After checking through security, I look at the screen and see that the estimated leave time for our flight is 6:20 pm. What?! Yeah, I was not reading it wrong. We went back to the RyanAir desk (the budget airline we were flying), and they told us that the plane could show up at any time and they weren’t really sure why it was so delayed, but we had to stay around the airport and wait. So wait we did. For nine hours, we ate the sandwiches they gave us and the other food I boy scout-edly prepared, slept on the floor and seats of the airport, and had a very Tom Hanks Terminalesque afternoon. By about 6 pm, our plane had arrived and we were on our way. The crew and pilots were called in from being on stand-by, and they had no reason why the plane was delayed so long either. So to this day, no one knows why we had to sit in the Madrid airport for over 9 hours.

Vicki and Becca excited to be sitting in the Madrid airport for 9 hours!

By the time we made it to Oporto that night, the sun was setting and we took advantage of the dwindling daylight to do some sightseeing. We went down to the river and ate a nice meal, saw one of the main cathedrals and the main bridge, then called it a night.
Saturday was our only full day there, and full it was. We woke up early and went ahead and made reservations to do port wine tastings later on in the day. For 3 different wine bodegas, only 6 euros! After getting our reservations set, we went and explored the city. We climbed the Torre Dos Clérigos, a church tower that provided great views of the city. We shopped around the oldest bookstore in Portugal, which had a really cool interior. We did take a little rest though, to grab a coffee and pastry at a Lonely Planet-recommended café.

Me in front of the River Duero.

By the time we had done all that, it was time to head across the river to the wine bodegas. In all, we did three different tours: Sandeman, Offley, and Ferreria. They were all in Spanish, but I was proud of myself for being able to understand all of it (at least of the parts I was paying attention to and not zoned out). At each bodega, they explained the process of making the wines, gave a tour of the barrels, and ended with a tasting of both a white and a tawny port wine. I had never had port wine before, but I really liked it. It is sweeter, and will probably make a few appearances in coming years in my US life. My favorite was Offley, so hopefully I can find it back home.

Becca, Vicki, and me at the Offley wine tasting.

After that, we took a boat cruise down the river to see the city’s 6 famous bridges. It took us all the way to the mouth of the River Duero at the Atlantic Ocean. While it was fairly cold and windy on the boat, it was still a nice tour.
That night, we grabbed some dinner and went looking for a place with wireless Internet so Becca could call her mom on her mom’s birthday. We were headed to McDonald’s for that. When we get there, there are two or three girls outside yelling and being held back by McD’s workers. We look inside and more girls are being held back. For the next 20 minutes or so, we watched a massive girl fight inside and outside of McDonald’s. They were all yelling in Portuguese, so we have no idea what it was about. But it was really crazy to watch, and I’m glad we had not been inside when all of it went down. Luckily, we were able to find another bar to enjoy Wifi and a drink.
Sunday was a little more relaxing, without the crazy amounts of sightseeing. We were able to walk around the city some more, see a really cool park overlooking the water, and walk along the waterfront before having to head back to Madrid. All in all, I was definitely a fan of Porto.

Had to jump in Porto, too!