Monument To António Nobre

This morning, I finally woke up to a throat, which did feel better! It's not 100 perfect, but a lot better. And for the first time on the trip so far we got free breakfast! And it was honestly better than the breakfast I had to pay for in edinburgh. When we finally got moving, we went to a church that was built in the 12 century where we met a tour guide, which led us to a free English tour in the afternoon. But we had to kill some time, so we found a garden that we walked to. It had roosters and peacocks! But after walking around for 5 minutes, we were kinda disappointed because it was small and not much there. So we opened google Maps to go somewhere else to see there was a huge section we missed around the building we were at! And thank god we noticed because it was so beautiful. There were more birds, trees, and fantastic views over looking the river. At one point, we were standing under a sheltered area to stay away from the rain, and a male peacock was just chilling right beside us. Even watched him lunge at a woman. And I have never heard a peacock before, but it is not as pretty as you would think. It is very loud and sharp. I should also clarify that Ethan had a song stuck in his head, and if he sang it, he asked that I should slap him on the back of the head. So he asked for it! I swear I'm not a bad friend. After that, we started walking over to our free walking tour, but we decided to stop for lunch. We stopped at the most random little place, and no one spoke English at all. I felt very out of place. But that was the idea. I had to find some authentic Portuguese food! For 9.50€ we got a beer, cabbage soup, and a pork dish with special sauce. Ethan didn't realize what he was getting and ended up getting a dish with tripe. I tried it and couldn't do it. The texture was horrible! The walking tour was fantastic. He talked about the history of Portugal and porto and gave us lots of fun facts and good viewpoints. Turns out port isn't even made in Porto. It's only aged here, and it was made because they had a treaty with britian to ship wine over when they were fighting with France (where they normally get wine) but it was too far of a journey and it would all spoil because the alcohol percentage is too low. So they add brandy when making wine to create a higher percentage wine that was sweeter and thicker. And it never spoiled on the way to Britain. And it turns out the train station our hostel is in is a UNESCO world heritage site where there are 22,000 painted tiles depicting different historical moments. And the evolution of travel all the way to trains. The hostel was a good find for sure! Afterward, we finally went went out drinking. It feels good close to 100 percent. But when we got to the pub crawl it was not what I was expecting, a very interesting crowd for sure. It was nothing like edinburgh. So it started slow, but as we started getting comfortable, it was a blast. It's so weird going drinking where everyone is from a different country. And the guide even took us to local bars, and the alcohol is so much cheaper! We got a pint of beer for 2.50€. The locals here, though, love sweet drinks. I know the hangovers will be horrible. But for some reason, the only beer you can buy here is Super Bock. But I can't finish this post without talking about one bar. There was a french rugy team partying. We were all outside and the person beside me just said "oh my god, what the fuck" so I turn around to look at the bar. And all I see is 10 plus guys standing on tables just, butt ass naked. And I mean NAKED. I saw a few too many twigs and berries tonight. Overall, everyone was so nice, and we ended up making more fun memories.Read more