I was mostly looking forward to the warm weather and the beach, but when we got there, I realized Portugal has a quite a bit more to offer. It's a gorgeous country. In Porto, the architecture was extremely old and so elegant. I absolutely loved it, and it was right on the Douro River which was lovely and actually lead right out to the Atlantic. Porto is known for wine as well, so there were many boats in the river that had barrels and barrels of wine. Of course we fell in love a little bit, with the wine ;)
So the four of us stayed in a hostel called "Wine Hostel," and it was tucked right between two restaurants. We almost didn't find it because the doorway was so small, but we did eventually, and it ended up being super cute and quaint.
Food Stash
View from the Hostel
Someone had wrote this in the Guestbook
We made our own dinner almost every night to save a little money. We ate a lot of pasta and pizza, but it was always delicious. We had wine with our dinner every night too. The first two nights we got lucky because someone had checked out and left wine behind for whoever wanted it. Of course we opened the bottles up right away :) We didn't mind buying our own wine for the other nights though because it was extremely cheap and delicious.
In front of our hostel was also the Cordoaria Garden, which was lovely, but my favorite part was the smell. I love the smell of freshly bloomed flowers. Kirsten, however, thought it smelled like cat pee. Hahaha!
Portugal was a very relaxing vacation for all of us. We ended up spending three days at the beach, which was perfectly fine with all of us. Two of the days were absolutely perfect, and the third was just a bit too windy. We had to take a bus every morning to the beach, but it was a pretty ride because it went along the river the whole time. And on the walk to the bus stop, we always passed some cute shops, and some not so cute shops...
I guess it's totally normal here to display entire animals for sale in the windows. It was a little disgusting to say the least. They also had entire chickens in other shops. It was all a little much, I think.
Anyway, one morning on the way to the beach, we got off a few stops early to walk and take tons of pics along the coast.
This pier reminded us of Titanic, so of course, someone had to do the pose. It was a little scary though because it was a little wet from some of the bigger waves. So if you weren't careful, you could fall right in the water.
Kirsten saw this little guy on our walk to the beach, and it was around this point that we realized we should give each other nicknames. Kirsten would be Sherlock because she's constantly finding or spotting cool things due to her observant eyes. Kelsey would be Pandora due to her constant singing of the most random songs. Emily would be Wine-o-theke because of her love of wine and due to the fact that she's always got a stash of medicine for any occasion. (The German word for pharmacy is Apotheke). She actually doesn't love wine that much more than us, we just like to give her a hard time. And I would be Honeybee because when we were in Greece, we found out that Melissa is the Greek word for honeybee.
I didn't get as much color as I would have liked because the only sunscreen we could find was 30 spf (and I was definitely not going without sunscreen), but I didn't mind because it was still wonderful being in the hot sun. We also went in the water a few times, and it was absolutely freezing. But you got used to it soon enough, and then it was just fun to catch the waves. But we did have to hold on to our tops and bottoms. I may have mooned a few people at one point.
Then the next day, we decided to do a boat tour and go to a wine cellar for a tour and tasting. The boat tour was lovely, and so was the wine tour and tasting of course ;)
I can't remember if I've mentioned this already, but Emily and Kelsey are actually cousins. They act like sisters though :)
They were joking about how this would be a pretty place to propose.
Wine Cellar
That night after the wine tour and tasting, we decided to go out to dinner for a traditional Portuguese meal. I ended up ordering a very traditional Portuguese sandwich called the "Francesina." It was absolutely amazing. It was mostly just a lot of meat (steak, ham, and sausage) on some bread with cheese. But it was soooo delicious. It even came with a shrimp on top, and I was going to try it, but it wasn't depooped, or deveined I guess, so no thanks. We also ordered some delicious wine, and for dessert, Emily and I split a crepe with ice cream. It was basically all amazing.
Then after dinner a woman came out to sing traditional Portuguese music. She was explaining that it is custom to be very quiet, preferably silent, while one sings traditional Portuguese music. Nobody was too quiet, but I don't think she minded. Then she was calling out names of countries to see where everyone came from. There were people from Portugal of course, France, Germany, Netherlands, Columbia, England, United States of course too, and quite a few more that I can't remember. The music was a little somber, but pretty in its own way.
The next morning Emily and Kelsey headed to Fatima for the day, but Kirsten and I decided to lounge at the beach one more time. It ended up being super windy, so it was a little cold, but the best part was getting there in the first place. We noticed a market on the way to the bus stop that morning, and we still needed souvenirs, so we decided to stop by and check it out.
It ended up being the strangest market I have ever been to in my life! First off, they were only selling animals and their supplies. Mostly it was just birds. They were everywhere. So many different types and colors. They were pretty beautiful actually. But then as we kept walking, we started noticing all of the other animals they had for sale...
Crabs
Tarantulas
Turtles
Fish
Iguanas
Millipedes. Yuck. I gagged a little when I saw that thing.
Snakes
Chickens, Roosters, and Geese
Chipmunks and Squirrels
The windy day was perfect for all of the sailboats.
Then that night, once we were all together again, we went back to the beach to watch the sunset. It was still a little windy, but totally worth it.
We liked these trees because they looked like giant pineapples.
And of course, we had more wine after the sunset, and chocolate too. It was a perfect ending to a perfect trip :) And now I can safely say, we all became wine-o's over the trip, but don't worry Mom, we've got it under control ;)
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