Adventures in Spain: Porto, Portugal!

Thursday, we left for the airport straight after class at noon and finally arrived in portugal around dinner time. The flight was really easy, only about 45 minutes and $50 US dollars, so those were two big bonuses of this trip. We were blessed with awesome weather the whole weekend, during the day it was in the mid 60s and sunny, it was perfect! Thursday night we walked about halfway down to the river and watched the sun set, and it was absolutely gorgeous! Then we got a couple drinks at an outside bar and went back to the hostal to get some rest.

The hostal we stayed in was the first real hostal we've stayed at so far! We were in a 6 person room, had a community bathroom, and two random room mates. The first night was two german girls, who were nice but a little strange. The next two nights were two italian men. We didn't really socialize with them too much, they all pretty much kept to themselves. Friday we walked down to the river, which was quite the hike, and veryyy steep. We sat outside and ate lunch (second salad I've had in europe YET.. ugh) and tried some Portuguese beers at a cute little cafe right on the river. It was a beautiful day and hard not to enjoy. We got some yummy gelato afterwards and walked around some more before going home and taking a much needed nap! We took advantage of the kitchen the hostal provided for us and cooked spicy chicken pasta for dinner! It was so good and so much cheaper than eating out.

Saturday we walked to the center of the city to shop around. I found some really unique jewelry from a local vender for a couple euros, which was cool. We saw these random carts selling what looked like some sort of sea creature to me, but turns out they were huge smoked walnuts. They didn't look that appealing but they were SO good. We tried a couple wines and then went home to cook our 2 euro pizzas that we found at the grocery store for dinner. We were lucky enough to have a huge group of Irish kids around our age also staying in the same hostal, they were in porto to study architecture for the week. They were wild, and so much fun! Friday and Saturday night we all hung out and had singalongs because like all of them could sing or play the guitar. It was so fun, they definitely made our trip that much better! Overall, we had an awesome experience. I've been so blessed with everything I've done so far and really have appreciated every moment on this trip. It's safe to say I'm having the time of my life! I can't wait to see what else is in store...