Porto

On the airport in Porto Marianne and Rita met us, Jasmin, Gernot, Andreu and me. Then we drove to a flat of Rita’s friend, who thankfully offered all of us to stay there while she was away, where we all had enough place to stay at. Rita had already prepared food for the evening, Bacalhau casserole, I think no comment is needed for anybody knowing Rita’s cooking skills.
The next day we went to a museum in Porto, but either I was to tired to get anything out of it, or everything was just as or less interesting as this staircase.

But the gardens around were nice, as was the weather.


Then we went down through the old town, down to the river side, to enjoy the sun and write the first postcards.

In the evening I decided to cook, the result was ok regarding the little time on our hands. And to search more positive points about it: it was quite suitable to be eaten after going out to some bar that evening.

The car was relatively crowded on the way back from shopping ….

That evening we went to a nice bar in Porto, nice wooden floor, an old house which was not too obvious seeing it from the street. In the backyard there were a lot of tables below palms. There we all sat at one table, all of us exchange students having been in Finland. Then some guy asked if he could sit down there. Some not so portugese looking one. Actually he was a finn, who moved from Rovaniemi to Porto about 20 years ago. Unfortunately most of the others of us were not really able to talk in finnish, but all of them had been only half a year at different places in Finland. But I could actually talk again some finnish … a week after having left Finland.
Back in the flat, icecream and spinnage-foccacio were decimated.

Ingredients for Rita’s casserole everywhere …

Having seen this church already on a lot of postcards … and on this photo even the construction site in front of it is not visible. At other places in the city we also saw otherwise rather ordinary houses being decorated with these sort of tiles.

towards the big bridge … some of us didn’t like that you could look directly downwards between the metal plates …

… but the view from both sides was really nice. One week later this area was used for the redbull airrace.

… finally we were on our way to Coimbra. The train station in the city was really impressive, because the tracks were directly going to a tunnel, the train station itself was surrounded by houses.