We’re leaving for Portugal today! So of course I thought it would be a good idea to get up at 3:45 and go run a half with my friends before leaving. Hmmm. I’m still not exactly sure it was a good idea, but I survived and I had a good time. 

I got home, ran around doing last minute shit while Matt worked, and it was time to leave. 

Our Uber driver felt like a guy from the Middle East that had driven a taxi in his native land. Zipping in and out of traffic, yelling at one guy… Hilarious. We got to the airport and figured out where to drop our bags – DIA has gotten super confusing since they remodeled and “fixed” it…

Went to PreCheck, where they told us Matt’s birth year was wrong. Weird. They sent us back out to get another boarding pass, where the woman we talked to told us everything was fine and we should go to a different line and person. Ugh. That’s all I have to say. 

We went back through security and waited about two hours to get into the CapitalOne Lounge. We had a whopping 20 minutes to have a drink and grab some food, and then we went to our gate. 

There was no one waiting when we got there – and apparently they were almost at last call. Good thing we got there a few minutes before our boarding passes said boarding started… We thought it was kinda weird that departure was only 15 minutes after boarding started, but we didn’t question…  We made it, that’s all we really cared about. 

We took off, waiting for the 30 planes that were ahead of us in line, and settled in for a long flight. I had a glass of wine (my first on an airplane in almost 30 years! I could just NOT resist the novelty), Matt had a beer, and dinner was actually delicious – I had some pasta with pesto, and Matt had Kung Pao chicken. 

I watched movies all night (the second one took three or four rewinds because I kept falling asleep), and ended up sleeping more than I thought I would. Eventually, we were an hour and twenty minutes from Frankfurt and breakfast was served. Eggs, hash browns, a roll with butter and jelly… also pretty good, for airplane food. Apparently Lufthansa has a decent reputation, and I can see why. 

We landed in Frankfurt, got our bearings, went through passport control, found our next gate, and grabbed a coffee. We didn’t have to wait too long before our next flight.  Two and a half uneventful hours later, we landed in Porto.

We got off the plane, found our bags, and breezed through the “nothing to declare” section of Customs. We found our rental car company (Europcar) as easily as we’ve ever found a rental car company at an airport, and the instructions for the shuttle were clear, for once. We got to the office, got our car, and took off to find our hostel. 

Driving (for Matt) a stick shift in a new, foreign city at rush hour was exciting to say the least. Navigating (even with GoogleMaps) was kind of a pain in the ass for me. I kept not knowing where lanes ended and where turn lanes and exits began… It was an exciting drive for sure, and then we finally found our hostel. We parked the car and went inside and got our room. 

We threw down our stuff, changed clothes, and headed out to wander around. The Douro River is right by our hostel, and we have a beautiful view of it from our room. We wandered down to it and walked towards the ocean for a bit. The mouth of the river is right there, and watching it flow into the Atlantic as the sun was setting, drinking our first glasses of Portuguese wine at a little riverside bar was absolutely spectacular.

After watching the sun go down, we went to dinner at the only restaurant near where we’re staying, an Italian and Portuguese place… Interesting combination for sure.  Dinner was pretty good, fried cod with potato salad for me and lasagna for Matt. When we were finished eating, we came back to the hostel and went to bed. We were pretty exhausted….

As tired as I was yesterday, I somehow was less so than most of the times we’ve taken a red eye to Florida. Maybe because we boarded before 6:00 pm and had all night to chill instead of having to stay up til midnight to get on board? Who knows. Interesting, though. 

I slept alright-ish, and I woke up around 7:30, none of which was too hateful. Matt woke up a bit later and we went down to breakfast. The food was alright – ham and cheese and rolls and cereal and yogurt and coffee…

When we’d finished eating, we headed out on a walk. We walked. And walked. And walked and walked and walked. We walked the length of the Douro  River until we made the turn away from the river to go up the hill to the historic district. 

We wandered to some of the major points of interest – the Cathedral of Porto, and the train station,  near which we had lunch at a restaurant in a square. I had  the francesinha – a sandwich with steak, ham, sausage, bread, and covered in cheese and a special sauce. It was DELICIOUS! And I had my first glass of Port wine, too. Also delicious. 

We continued our wandering after lunch, looking for the infamous library and the Clergios Tower. We found the tower and decided to get tickets for another evening for sunset, and thought we found the library – which turned out to be a church. Oops. I did figure that out until we went inside and I realized it wasn’t the library. It was still super cool, though. 

Eventually, we got tired of wandering and worked our way back to the hostel. We chilled for a bit, showered, and headed out to dinner.  We went to a little place that Matt found – and it was amazing! I had this steak sandwich with ham and thyme and garlic. I’d never had a steak that was so tender you could just bite through it. .  I had another glass of wine with dinner, also good. Then back to the hostel and bed. 

Thankfully, we decided not to do anything too major this morning. I think I slept 11 hours last night, and I needed it. I think I was still way behind from the overnight flight and the time change. 

We had some breakfast eventually, and then we headed out for a walk. We’d decided to check out Foz, the area near where we’re staying with the mouth of the Douro River into the Atlantic. There are a bunch of beaches on the Atlantic side, and we wanted to see what it’s all about. 

Again with all the walking. We walked out past where the Douro flows into the Atlantic, and then kept going beyond that. We found a bunch of little cafes, and eventually stopped at one of them for a drink. We saw this cool pergola type thing that I later found out is actually a landmark of the region. We got to the beach where there were a bunch of people surfing, and there was a food hall type place where we had lunch. 

After we ate, we took a different way back to the hostel, more through the actual streets where the people live. It’s really a beautiful area. We chilled in our room for a bit, then it was time for our river cruise!

