Portugal

I spent the day walking around Porto checking out the sights.
-- Livraria Lello is a beautiful, and incredibly crowded, bookstore. Fortunately, I bought a timed ticket online in advance, so I could skip the blocks-long line. It would have been a great store to browse if it weren't so packed. Although it is rumored to have been an influence on Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling says no. However, she did spend time at the Majestic Cafe, where I enjoyed ice cream while admiring the Art Nouveau mirrors.
-- The Praça Gomes Teixeira has this wonderful lion fountain that was constructed in 1882 to serve as a public water source.
-- The twin churches of Carmo and Carmelita, built for monks and nuns respectively. They look like they're the same building from the outside, but they're not connected at all - they're separated by an incredibly narrow house that was occupied into the 1980s. Both churches have lots of overwrought gold-leaf Baroque ornamentation. They also have religious statues with real-ish hair. Lots of Portuguese churches have these statues, and I don't know why they creeped me out so much, but they did. It was like the wax-museum version of statues.
-- Of course I had to go to the Portuguese Center of Photography. Only when I arrived did I find out that the photography museum was housed in the Cadeia da Relação, which was a prison until 1974. The poorest prisoners were housed in the basement and the richest prisoners had rooms on the top floor. There were some great portrait photographs, but my favorite exhibit was of camera technology over time.Les mer