Porto Day 2

We had a decently early start today, so we went to Jardins Do Palacio De Cristal. Finally, the sun was out for most of the morning, which was perfect for the gardens. We walked around for 10 minutes and thought this was cool, but how is it a landmark? Like a couple of peacocks and flower beds was all there was, so we pulled out google maps to find where to go next. Luckily, we saw on the maps that most of the gardens were behind the arena. There were some amazing viewpoints and, of course, great spots for some pictures. If we found out later that we missed all of that, we probably would have been pretty choked. Not far from there we found a restaurant that seemed like it was only for the locals, nobody spoke English and a couple dirty looks from people. I really should have used Google translate for the menu because when they brought me my food, I was a little surprised. I just thought the pork was really fatty, but I forced it down. Only to realize I ordered tripe. It's not really my thing lol. The sauce rice beans and carrots tasted really good though. After we joined a free walking tour around the city and learned about a lot of the history of porto. We found out how port was originally made. The Portuguese were shipping wine to England, but there wasn't enough alcohol in the wine, so it would go bad. Their solution was to add brandy to the wine to make it sweeter and stronger. The English liked the new recipe, and so did the Portuguese, so it stuck. The Portuguese would actually use English whiskey barells to age their port and the English would use the wine barrels for their whiskey. Win-win situation there. Later on, we joined people from our hostel for a pub crawl. You pay €15 up front, and you get a bunch of "free" drinks through the night. It made up for a pretty solid night.Read more