Arriving into Portugal

Can't say my arrival into Portugal was the smoothest or most comfortable thing, to tell you the truth..

2 layovers (one in Chicago, another in Frankfurt), and about 24 hours later, I find myself in Porto airport, which is nice and clean and open. If I had a local airport - I'd want it to look like this one!

The team members that had taken the flight from Frankfurt together sat and waited at the airport for approximately 6 hours for the flights of all the other participants to arrive, and then we took a bus to Porto for lunch before heading up to Braga. I passed out here for a bit, I have no idea what happened between the airport and the shore, but I don't think it was longer than a 20 minute ride. The bus driver scared me by coming to the back where I lay down and said in Portuguese "It pains me that I can not kiss you!" Wow, talk about forward! I gave him a crazy-eyed look and promptly passed out again.

There was a Red Bull air show that day, so public transportation was jammed and people ran late. We also couldn't go to the famous bridge/river area because that's where the entire city clustered around to see the air show. So we were off to the side a bit having lunch on the shore.

The sun and air in Porto reminded me a lot of Los Angeles (although a little cleaner in Portugal). The sun was strong and warm and lovely here. The shoreline is a bit rocky, with little nooks where you could find some sand. There was definitely a sense of "arrival" by then.

We have a snack at a shack on the beach, where the menus were more difficult to understand than I had anticipated. I thought polvo would be chicken, but turned out to be octopus! Whoever says Portuguese is like Spanish is completely wrong. Portuguese turned out to be harder to understand than French or Spanish!

I don't know if other cities in Portugal are like this, but this large city manages to keep a quaint village feel. Everything from the clean streets to the beautiful tile-covered buildings and homes makes me feel like I"m in a large town as opposed to the second largest city in the country! What a lovely beginning being greeted by sunshine and happy local smiles.

************************************

Copied from my hand written travel journal:

Sept 1, 2007

Somehow managed to pass an entire freaking day on planes. Up, down, up down, up down. The stupidest part is that we're now heading back west to go to Portugal from Germany. I'm digging the traveling though. I like the new faces, the different mannerisms & somehow the music I listen to, being in many lanauages, folds in much better to the everyday. God I love Europe!

So I met Karen, Elyse & Manolo! So incredibly nice! I already know I'm going to have a good time. It looks like we're going to do quite a bit of touring, and maybe even catch a futbol game! I can't wait! But after all this traveling I just want to shower & sleep. My lip is already split from dehydration.