Friday night I relaxed like usual. I was going to cook for my host family again but my host dad has something wrong with his stomach and is on a special diet for a week so I couldn't make what I wanted to make, but I'll make it next week! Anyway, then I went out with my friends from school on Friday like usual we went to a bar they had live music like electronic/house and then a Portuguese rapper it was pretty cool. Saturday morning I slept in and then after my host family and I ate lunch we dropped Pedro at a friend's house and drove to Porto. Porto is Portugal's second largest city, it has a metropolitan population of about 1 million, and it's about 45 minutes south of where I live in Viana. Porto is where famous Port wine(Vinho do Porto) is from, and I'm pretty sure there is a connection between the city's name and the words "Portugal" and "Portuguese." First we drove from the highway through Matosinhos and into Foz do Douro(Translates to Mouth of the Douro River) which is a neighborhood of Porto where lots of rich people live, it's right on the corner where the douro river lets into the sea. The waves were so huge I've never seen anything like it and when we first drive up along the coast it looked like a tsunami was going to hit. The waves were 15-20 feet at least and they were totally engulfing one of the harbour arms and when they hit the seawall/harbour arm they would go higher than the lighthouses, it was insane. The pictures don't really show the scale for how rough the sea was.
Waves crashing near one of the harbour arms/lighthouses, see the people for scale
Avenida do Brasil in Foz do Douro
Wave engulfing the other lighthouse
Then we drove along the douro from Foz into the center of the Ribeira(old fishing neighborhood) of Porto and crossed a bridge into Vila Nova de Gaia, where all the port wine is made. driving along the douro into the city is really cool there's all these really old runned down houses with laundry hanging everywhere and old people leaning out the windows and it smells like fish/salt and everything's really colorful too.
Porto from Vila Nova de Gaia
Porto from Vila Nova de Gaia
Ribeira, Porto
Boats that they used to use to bring the wine from up the river in the Douro Valley to Porto to be bottled, now the boats just sit there for tourists to take pictures of.
After we stopped in Vila Nova de Gaia we drove back into Porto, unsuccessfully trying to find a parking space and eventually parking near Casa da Musica(a cultural center with concerts and things, my host dad's an architect and he wanted me to see it since it's really modern and all), we went inside Casa da Musica and then we went to my host dad's sister's house, it's near Casa da Musica on the way to Foz do Douro, their house is really nice and humongous, my host dad remodeled it before they moved in I guess. Then we stopped in Ikea to get a futon for my host dad's mom to sleep on so she can stay at our house more often I guess and then we drove home, picked up Pedro and then went home ate dinner watched Where the Wild Things Are and went to bed. Today I went to rowing but since it's been raining really hard all day(snow in Gerês, so mad it happened this weekend and not last weekend!) I didn't get to go out on the water. I didn't really do anything today after rowing just watched t.v. and listened to music. Porto is really cool and I didn't really get to do much there but I can't wait to go back. I didn't realize how tiny Viana is until I went to Porto.
Boa Tarde!=Good Night/Evening
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