Dia de mau tempo

Or, one of the most fascinating news stories ever

Yes, it's official - heavy rain made the headlines. 

I have twelve whole days to catch up on - time is unbelievable. On a related note, I'll be back in England in less than three weeks! Best to crack on with the blog while I've actually persuaded myself to start writing. 

In brief, the rest of the week when I last posted (Wednesday 12th) onwards was fairly standard office life, interspersed with interesting evenings including skyping a lot of people (hello people!), going running (only because the river was too rough to row on), and swimming. I was partly trying to save energy for the weekend, because I knew it was going to be super busy and fun.

Overexcited much?

After getting up pretty early (around 6) on Saturday morning, I met Carly at the metro for the start of our epic journey up to Porto. We had a fairly smooth journey, except an unexplained half-hour delay, on an Alfa Pendular (high-speed) train from Lisbon Oriente station to Porto Campanhã. After getting the metro into the centre of town, we left our bags at the Hotel do Norte (which turned out to be pretty good, considering the extremely reasonable price) and went off exploring. 

We made it!

We saw the first of many beautiful churches - could hardly miss this one, the Capela das Almas/Capela de Santa Catarina, since it was right opposite the hotel - before heading to the Mercado de Bolhão, which felt very Portuguese, with lots of proper fruit and veg stalls, and this gem.

So many sausages

And some more touristy merchandise.

We wandered around a bit further, dodging a shower in the Portuguese way, in a café, before meeting Clare and Bea, Oxford friends doing their year abroad thing in Porto. They were lovely enough to look after us throughout the weekend, between the two of them. We all went for lunch and Carly and I were introduced to the francesinha, a Porto speciality that we'd never eaten before (Carly because she'd never been to Porto before, and me because I hadn't eaten it on my previous visit, a day trip last summer). The four of us then went to a 'flea market' (actually a massive car boot sale) in a multi-storey car park, which was quite an experience! Clare got the star buy, a beautiful leather handbag for €0.50. Later on we walked through the city and down the Rua das Flores to the riverside, where we said goodbye to Clare, then the three who were left walked back up again, stopping for chestnuts from a street vendor. We ended up having a very long chat in another café before saying goodnight.

Autumn colours - this still hasn't happened in Lisbon

And more

After a good night's sleep, Carly and I began the day with another café trip for breakfast, before doing more of our touristy things. We walked up the Torre dos Clérigos - cue huge numbers of photos - and wandered more, seeing more of the aforementioned beautiful churches, as well as a pet market with loads of birds, some rabbits, and even the odd kitten!

The city looks great from this high up

Don't look down!

Spot the rowers.

We met Sandra, Carly's local friend, for lunch in yet another café, where Clare joined us. We walked across the lower tier of the impressive Dom Luís I bridge to Vila Nova de Gaia, where we had a guided tour of the Sandeman port lodge.

Known for being one of the more 'commercial' lodges, with its instantly recognisable trademark, the Don

We definitely benefited from having Clare, a port lodge expert after several months as a guide, on hand to add extra information. (For the record, Bea had also been working in the industry - maybe Oxford does give students a taste for port!) We enjoyed trying a white and a ruby, a great treat. Sandra said her goodbyes before yet another café break, after which we walked back to Porto, this time over the top tier of the bridge. 

The aforementioned bridge

A View from the Bridge

We visited the Cathedral, then picked up some supplies for the journey home (it really is normal to organise your life around food, promise...). After we'd said goodbye to Clare, we picked up our stuff, and headed to the station, arriving very early again, giving us time for writing postcards. The train journey was fine, but I discovered that tilting trains in the dark are really not much fun if you occasionally feel travel sick. No harm done! I got home in time to skype Stephen before getting some rest ready for the next working week.

Everything went pretty well in the office this week too - not much to report. One exception is that it got cold enough for the radiators to come on. This was extremely exciting as I'd been under the impression there was no central heating, and had pretty much taken to wearing a scarf and coat at my desk. Apparently a common complaint among British expats here is that they feel colder in Portugal than in the UK in winter, because proper heating isn't a priority - it's just too mild most of the year. I sympathise, although I expect many of you reading don't!

The only blue sky we saw in Porto. It lasted about 5 minutes.

Another piece of news is that a different company has offered me an internship for the spring, meaning I can stay in Lisbon, which has really improved the look of my year abroad plans (yay!). To briefly sum up the rest of the week - Monday evening brought a rowing session, and on Tuesday evening I watched some of the Portugal v. Argentina match on TV (can definitely claim I was getting in touch with local culture...). On Wednesday evening the weather was no good for rowing (I'm pretty sure that was the 'dia de mau tempo' in the headlines) so we were treated to an erg and core session, real winter training mode (and surprisingly enjoyable...). I was still feeling sporty on Thursday evening so went swimming and ended up doing, among other things, 1km continuous crawl... Stephen may joke that I'm preparing for a triathlon, but I don't think it'll happen too soon.

The start of the weekend, Friday night, brought more happiness as I went out for dinner with Bea, down from Porto to visit family friends, and Lizzie, another Oxford Portugueser who I've somehow not seen all autumn despite us being in the same city most of the time! We had some very delicious tapas and a good long chat. Getting home around midnight left me with about 5 1/2 hours' sleep before an extremely early start for Saturday's adventure. 

Clue: there were kittens! Okay, that's a rubbish clue. There were boats too.

I was heading to Avis, a lake in the Alentejo, with people from my rowing club, including Laura, a Dutch friend who has possibly The Best Job In The World as she is a rowing researcher! She'd asked me if I wanted to help out as an assistant on her experiment, which was super exciting. I'm not sure if her research is secret, but I don't think she'll mind me writing that it is to do with the effects of crew synchronisation on performance, and that it involves loads of exciting high-tech equipment. Everything seemed to go well, and we managed to squeeze in a quick paddle in a double scull as well - such a joy on a beautiful lake in the sunshine. It was great to be out in the countryside away from the hustle of the city for a while. 

A very small part of the lake.

A video! How cool is that?

Today I slept for ages, just making it to church in time, where I unexpectedly found Carly, who I thought was in the Algarve - turns out her trip's been postponed. After the service we enjoyed our normal cup of coffee in the church hall (so English) then, with some rain-related difficulties, caught a bus down to Alfama to visit the Museu do Fado. For anyone who doesn't know, fado is a traditional style of Portuguese music, and I would say it's worth googling. One fadista (singer), Carlos do Carmo, was awarded a Latin Grammy earlier this week... I think... I heard it on the Portuguese news... so it was a topical time to go to the museum. It was full of interesting displays, and we got to listen to loads and loads of recorded fado. We had a bite to eat before wandering back up to our respective homes.

Anway, that brings the blog up to date! As ever, thank you for reading.