Portugal: Rainy day

For our last day in Portugal, the sun went in to hiding and it poured sideways for hours.  Emily and I hid out at the hostel, playing battleship for a while, and then wandered around when the rain lightened up.  We went to the grocery store, where she bought some coffee beans for her host family and I bought a full sized chocolate bar for 39 cents.  It's delicious, and I should have bought more.  

 We really didn't do anything touristy, but I had a really nice day just eating and relaxing.

Honestly, we spent most of the day eating.  Food is a big part of culture, right?  We started in a pastelria for cafe com leite (look, I'm learning portuguese!) and nata.  I am in love with nata.  I won't tell you how many I ate.  Please don't guess, either. 

Once we left there, the rain started to pick up again, so we hid out in a very swanky mcdonalds for an hour or so.  In case you're curious, the chicken nuggets taste the same.  

Después, we went to a cafe for lunch, and had bocadillos and vinho, as well as some more nata.  I do love food.

Portugal: the Harry Potter connection

There's a tiny bookstore tucked in to Porto's downtown district with some of the most amazing architecture I've ever seen.  It's so beautiful that you aren't allowed to take pictures inside; the owners are milking the building for all it's worth, selling overpriced postcards and monitoring the customers for illegal camera usage.  

The bookstore isn't only famous because of the building itself; JK Rowling used to work here, and the staircases at Hogwarts are rumored to be based off of the staircase here.  The school uniform for Hogwarts may also be based on the uniform that many of Porto's university students choose to wear.  

Portugal: Riverside

Portugal: Morning number two

In this square in the seventies the people of Porto began to gather to listen to speeches related to the carnation rebellion in Lisbon, which is probably one of the coolest events of modern history that no one's heard of.  

Portugal: touristy things

Despite being in Portugal from Thursday night through Sunday afternoon, we really didn't do very many typical tourist things.  I think the most touristy thing that our group did was go on a wine tasting tour.  We picked a brewery and took a tour of their building, and then sampled three different port wines, for only 3 euros.  I'm not much of a wine person, and I thought they were delicious.  Port wine is very sweet.  Also, we had to hike pretty far up to get to the bodega, which resulted in some pretty phenomenal views.  

Portugal: To the sea

Saturday afternoon we decided to take a trip out to the ocean.  We took a trolly ride, which was pretty fun in itself.  There wasn't actually any beach where we were, just concrete blocks preventing people from falling in to the water.  We wandered around amid the fishermen, taking pictures of the sunset and taking turns reenacting that one scene from titanic.  

It's funny, because a month and a half ago I was in Florida, looking at the same ocean, but on the other side.  Jenna made a comment about that coast being the closest to home that most of us would get until we flew back at the end of the semester.  What is it about oceans that makes people so emotional?

 Back to Porto along the riverside.

Sunset out of the back window of the trolley.