Day 2 - Porto

This morning after brekkie at the hostel we headed to the train station to reserve seats for the journey to lisbon tomorrow. Since the "Italian Standoff" I now know how to operate the ever so complex Europass. Hopefully I dont get threatened with jail time tomorrow. Once we had that taken care of we headed off to the beach. We went to a different one than the extra rocky one that we saw yesterday and it was much nicer. Not as many rocks and the sand was nice and soft. But...it was way to windy to enjoy. On the bright side, my skin has never been so exfoliated. I explored a rocky jetti that was neat. All the rocks were worn smooth by the waves and there were quite a few pools from when the tide is high. I saw quite a few crabs and seach urchins and a few fish in some of the bigger pools.

We werent at the beach long and we got back on the bus towards town to search out a Port storehouse. We crossed a bridge and found one just after the bus stop. It was the Sandeman storehouse which is the most popular brand. The tour was very neat. They had thousands of barrels of ageing port, some that held over 20,000 liters of wine! After that tour we got to taste a few and they were very good. We left there to get a very late lunch and sat by the river for a while enjoying the scenery and river traffic.

By then it was almost 5 so we started to head back to the hostel and took a detour through the main part of town that we hadnt been to yet. Again, neat architecture but overall pretty dull. We were pretty tired so we came back to the hostel to rest for a bit before dinner here. Dinner time in Spain and Portugal is anywhere from 9-12pm. I've had a nap and a shower and I think we are going to get some food from the shop down the street and maybe watch a movie here at the hostel or something. There are plenty of other people here so I'm sure we'll find some people to chat with.

I realized today that since I am travelling for 50 days total and this isnt like a regular vacation, I cant go out to dinner and fight something to do every night. I need regular nights in to relax, not only to save money but just to survive! Travelling is exhausting sometimes, there is so much to see and so many miles to walk.

Tomorrow we will be in Lisbon by noon and I think we are going to the beach for the afternoon. There is also a neat aquarium there that I want to go to, I'm very excited about that. Look for another post later with all the neat stuff I learned about Port wine today.