After my lovely time in Lisbon, I headed to Porto for quick day of sightseeing. It was one of those cities that some random person I met in my travels (a spainard in Zaragoza) told me to go to, so when I got there and opened up the guidebook I was like..."uh...why did I come here again?".
I ended up loving Porto too. I think Portugal itself is just such an amazing place. It's just not touristy at all, which leaves you feeling like you're discovering some amazing thing that no one else has taken advantage of. And Portugese people are all so nice: even the ones working in the train station. I don't know if i'm having such warm sentiments towards Portugal also because it's one of the only new places i've traveled to on this trip (belgium too, but my wallet was stolen there! Fuck you Brussels!) My hostel was pretty crappy; I was in a room with probably 13 other people, and it smelled like a mixture of B.O. and dirty socks. Luckily it didn't bother me THAT much, cause i'm still sick, and my nose is stuffed up.
Traveling sick is pretty awful. All I want to do is curl up in bed and sleep till I feel better, but of course I need to GO GO GO and rush around to see as many sights as I can! Only 5 more days left on my eurail pass, by the way. I took 2 sudafed on my only day in Porto...woop woop! It was pretty weird. I felt super light-headed the whole day, and once while I was painting I felt like I was falling even though I was sitting down. Pretty weird. I haven't taken any since. I was hanging out with a french guy in Porto for awhile, and I spent a good 20 minutes trying to explain to him how when I'm home, instead of taking medicine to get better, all I want is some 7up and Chicken Noodle Soup. I guess in France, they don't have those "food" remedies, he told me that they just go to the doctor whenever they're sick (because they have reasonable healthcare of course). He also didn't know what Campbell's soup was, so I had a hard time trying to explain to him about that too. Oh, silly american things that you take for granted.
We walked around the city for a bit then took a train to go see the amazing beaches. I want to come back in the summer SO bad...apparently there's really good surfing, but the beaches are just so nice even now! I really enjoyed seeing them as they were yesterday...cloudy and windy and a little chilly...it reminded me of the oregon coast so much! I'm such a sucker for anything that makes me feel like i'm home at this point. P.S. Only 1 month and 2 days till I return!
Last night I got on a train at 6:48 pm and continued to take train rides from then till 3:30pm today. I went Porto-Lisbon-Madrid-Barcelona, and WOULD have gone Barcelona to Carcassone in France, but My Lisbon-Madrid train was 3 hours last getting to Madrid! Ridiculous. That changed my plans a bit, but I don't mind. I'm feeling a lot more light-hearted about traveling. My luck has definitely changed for the better...I'm already excited to go back to Portugal to work/play in Lisbon, I'm heading for Nice tomorrow, and someone here in my Barcelona hostel just suggested a good hostel there, and on my train from Porto-Lisbon I sat in the 1st class section for 2 hours without them noticing, and I didn't even buy a reservation for that train at all! When they found me, they just made me sit in 2nd class, even though they should have made me pay. To be fair, I honestly didn't know it was the 1st class section. And I didn't buy a reservation because I was running late. But anyways...lucky me for once. Yay!
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