Porto

Alex and I decided to couch surf for our entire stay in Portgual... a genius idea if I do say so myself.  She organized our hosts for Porto and Lisbon and I organized our hosts for Albufeira.  Alex tells me our host Mike offered to pick us up from the airport, the only catch is we don't have his phone number and he doesn't have ours either...ya woops! We land in Porto at 23:55 and head out to the street level after seeing no signs of our host in the arrival section.  With an hour already gone by, and still no signs of our host, we are thinking something went wrong. 

Plan B is looking very intriguing - the Porto soccer team had just landed dressed in suits and their tour bus was waiting for them directly across from us ; ) 

In the end Mike, our host, found us and our first night/wee hours of the morning were not spent sleeping in the airport!  He took us on a little drive through the city and pointed out all the "must-sees," from the car windows.  We got back to his lovely apartment and shared some great conversations over a bottle of port-wine. It had to have been about 5am before we finally went to sleep. We slept in a little the next morning and he offered to drive us to our next host's house.  Mike was only able to host us for our first night because he was taking off to Lisbon. 

Mike dropped us off at Ricardo's house(our next host). He was really nice but apologized that he couldn't spend the day with us because he was busy with work.  However, he gave us the phone number of Fernando- another couch surfing host who was currently hosting 4 Russian women.  We all met up in the center of Porto and Fernando gave us a tour of the city, while cracking sexest women jokes...i laughed at them all...he was silly. 

 

Cool markets on our walking tour- it was rainy so we took cover here for a moment

a beautiful church with the typical blue tile seen through out Portugal

Fernando then invited us over for dinner to cook with the other women.

alex, me, the four russians, and Fernando!...ricardo joined in soon after!

Ricardo then took Alex and I dancing allll night/ morning at a very cool club!

We woke up the next day with the sun shining and decided to head out to see more of the town and of course go wine tasting to Porto's famous wineries. 

kind of hard to tell but this is a tiny famous book store.  The winding staircase was an inspiration for the Harry Potter book/ film.

The different wineries all lined up along the water

gorgeous view!

First stop- Sandeman Winery : )

Second stop- Croft winery

Port sure is strong stuff..and with a little buzz going we happily sauntered the streets back to Ricardo's  apartment in order to pack our stuff and take a train that evening to our next destination- Lisbon!

Porto je t'aime : )