Porto 2

This morning I woke up relatively early to have a yarn to Mum and Dad for Dads birthday. Then I went for a run to the right along the beach and had a much better time than last night. Running along the beach was pretty hard work though. When I got back we had some yum omelet with rice and salad, flash lunch!

Carla had to work in the afternoon (bloody normal people and their having to work) so I decided to go adventuring by myself. A loose plan was to go check out the Cathedral and the Eiffel bridge in Porto and generally have a bit of a wander round. Carla told me to find the fridge when I walk across the bridge. I had no idea what she was on about so just smiled and nodded. 

Buying tickets for the train was harder than it should have been. The ticket machine had an English button but when I pressed it it made a beep sound then nothing happened. A Portugese dude came along that spoke no English whatsoever and I managed to figure out that I can just buy a ticket on the train (Carla mentioned that should be OK anyway). Then I think he decided to help me some more and we had a conversation in gestures while he spoke to me flat out in Portugese. I think he used the machine to load my Andente card (like an oyster card) with a couple of tickets (there and back again)for about 3.60 euro. Cheers mate!

It was another cracker day in Porto and I was a bit tired from the run so I meandered up the Cathedral to have a look. It was just another old building to see (Sorry Carla but I've seen a hell of a lot) but the bridge was pretty cool. I had a bit of a hunt around and wondered where the hell a fridge could be and I found it:

Can you see it? The view of Porto from the bridge was pretty awesome with the late afternoon sun:

And from the other side I got an OK shot of the bridge. Its not really blog worthy but today was a bit light on photos so I feel I have to pad it out. The sky looks pretty sweet anyway:

I wandered back into town to just randomly walk around the streets. I was kinda getting pretty parched (bro) and I was kinda tired too so I though a coffee might be good. But it was also hot, so something cool would be nice. I started thinking about a magical ice cold coffee chocolate milkshake. Unfortunately I knew only one place that might have a shit show of selling one of these and that was Starbucks. Apparently takeaway coffee is almost non-existent in Portugal too so it seemed like a solid idea. So that kinda became my mission, as sad as it was, to hunt a Starbucks in Porto. It was pretty cool just wandering around in the warm weather for a while but then it was all too much so I spied a place that had a picture of a milkshake on their sign. Milkshake it would be. I went in and said "Milkshake" and the dude said yes pointed to the array of icecream flavours. I picked chocolate (naturally) and sat down. Then I saw "Retro ice cream palour" on my Use It map. I thought "Oh no, there is a recommended place and I have already ordered here" but when I went to check where it was I realised I was there, god damn I'm awesome. Either that or there is only one place in Porto! My milkshake was very good but it would have been approximately a million times better if it were 10 times bigger. Then I headed back to catch the train home. Cue train shinanigans below:

So in the morning Carla had told me train times (I knew there should be a train about 6:20pm) but I forgot to ask which train destination I wanted. On the way into town I looked at the sign and the last stop on the line I wanted was Aveiro. Unfortunately the only train going to Aveiro left at 6:50, not 6:20. hmmm. It was about 6:15 so I quickly went to the ticket office to find out what I could take to get to Granja and the guy informed me I could take the train to Ovar. I went back to the sign and found that there was a train leaving for Ovar at 6:20 from platform 5. But it was 6:25 now. Bugger, I went to platform 5 just in case it was running late. The sign in front of the train seemed to have a whole lot of stops on it and none of them were Granja. I asked someone that was getting on if it went to Granja and they said "Braga" which I think was a totally different line. Then I saw the train was due to leave at 6:45. I went back to the main sign and saw a train scheduled to leave from platform 5, for Braga, at 6:45. I wondered how the hell two trains could be at the same platform and then I saw that 12 m Atrasso was flashing next to the Ovar one. I deduced that this must mean "12 minutes late" but I also realised that there was no way the Ovar train could leave until the Braga one had. So I watched it change to 12m Atrasso, then 15 m Atrasso then 20 m Atrasso. Then the platform changed to platform 1, why did they even put a 5 there in the first place? But when I went to platform 1 there was no train! Then 22 m Atrasso, the 25 m Atrasso and finally a train pulled in! A heap of people rushed over and we all got on. Then we waited 5 minutes, then 10 then 15. It was now 7:00! Then everyone started piling off the train. I was reminded of the broken train incident in Paris and thought it was just my luck and this one was broken too. I followed the crowd and looked at the board of the train that they were getting on to. It didn't have Granja on it so I decided I would go back to the original train and wait until someone in a uniform kicked me off (its sign still had Granja on it and it appeared that it was still waiting to leave). After sitting on the train for a minute everyone came back and piled on again. I had no idea what the hell was going on but it was pretty easy to assume that I was still on the right train. The train finally left at 7:10pm and I made it home with no further complications. Carla told me when I was home that the train system is having some problems with strikes or something.

For dinner we went out to a restaurant place for a friend of Carlas birthday. On the highway Carla pointed out that there were no street lights. Apparently they turned them off to save money. She says things are pretty dire here at the moment with lots of extra taxes and salary cuts. Sounds pretty rubbish, worse than Spain she reckons. I hope the EU can ride through all these problems.

Dinner was pretty cheap and cheerful and then we went to a place for dancing. I didn't really do any dancing, I don't think any of my moves would fit with the music and everyone seemed to be having a good time so I didn't really want to ruin their night. We got home quite late and I hit the hay pretty hard.