Experience The Adventure

Porto, the origin of Port wine. And a port city.

This may be the only opportunity to see Portugal, so it was time to switch plans and head over to Porto, Portugal´s second largest city.

The first thing I notice about Porto, is that it is not very clean. In fact, a lot of the streets stink. The cobblestone streets in the central city are not in great condition, the fillers between the stones have been washed out and the streets have shifted to become unlevel from all the trucks. The main paved roads into the city were asphalt, and those were in pretty good condition. The buildings look in poor condition as well. Probably just because they have not been cleaned in a long time. I noticed there were quite a few burnt out building sections, when a fire hits, it looks like they just pack up and move.

I took a walk around late the first night, and it didn´t feel that safe to me. Well, safe because it is a small city of 300 000, but overall not so much. I asked the guy at check-in, he says it´s safe around here. He mentioned how you will always get approached by hookers and drug dealers when you walk around at night. He also thinks it great how funny the hookers are, that I thought was funny.

The hostel was pretty easy to find, some random auzzie from the bus was headed there but she had no idea or sense of direction. And the bus ride was quite enjoyable, it was less than half full, and the driver was quite stable and the road wasn´t too curvy. This was the first go at the public international buses, since using Eurolines in the summer. And there´s a dozen multinational bus lines, with dozens of stations around the city. So, the hostel apparently is only a few weeks old and it looks new. About the hostel, the outside looks like any other place, but the inside is almost immaculate! One thing you can notice is that it all looks like Ikea, and many pieces still have an Ikea table on it, Ikea curtains, shelf, dishes, etc. The common area is a mixed kitchen with living room, filled with 5 beanbag chairs taking up the majority of the space. This furniture might not last, I wonder what it will look like in a year. The computers look state of the art and are really fast! It´s quite a social crowd, though I spent a lot of time planning my next section of travels and using the internet.

Portugal is less expensive than the countries so far. The grocery store was not as expensive, and eating out was impressive for 6€ getting a steak, fries, an egg, a salad, rice and a Fanta. Delicious. Also had some port with a hotdog in a cheese sauce in a different cafe.

The highlight of Porto was taking a tour of a couple of the Port wine cellars. One was definitely better than the other, but they both had essentially the same information. Port only comes from one region in Portugal where the rocks moderate its temperate, its fermentation process is stopped before completion by the addition of a grape based neutral liquor of 75 percent alcohol, to leave Port with natural sugars that give it it´s sweetness. The was two small glasses of port at the end of each tour, one white and one ruby. I had 5 glasses of Port that day. That’s a lot of Port. There were a bunch of Canadians from Kitchener, Ont, and we ended up at the same places on the same tours. They were pretty funny, classic roles.

The English speakers here are more common than in Spain, though about half the places don´t have English speakers.

I´m out to see Pamplona, it might be a week before you hear again. Pictures to come, maybe on facebook.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 4th, 2007 at 6:06 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.