Weekend in Porto

One recent Friday was a holiday, so my lovely flatmate Melissa (who works all the time) decided to organize a trip to Porto. There's a direct bus that goes from Vigo into the Porto center, and after putting a group event on Facebook, it was easy enough to get lots of friends into the idea.
Friday around midday, Melissa and I met three friends at the bus station and began our journey south. We arrived mid-afternoon and headed for the hostel. I was surprised to find that Porto, a city I had been told was "filthy," was actually quite beautiful.We ended up getting off at the wrong stop, and even though we walked around a bit more than we would have, the city was lovely and it was quite a nice day, and the walk allowed us to get our bearings somewhat.

Avenida dos Aliados

After putting our things down, we went to see the sights, first stopping for the famous Portuguese coffee that Monica (a Gallega and also Melissa's best friend) and Anastasia (a French ERASMUS student in Vigo) had talked so much about. We walked around the city center and to the Mercado do Bolhão, which was pretty colorful despite all the shops shutting up, and the quickly greying sky.

We walked for a long time, finally coming upon a bridge to our destination: A city called Gaia across the Douro river from Porto. These two are the cites of the manufacture and export of Port wine. The bridge, though I couldn't tell you which one, as there are many, is something of a tourist attraction itself. It's beautiful and long and lined with lights, and from it you get what is arguably the best view in the area: the deep blue sky melting into the orange of the sunset along the horizon provided a remarkable backdrop to the two bustling, lit up cities divided by the wide river.

View of the Bridge at nightfall

View from the bridge at sunset

When we got to Gaia, we stopped at a cool looking restaurant along the water. Melissa and Jakob (an Austrian ERASMUS in Vigo) and I ordered three different kinds of Port and exchanged them, taking sips and passing the glass along, so that we could try all three.

"City of Gaia, Happy Holidays"

After, we made our way back to the hostel to meet our friends. We'd all arrived by different means, and made promises to meet up that night. But first, we did my second favorite pastime (the first being drinking while cooking a big meal), and got dressed and ready for the night while drinking and listening to horrible 90s-early 00s music.

Then we met the rest of our friends for a night out. Turns out, Melissa had drawn quite a crowd. We met at a place for dinner, and we happened upon a large group of girls in uniform (presumably off from a day at school). One of them had brought a guitar with her and they were singing songs all night, and instead of getting annoying, it was actually pretty fun. They seemed to take a liking to our friend Simon, and had a competition to see who could draw the best picture of him on their paper place mats.

Simon with the winning artist

From left to right: Anastasia, me, Jakob, Adrian, Simon, Melissa, Mónica

As is expected with groups of more than just a handful, we ended up splitting up halfway through the night. As for Porto's night-life, it reminds me a lot of Spain. Much like in Spain, you might stay out until 6 or 7:00 in the morning and that would be entirely normal, if not expected. However, in Spain this makes a bit more sense (if I can be so bold), because they have a siesta in the afternoon and eat dinner a lot later, usually around 10pm or so. In this way, they don't even leave to go out until about 2:00am. In Porto, I noticed, dinner is at a more non-Spanish time, that is to say, about 7 or 8:00. So they end up going out earlier, starting their night (and their drinking) earlier, but still staying out until 6 or 7:00am, making total party time longer than it is in Spain. I never thought I'd say this, because I've made the case to many people that nobody parties like the Spanish do, but it turns out, Portugal might win that competition.

Another notable difference is how cheap everything was. Dinner ran us about 3.50-€4 easily, 6 or 7€ if you wanted to be extravagant. And beer-just guess how much a beer cost (in a bar!). Go ahead, guess. No. Nope. You're wrong. 0.50€. Fifty cents. Yeah. ....Yeah.

We got in around 5 or 6am, slept, and were up bright and early the next morning. Well, I was. I got up around 9 or 10 and went downstairs for breakfast, where I was later joined by the other three girls Anastasia, Melissa, and Monica. The four of us left for the day around 1, going to see some really cool shops and different sights along the way. The highlight (for me, at least) of the weekend (or maybe my life) was visiting a bookshop. But not just any bookshop, the bookshop where they filmed the Flouish and Blotts scenes from Harry Potter! It was a nerd's dream. Please forgive the poor quality. Strictly speaking, there were no photos allowed...So I was forced to use my iPhone:

That evening, pretty exhausted from a long day of walking, we went to go meet our super-Gallego friends Iago and Dreso. Iago came up with the idea to go see the football game that was on. I decided that a nap was probably a bad idea, as I would probably just end up sleeping through the night. So I joined Dreso and Iago and Anastasia to the famous Estádio do Dragão, home of FC Porto to watch my VERY FIRST EVER football match, against FC Braga. Porto won, of course. Not that I really care, but it was all about the experience.

FC Porto in blue, FC Braga in Red

From left to right: Anastasia, Dreso, Iago, myself

It was pretty late, and the four of us were hungry, so we told the others to meet us at a restaurant for dinner. We went directly out for another long night, getting home around 5 and going promptly to bed. The next morning, we didn't feel like getting up at 8 to try and catch the 9:30 bus home, so we slept in and decided to spend the day in Porto. The women at the hostel graciously let us store our things there while we were out.

It was such a nice day and even though we'd run out of things to do, walking along the different bairros was really enjoyable. We went to the west part of town to see some of the older neighborhoods, which were also some of the poorest. It was all sandy colored and old looking, and really quite charming with it's hilly, windy, cobble-stony roads.

The bridge over the Douro River at midafternoon

Eventually it was time to head to the train station to get the train back to Vigo. It was the longest train ride of my life, especially with the time difference (even though we are directly north of Porto, we are an hour ahead-meaning, in this instance, that we left at 7:15pm and arrived about 10:30pm). Sufficiently tired, I went straight to bed.

It was a weekend of firsts: First time in Porto, first fútbol game, and first francesinha. Ah, the francesinha. Imagine two pieces of texas toast stuffed with pretty much anything you like-sausage, veggies, cheese, all of the above-and baked and finally swimming in sauce. Amazing. But what's even more amazing is this menu given to me at the restaurant:

Maybe...Maybe don't hire this translator again.



















El mundo es un libro y ellos que no viajan leen sólo una página.