On to Porto

I don't want to start another post with "so", but I forgot to mention that the last 2 mornings before this one I woke to the soothing sounds of a jack hammer. It was so awful it was almost comical.

It actually sounded like they were trying to break through the wall I was sleeping beside.

So, just a note: if you're going to Lagos… Don't stay at White Butterfly hostel. Stay at Hutch instead. It's great! Cozy and fun and NO early morning construction… hopefully.

Alright, so today we took the bus to Porto. It was the nicest day we've had so far weather wise and I spent it ALL on a bus. Whatever, it's cool. The landscape was stunning and I got to nap a lot.

Porto is beautiful. It reminds me a lot of Lisbon, probably not surprising, but it also has it's own flare.

For dinner I had this soup called Caldo Verde, which is apparently a traditional portuguese soup of Potato and Kale, and it was really quite good. We also had an entire bottle of really nice white wine for €3, and our whole dinner between the 2 of us was €10.

Tomorrow we do a walking tour, possibly even a wine tour. When we got in today to our "Wine Hostel" we were greeted with a glass of Port wine. Man is that stuff intense. Did you know it's cut with Brandy? Like wine is a sipping drink already, but this is a super small sip kinda beverage.

The building we are in is beautiful. The room is super clean and tidy and the bathrooms are really nice. I haven't even spent a night and I can comfortably say I would stay here again. Not to mention there is in-house laundry that they do for you while you sleep. Not bad right?

Oh and here's the view from our room:

I'm thinking I will have to go work in Italy for a few months after all. Freelance writing opportunities are few and far between, and while I am still planning on doing it, I don't know if it will keep me a float like I thought it could.

I know I have to have faith in myself, and trust the process, and believe the Universe will take care of me like it always does. But anxiety is a thing, and I have my fair share of it.

I will say thought, that my spontaneous stress eczema/psoriasis is finally going away.

I'm just trying to enjoy AMAP. Being grateful for as much as I can think to be grateful for. Taking pride in myself for doing what I'm doing and all the time and effort I put in to making it happen. That's the stuff I gotta look at, not the decreasing numbers of my bank account.

What's really great is how much english everyone speaks here. I think Duolingo lied to me when it said I was 37% fluent. I'm definitely not. Pretty quickly I end up asking "Voce falo Ingles?" "Do you speak English?", and go from there.

So if you're planning on travelling to europe, maybe get "hello", "thank you", and if you're canadian, "sorry", down pat. Otherwise just figure out how to say "Do you speak English?"

There's also this really great app I bought that translates in basically any language you need, and you can download specific packages for when you don't have internet. HIGHLY recommend it.

I checked my step counter today that I didn't know I had. Turns out Friday I did over 23k. Wow me, right? Considering I hardly walk anywhere back home, I think that's pretty great.

Ok, that's it for tonight. I didn't get too many pictures today, so what you see is what I got.

AML