I arrived in Porto on Tuesday. I had purchased a rental car when I made my flight arrangements with Ryan Air, and they had offered me a rental car at too-good-to-be-true rates, about three Euros a day. So I had paid about 21 Euros to rent a car for a week. But I had been nervous about it for a while. I had Googled info about cheap car rentals in Portugal, and found it there were all kinds of hidden fees in these too-good-to-be-true deals. Plus, I found that parking in Porto was extremely difficult and cars get towed all the time. And, gasoline in Europe is expensive. I had been struggling for some time as to whether I was going to just abandon the car rental, but left the decision to the last moment. When I got to Porto, I finally decided to ditch the rental car. I mean, it would be nice to have a car for a week for exploration, but it just didn't seem worth the hassle. So I saw the guy from my car rental company standing around with a sign, waiting for me, and I told him I wasn't going to pick up the car after all. I'm out 21 Euros, but I'm ok with that decision. I'm staying in Porto for a week, and part of the reason for that was that I had gotten this cheap, week-long car rental. Part of the reason is also that Portugal is much cheaper than the UK, and I need to save some money, so I'm willing to sit still for a little longer, though surely there are some interesting day trips in the area.
The metro was pretty easy to take to the hostel. The hostel is on a walking street, and there is no reliable parking anywhere near (and they don't offer parking), so it's probably a good thing I didn't get saddled with a car for a week. I got settled in after dark, and promptly explored the city. The next day, I went on a walking tour and a boat tour. It seems like those tour guides make pretty good money. The walking tour had about 40 people on it, and it was booked as a pay-what-you-want tour, but almost everybody paid 20 Euros, and some paid more. So that's 800 Euros for two hours' work, and the tour company probably takes a cut for finding customers, but the guides are basically working for themselves and taking in a lot of untraceable cash. I had talked to a bus tour guy in Scotland, a personable guy named George who was just a fountain of densely packed historical info and dark jokes about all the stuff we saw, and he really liked the gig, said it paid great, and he could work as much or as little as he wanted. He said he used to be a civil servant, but leading tours gave him more freedom. It's probably a better deal in these European socialist countries that offer benefits like health care not tied to jobs.
When I got to my room in the hostel, there was an older guy there, who joked, "Finally, I'm not the oldest guy in the room!" I answered with, "Yay, I win!" A good laugh was had.
Total fuckup guy shows up at the hostel on my second day here. He comes in late at night and gets in the wrong bed...somebody else's bed (someone who had been in that bed for two days already and was pretty irate when they arrived and found someone in their bed, but total fuckup guy was asleep and not wanting to wake up when original guy and the hostel person yelled at him, so original guy took another bed, having to move his stuff from the bed's locker...hmmm, stuff in that locker should have been a clue that the bed was taken) Some of my food in the hostel fridge had gotten eaten, too (first time EVER that had happened); I suspect it was total fuckup guy. Then the next morning they have to wake him up to check out about 2 hours after the check out time. Of course he takes an hour to wake up, while the irate hostel person waited for him to get his shit together, which is scattered far and wide. Then as he's leaving he can't find his key, and looking for it all over the room with the frustrated hostel worker. And he's acting like the aggrieved party. Good riddance.
Then we got guy who never leaves the room. I mean, I don't view that negatively or anything, but the guy never gets out of bed, as far as I can tell, except to use the bathroom. I think he's watching TV online most of the time. I'm not judging, though, just reporting. Maybe he has a disability or something. Who knows. He doesn't seem to speak much English or Portuguese, so I haven't had much contact with him, except to exchange pleasantries.
Wow, almost nobody has been using the hostel kitchen here. It's a great kitchen, too. Some hostels don't even have kitchens. Some have kitchens that are so packed and busy all the time that you can't find room to store your food or prepare a meal. But this one is nice, and, so far, underutilized. But I've been using it a lot. There's plenty of storage room in the fridge, and also lots of room for dry goods.
