2012 June 17th Alexa reported
Second Week
From Couchsurfing to hostelling back to Couchsurfing, from Portugal to Spain.
You must vist Porto before you die!
After a slight pickpocketing attempt in the Lisbon station, I headed North by train,
changing my seat three times before understanding there are different classes and
reserved seats. I found Oporto City Hostel under 10 euros a night, with a kitchen, a
connected laptop, bunk beds and kids from all over.
No library but a single English book left behind, and I am finishing Dickens` "GREAT EXPECTATIONS" today. I bought provisions at a supermarket (the humblest shopping is interesting in Europe!) but wasted the next day sleeping, reading and laptoping, but at last started in on the sights.
A daylong panic before I mastered the ATMs (MultiBanco), a brush with brash gypsy kids at an outdoor market, and a walk down to the river for a specialty lunch, a cholesterol-laden "French" sandwich invented to warm up Portuguese women with a special hot sauce to encourage sweating and the removal of clothes.
Clicking away (if I only knew how to post photos!), I crossed the Douro ('gold' for
the sunsets) River to Gaia to visit one of the many port factories, Taylor`s, with a tour and samples. According to the video, they still stomp the grapes, first in a military line, and then dancing to music.
As a past picker of grapes many years ago in France, I took great interest in the details of storage in huge wooden casks.
Once over the bridge again I took a funicular back up the hill (Porto is like San Francisco!)
and the next day had a typical and cheap lunch with a Spanish Couchsurfing physicist, Manuel.
Then my first walking tour along old castle walls, into a gold leafed-church, past the elegant cafe where Rowling started Harry Potter (she was married to a Portuguese), and the gorgeous Sao Bento station, walls covered with blue and white tiles depicting history. Before bridges, people walked over a series of linked boats, but when the French invaded, the 'bridge' failed and 4000 drowned.
The guide, Pedro, had been in Angola, a former colony, promoting a bakery in a poor region, and came home to give talks for tips. (WildWalkersPorto on Facebook) The next morning a different tour with his relative Anna, to a famous bookstore where Rowling got more inspiration, a neighborhood walled in during the plague to doom, incredible park trees and competing churches.
I took a bus to the ocean and back again, chatted with a Korean girl studying in London (I just added Korea to my itinerary) and a Hungarian roommate taking a 140 km pilgrimage in the mountains, for exercise, not piety.
The next day a bus for Madrid and what magnificent scenery I enjoyed with Pip´s adventures (Dickens) though a driver was overly attentive. Ivonne, my CouchSurfing host from Colombia, teaches Spanish to Italians and welcomed me to her sweet little flat, her 5 year-old-son Camilo, the cat Izu, and practicing her English.
Coming soon, a visit to the Prado museum, then the Gehry in Bilbao...so far so great!
Alexa
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