Porto, Portugal; Vacation 2012 part 8

Driving to Porto, (I was reading the map, Ben driving,) Ben tells me to open the photos on his iPad, as he's taken screenshots of the map with directions to get us there. So I do. And we make it all the way to the final destination before we realize we are following the directions to get to the church, not the hotel. This is when Ben enlightens me the he had created a different photo album for these directions... So we spent the next few hours driving in circles looking for barely marked roads, working with maps that were labeled wrong and one way streets. Ben's two favorite things to say in times like these are "at least we're together," and a not-too-sarcastic "good times!" Thankfully the kids were either sleeping or good humored throughout this whole adventure.

Porto, Portugal is famous for its wine, but we went there to visit a church. Listening to a sermon in Portuguese was amazing; we easily understood over 80% of it! To get to church we figured out how to use the metro, which the kids liked, and meant we didn't have to worry about parking.

We took another trip on the metro to a seafood restaurant, El Marinheiro. We ordered fish, but didn't know what kind we had ordered. When it came complete with bones and eyes we couldn't help but laugh... That doesn't get served much in Texas. (Another thing not found in Texas is the octopus in a can found on the tuna aisle at the supermarket.) When we got back to the hotel there was one of the most majestic sunsets I'd ever seen. Pictures can never do those justice.

Not far from Porto was a big Medieval fair that we went to. There were tons of booths and all sorts of languages flowing. We met people from Iran, Senegal, India, Ukraine and I'm sure there were more we didn't meet. A booth set up with homemade soap bars made me miss friends in Texas.

Going back through Spain next!