Wednesday, I took an impulsive day trip to Braga. I was walking by the São Bento train station, which I had visited previously to check out the impressive tile mosaics depicting historical scenes, and saw there were several day trips available. So I bought a return ticket to Braga from one of the ticket machines for just a little over six euros, and hopped on the train. Braga is a nice, peaceful place with a small-town feel. It's Portugal's fourth-largest city, but doesn't seem that big. It's really not huge or anything; there are a little over a hundred thousand people there. But it's a nice wander, and there is an interesting cathedral in town with lots of archaeologically interesting stuff and some ancient relics...a lot of these old cathedrals have body parts of religiously significant people. A few kilometers outside the city, near the village of Tenões, there is an amazing religious retreat on a mountain called Bom Jesus do Monte, which is an elaborate, multi-layered monument with spectacular views of the surrounding area. I kept climbing higher and encountering more amazing and meticulously constructed pieces of landscape, architecture, and art. Then I hired up a dirt road leading farther up the mountain, and found another elaborate religious monument called Santuário do Sameiro. I managed to get inside the church at Santuário do Sameiro, even though the hours posted indicated it was closed. I had tried the main door, which was locked, so I thought I wouldn't be able to get in. But then I saw a tourist slip out of a side door, and it was unlocked, so I went in. There was nobody in there but a nun praying, and she seemed to be giving me the stink eye for being there. And my shoes were squeaking loudly on the floor and echoing throughout the whole church, even though I was trying to walk as softly as possible. On the lower level, I was surprised to find a hypermodern motif. The gardens surrounding the sanctuary were elaborate, and, once again, the was a great view. I was able to catch the bus back to town from there, and then take the return train back, but I decided to stop in a random town cathed Trofa for a bit. It wasn't terribly spectacular and just seemed like a bedroom community for the bigger cities in the vicinity. But it was a nice walk. I missed the first train I tried to catch out of Trofa, as I got back thi the train station a few minutes late, but caught the next train, and arrived in Porto fairly late. It was about midnight when I got back to the hostel.
I'm trying to speak Portuguese as much as possible. And by Portuguese, I mean Spanish with as many Portuguese words as I know thrown in, probably pronounced like they would be in Spanish. But I do know how to pronounce a few Portuguese words. Amazingly enough, this strategy seems to be working enough to communicate fairly well. And the more I do it, and the more I hear the responses to the things I say, I weed out the Spanish words and mispronounced Portuguese words, so it gets better and better. I have very little knowledge of Portuguese verb conjugation, so I keep it simple. And I use my general rules for speaking languages I don't speak very well...things like, use helping verbs so you can just use the infinitives, ask questions that solicit yes or no answers whenever possible, etc.
Friday, I went out on an unsuccessful journey to find some merino wool socks, and maybe sock liners as well. My feet are doing better, patially becsuse all the raw stuff is getting calloused up, and partially because I've been wearing a new pair of comfortable merino wool socks. Unfortunately, I mostly packed the old merino socks that I wore on my last trip for a year and a half of walking. But, though they look fine, they are pretty worn out, and their usefulness to protect my feet has somewhat diminished. When I finally washed the new pair, I discovered, to my horror, that I had apparently culled out all my other pairs of brand-new merino wool socks when I was winnowing down the stuff I was taking with me, and this one is the only pair I have. So I've got to get some new ones soon, and it's a very high priority. Merino wool takes a long time to dry, so I had to wear an old pair today, and they are definitely not as comfortable. Note to self: on future trips, bring brand-new socks. Seriously. I looked online for where I could buy merino wool socks in Porto, and some forum mentioned that somebody had bought some at a place called Berg's, an outdoor supply place. So I Googled Berg's, and it was quite a walk across Porto, but I was up for a good walk. Unfortunately, when I got there, it turned out it was an online company, and the only thing there was an office suite filled with coders and corporate types. Shit. Finding brick and mortar places is a big problem on Google. Whenever I Google "where to buy product X in city Y", all I usually ever get are mountains of results from online mail order places. And it's much worse overseas, just forget about it. And the sad thing is, the brick and mortar places are out there, their results are just buried in a haystack of online crap. When traveling, it's much easier for me to buy things from an actual place if I can find it, because if I have to buy things by mail, I have to coordinate when it's going to get where I'm going to be, and give that place a heads up that a package will come for me. That's if the online place will even let me ship stuff at all to a place that's not my verified home address, or will take an order at all from some foreign guy who they can't necessarily even verify as real. Hassle city, but this is important enough that if I can't find a street retailer, I'll have to dance the online ordering ballet. Tomorrow I'll try to remember to ask the hostel folks if they know a good hiking clothes store, though that's kind of a specialty thing.
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