471.

The number of times our umbrellas flipped inside out in Portugal because of rain and wind. Not what you want. Clearly, this is an exaggeration.

 

I'm genuinely sorry for the lack of Bloggyness in the last week. I've been overwelmed with trying to catch up on the blog, faulty internet and actually starting real school here. The education system is much different in the UK and all of my classes just have one final project due at the end for evaluation. Since, I've got just over a month left, this week I have finally, FINALLY started to do schoolwork. Don't get me wrong, I have definitely been learning things this semester but most have been things about myself and the world around me.  All of those lessons have been far more important to me than anything a textbook could ever teach me.

 

Enough of that. Here's a continuation of my journey in Portual on Saturday after wine tasting.

 

After we finished the wine tasting, we lingered in the beatutiful Ribiera area for another hour of so. We browsed through a few shops and looked for some gelato for Meredith. She had the craving, I guess living in Italy for a few months will do that to a person. We didn't really find much of interest, so we decided to continue toward "La Foz" area where the beach is.

 

Major fail. We had asked the woman who sold us the tickets to the Calem port cellar where we could catch a bus to get there. The map made it seem like it was quite far away. She spoke English quite well and helped us figure out which direction we should go and she even wrote down directions in English for us. She told us to catch bus 7 near the San Francisco church and take it to the bus to Matosinhos.  Naturally, we figured that was the stop we should get off. False. That was the last stop on the bus. So we ended up riding the bus probably 40 minutes only to find out we reach a fish port (it smelled awful) and a metro stop. And, to top things off it started to downpour. Lovely. We walked across the sidewalk and bought tickets to the metro back into town since we were not about to explore this fishy area. Yuck.

 

So, we never got the Porto beach. We passed it on the bus and BOTH, Meredith and I considered getting off since we heard signs for "La Foz" but didn't because we figured this woman knew her way around better than us. I was pretty annoyed when we got off the bus. I was just ticked that we wasted so much time. But now, looking back, this makes for a much better story. The Brazilian guy at our hostel told us earlier that La Foz wasn't even worth seeing anyway.

 

It was still raining really steadily when we got off the metro. It was the same station, Sao Bento, that we arrived in the night before. That was the only metro in the center of Porto. They don't rely on that metro system very much there.

 

We decided to brave the inclement weather attempt to find a restaurant for dinner. We walked a few blocks to where the Clerigos Clocktower only to let the rain pour harded. We ducked into a part of a building's crevice that was covered by an awning. My suggestion for anyone traveling to Europe is to invest in a sturdy umbrella. Ours flipped over so many times. You would not believe. Mereidth ended up leaving hers on the street because she was so frustrated. The rain was tremendous and we were soaked. We stopped inside a cafe to shield ourselves. I bought a deliciously satisfying eclair and Meredith bought a Brazlian soda. After the rain settled down, we stopped for dinner at the very exotic Subway restaurant about a two minute walk from the metro, right back where we started. Nothing like American food in Portugal, right? Mere said she had been craving it since there is zero Ameican food in Italy. It was definitely comfort food.

 

Then we made our way back to our hostel. The rain was calmed a bit. We got back and watched a movie, Meet the Fockers, with the Denmark man, Brazilian man and a Spanish woman whom I did not recognize. After the movie we got our things ready for the morning since Meredith had to leave right after breakfast to get to the airport for her flight back to Italy.