Porto with the Best Flatmates a Girl Could Ask For!!!

What's a better way to prepare for exams than a 3-day holiday in Porto, Portugal?!? Amy, Marie and I left Swansea at 3:30am to drive to Bristol to catch our 6:30am flight to Porto!! We were quite tired and certainly ready for a vacation. It had been a super sunny week in Swansea and we couldn't wait to add to our tans with some Portuguese sun!

One problem.....we landed in Porto to POURING RAIN!!!
Note the outfits! None of us packed for this kind of weather. Marie and I didn't even have a pair of shoes that weren't flip-flops!! First order of business - umbrella. Second - shoes!!

If only I could find a beer this big!!!

It was pissing down (as the Brits would say)!!! Not fun, but an adventure! Amy, Marie and I have the worst luck with weather. We travelled for Cardiff for night back in October and got hailed on!!

Once the rain stopped, we began to explore. This is an open-air market in the city centre. Lots of plants, fruits, and veg for sale. Oh, and you can choose and buy your own live chicken to take home for dinner!!

This is our hostel - Oporto's Poets Hostel. It was fantastic!! A bit hard to find and hidden among steep and narrow streets. but with hot showers, a kitchen, and free internet, we knew we'd be good to go!

We found the beach! Nice sunny day, right? Oh man, that water was COLD!!!!

Our first night in Porto, we went to this chill bar for just a couple beers....

Then we spotted this amazing invention - a 3-litre beer tap filled with Super Bock, northern Portugal's beer of choice! It was delicious!! The three of us proceeded to have 2 of these bad boys while talking and laughing about all the fun times we've had over the past nine months. It's a night I'll always remember!!!

DUDE!!!! A cat that could actually rival Milo's girth!!!

A city by the sea....how beautiful is Porto!! We spent our second day wandering the streets!! Notice it is actually sunny this day!! WOOHOO!!!!

My goal is to get recycle bins like this all over LA!! It's so easy....just RECYCLE already!!

Ah....SUPER BOCK!!!!

Poor little Marie can't see over the railing!!! Wee!!!

Porto is where all Port wine is made. We found W.H. Graham's port winery and went for a free tour and tasting. Mmmmm!!

We got to taste a vintage ruby port, a tawny, and a white port. Very yummy!!!

Here's the Port Wine Institute where the big wigs judge the ports and give out awards for vintage years. Oddly enough there was a marijuana fair going on right across the street from this. The Portuguese love their altered states!!! My one regret is not going to the cannibis fair....

This is the view from behind our hostel. Not bad!!

Our grassy backyard at the Poets Hostel.

Our 3-day took a different turn as the three of us headed for the airport on Friday morning. We had checked in with Ryanair online and, with boarding passes in hand, we headed for the gate. Upon boarding, the lady tells me that I cannot use the online check-in since I am not an EU resident, and I must go back through security to get a proper boarding pass. This is 5 minutes before the flight is set to take off. I say goodbye to Amy and Marie (just in case) and make a run for it. I get stopped by Passport Control for running past, then fight with the security people to let me out of the secured area, then race to Ryanair where a nice man has a boarding pass in hand ready for me. After paying my 4 Euros for the boarding pass, I cut to the front of security, go through the metal detector where I am stopped and my backpack searched (which didn't happen five minutes before when I went through), and the nice man from Ryanair gives me a look and says, "I'm sorry, but you're not going to make it..."

So, I'm now stranded at the airport in Porto. There are no flights back to Bristol until the next day and one flight to London Stansted that night. It wouldn't be that big of a deal, but I had a flight to Stockholm the next day and really wanted to get back to Swansea to re-pack for my next trip. It wasn't going to happen though. My options were (1) pay 75 Euros to take a flight that night to Stansted to spend the night in the airport and await my flight to Stockholm; OR (2) pay 138 Euros and take a direct flight from Porto to Stockholm the next morning. I choose option 2 and spent another night in Porto - a better choice, I think! I got an extra day to explore Porto on my lonesome, and was even able to stay at the same hostel. They had a dinner at the hostel that night and I met some fun people from Denmark, England, Texas, Australia, and Finland. We all went out for a few that night. It was very nice!!! But expensive!!!

The next morning I headed back to the airport and properly boarded my flight to Stockholm. It was an unexpected turn, but one that I found very rewarding. I was already set to spend my time in Stockholm alone as I was travelling by myself, so I took this last day/night in Porto as preparation to my first adventure to a new city alone.