Goodbye Portugal

After we left the farm we headed to Porto where the first thing we did was eat Chinese food and the second thing we did was get into the shower and stay there for a long long time.  We spent the night in a cute little film themed hostel with endless cups of tea in a red Amelie inspired room. We tried to hit up the Porto nightlife but for some reason everything was closed. 11:30 pm is too early on a Thursday night?  The next day we walked around Porto a bit until it was time to pick up our sweet little rental Hyndai. 

Everything will be alright?

"do you know this mustache?"

A tribute to Portuguese writer Jose Saramage, author of Blindness. 

I loved this little guy!

This was an outdoor/indoor market in Porto that we ran through on the way to pick up our rental car 

we wished we could have stayed and looked around. 

On our agenda was PORT wine tasting in the Unesco World Heritage site of the Douro Valley (Brandon says that sounds snooty-I think it does too!), the only place in the world that Port Wine can officially be made. The ride through the Douro Valley was amazingly beautiful with houses on steep terraced hillsides with regional varieties of grapes.

We stopped at one vineyard where we tried 7 Ports and a lovely lady served us wine with Jennifer translating the whole time. Half way through the tasting we asked her if she spoke English. Oh yes she did, perfectly in fact, so here Jennifer was translating haltingly, trying to understand the Portuguese descriptions, remember them and then explain the subtleties of Portuguese Port, while the whole time our pourer spoke fluently! She must have had a laugh.

After Brandon bought a bottle for us to drink later, we made our way to Pinhao, a tiny little town on the Douro River.

First and only time I've ever partook in drinking an entire bottle of Port in one go. 

We stopped into a butcher shop to get some cheese to go with our wine and were surprised with the most amazing experience. After letting us try generous tastes of every cheese they had, the butcher brought out their homemade liquor, gave us samples of almost every one of their home smoked and cured meats and treated us to homemade wine with grilled bacon and chorizo. The butcher kept asking us if we were in a hurry, to which we responded gleefully “no!” We spent about an hour an a half there and left with a bag full of  salami, prosciutto, blood sausage, smoked ham, cheese and bread.

Brandon says that if he had more control of his masculinity, he would have been weeping at the butcher shop. I also told the butcher that my husband was in heaven to which he sweetly smiled.

Drive by shooting

Beauty

Brandon in a meat trance (the black thing behind him is a boar face)

sorry vegetarians

The piece on the right is a pound of prosciutto

After a night of Port and pork (and chocolate too-apparently they go well together) we arrived in Aveiro where we played in the Portuguese indoor Ultimate championships (our goal is to find Ultimate wherever we go).  We had a great time with these friendly Ultimate players who hug and have a heart to heart with their opponents after each game.  The day was capped with a rollicking dinner for 50, almost all of the club Ultimate players in Portugal (watch the video till the end and you’ll see Ultimate players doing what they do best: get themselves in trouble). We were lucky to be able to crash at a teammate’s house for a few hours before our flight out of lovely Portugal, a destination definitely worth a second visit!