We had decided to drive to the marina across the river, and (thankfully) left with an hour to spare. It was rush hour, and our 5 km drive ended up taking over 45 minutes… Yikes! Also, the roundabouts are really weird and annoying here. They have multiple exits that look exactly the same on Google Maps, and you can’t tell you’re on the wrong one until you’ve already taken the exit… It took us three tries to get off on the correct street at one point. Ugh. 

We did end up making it to the marina on time and got on board our sailboat for our river cruise. The cruise was a pleasant experience. The sailboat was funny, it didn’t even have a main and there was no actual sailing to be had. But the cushions were comfortable and the views of the cities from the river were beautiful, and when we turned around to watch the sun go down over the ocean, the clouds parted and we got a pretty awesome sunset.  

We cruised back to the marina while having a mini wine tasting, which was really nice, and set off in search of dinner when we got back. 

We tried to go to a restaurant our guide had recommended, but it was closed, so we wandered lost for a few minutes until we saw a place with a grill right out front where a guy was cooking. We decided what the hell and had some pretty amazing fish for dinner!

The drive back to the hostel was slightly less entertaining than the drive out – we only screwed up one roundabout – and when we got back, we quickly went to bed. 

After breakfast, we wandered around Foz (again) in the morning, and saw a bunch of removable fencing that looked suspiciously like some sort of race… When we asked one of the locals, it turned out that the Porto Half Marathon was the next morning. I got excited for a minute, then realized I didn’t have running clothes with me. If I’d had more time, I could’ve found a store to buy some, but oh well. It turned out not to matter anyway, Matt actually looked and the race was sold out. Darn. That could’ve been fun. 

After going back to our room and chilling out for a bit, we got dressed for our afternoon adventure. We grabbed an Uber and went to Ribeira – the area right along the river in the historic district – for lunch. We checked out a few menus and then picked one up a little higher, which had a super cool view of the water and all the boats going by. 

After lunch, we headed over the river to Calem, where we had a port wine tour and tasting scheduled. We showed our tickets, and sat down to wait. 

The tour was alright. Mostly just a bunch of barrels with wine inside. These were the cellars, not where the wine was actually produced. It was still pretty cool to see a big wooden tank that holds 74.000 bottles of wine…  

Then, the tasting. I’ve had a good bit of Port in my life, but this stuff hit differently . It wasn’t nearly as sweet, and it was super smooth. The three tastes we got were delicious, and I particularly enjoyed the white Port, which I’d never had either. 

After the tour, we thought it would be fun to find a soccer bar and watch the game. We went to Ryan’s Irish Pub and had a Guiness, but it was totally empty and not so much fun, so we decided to go to a different bar.  We ended up at a place called Eleven Sports Bar, which was nuts and full of people watching the local sports team, FC Porto. We had a couple beers, then went on to dinner. 

We Ubered back to Bocca for dinner, the place where we had our first glass of wine in town. Sea bass FTW, and a nice glass of wine and Port to go with…  Then a walk back up that ridiculous hill to the hostel and bed. 

Boy are we tired. SO tired. We’ve been going non stop for almost a week now.  We decided to take it easy so we can keep going tomorrow. 

We had some breakfast and headed to watch the end of the half marathon we discovered yesterday. I forget how much I like watching other people run, but I really do.  We were at the finish line to see both the men’s and women’s winners, which was really fun to watch. I love watching people win things.  

We went back to the room and chilled a bit, then went out for lunch at a spot called MxM. I had a Caesar salad, and it felt good to eat something green for once. Then we got some espressos at the river side vendor and had coffee with a view of the river. Then it was back to the hostel for a bit before dinner. 

We went to CopaD’Oro for dinner. It wasn’t too far from where we were staying and was right on the river, so the view was beautiful. Seeing the lights come on on the bridge against the fading evening sky was amazing. So was our pizza and our liter of wine for 7.00 Euros. 

Then, the walk back to the hostel and bed. 

This morning after breakfast, we set out on a walk in a different direction than we’ve walked . We went towards Foz, but took a different street and turned randomly down alleys and found all kinds of cool buildings to look at. We grabbed croissants and espresso from the little grocery by us on our way back and ate them on the balcony. 

In the afternoon, we had tickets to see the Livaria Lello, the bookstore that supposedly inspired Harry Potter. We had heard the line could take forever, so we headed out early and Ubered downtown. We had a while to kill, so we grabbed lunch and beer at the Cervejaria Clergios while we waited. 

The line turned out to not be bad at all and we were inside in no time.  Okay. The staircase was cool. It did, indeed, look straight out of Harry Potter. And there were kids in the street wearing cloaks, which at first made us think they were dressed up to go to the bookstore, but we ended up figuring out they were some kind of uniform. It was all pretty cool.  10 Euros per person cool? Not so sure. But still cool enough I didn’t regret paying. 

We also had tickets to the Clergios church tower, but those were for sunset and we had hours to go. We found ourselves a bar, Base, and had a few drinks. That place was cool. It was a whole park, complete with cushions to sit on in the grass and umbrellas everywhere, along with tables and chairs. It was a great place to spend a couple hours and chill out. 

When we were finished with our drinks, we wandered around and killed the last little bit of time we had and went to the church tower. Up, up, and up some more. It was a crazy amount of stairs, but we made it to the top. The view was incredible. You could see all the way down river to where it meets the ocean, and watching the sun go down over it was an experience I won’t soon forget. Beautiful. 

We took all the steps back down and decided to go back to the sports bar in Foz we’d seen earlier in the day for dinner. We Ubered straight there. Focaccia for me, a burger for Matt, beers for both. It was another soccer bar, and it’s always fun to see the locals watch their team. We walked back to our hostel after dinner and went to bed.  Tomorrow, we drive to Lisbon!

Here’s the video: