Portugal and Spain

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Last week was the first of two of our travel breaks here at Cimba. My travels started off saturday morning, while most others left friday night. We left midmorning on a bus to Basano. The train we planned on taking didn't come so we had to bus it to Padova, which is one of the major train hubs in the region. We trained it to Milan and got off about an hour before our gate closed. This was due to the missed train and bus ride. Long story short we caught a cab and told him to floor it to the Ryan Air airport. We find out its an hour away from the Milan train station. So all four of us in this cab are pretty much freaking out. The cabbie did work and we got there with about 10 minutes before the gate closed, don't ask how much that cab ride was. We waited in line to check our bags and get our passports stamped, and rushed through security. We ran to our gate and they just started boarding, which was a huge relief. Ryan Air a low cost airline that is first come first serve and charges you for everything. I am talking bathrooms, water, food, and they try to sell perfume and even lottery tickets. It was quite an experience.
Our first stop was Porto, Portugal. This is the second largest city of Portugal situated on a river a few miles from the coast. It is a very beautiful city with several bridges that is built up on the hills on each side of the river. This is also the home to Porto Wine, which is a very sweet wine that is popular world wide. You can see the Hollywood type sign names above many of these wineries from the bridge. The first night we got there we walked down to the river to have a nice meal. The specialty dishes there are a fish that comes covered in french fries or a sandwich covered in gravy with french fries. The next day it was raining and one of the guys I was with came down with a fever and cold, so we hung out at the hostel, watched a few movies, hung out with some Brazilians and learning about the cultural differences between us. One of the guys from Brazil spent a summer in the Wisconsin Dells working at Kalahari. Day two was a bit nicer but still had rain off and on during the day. We walked around, checked out the castle and figured out our bus information for getting to Santiago, Spain. The next day Matt (the sick guy) was feeling better and so we walked around crossed the bridge and found a few cool touristy things. At 1 we hopped on a bus and made our way to Santiago. A few comments on Portugal: The economy is definitely suffering, there are many buildings rotting and boarded up. They love to tile churches with white tile and form pictures in blue on the tiles. And Porto is a big University town.




The drive up to Santiago was beautiful. The city of Vigo, Spain is in a bay off of the Ocean, very beautiful. You definitely can notice a big difference when crossing into Spain. The difference was in the overall cleanliness. Porto was definitely my favorite city I traveled to on this trip and that partly was due to the buildings looking so old, but Spain was much nicer. We reached Santiago and it started raining there too, but we had become accustomed to it. That night we had a nice steak dinner and just relaxed in the smaller town of Santiago. The next day we found the Cathedral, which is famous for the Way of St. James. This is a pilgrimage and the final stop is this Cathedral. Wikipedia it. The Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela is amazing, with an incredible amount of gold around the alter, also wikipedia it to get the idea. After checking that out we made our way to the airport. On to Barcelona.



Barcelona is known for many pickpockets and muggings. So going in I was prepaired to see a lot of shady characters. It is a beach town with a big city feel. First night we were there we watched the Arsenal v. Barcelona game. Arsenal scored two goals late to beat Barcelona 2-1, an exciting game. The next day we got up early and wanted to site-see but it was raining again, what a convenience haha. So we decided we would check out some shops because one of the kids I was with didn't bring much to Europe. We found a nice sale at Zara and he got his shop on. Fun right (sarcasm). That night we found a decent meal on Las Ramblas (tourist street of Barcelona). The next day was Friday and it was absolutely perfect day. No clouds for the entire day. We found the Goudi Sagrada Familia building, which was interesting. Then we found a park on the hills outside of the city and checked out the view of Barcelona. Then we found Juan's favorite soccer squad's stadium, Barcelona's Camp Nou. This is the largest soccer stadium in Europe seating just shy of 100,000 people. We took the tour, which entitled a walk through the museum, visiter locker rooms, walk down the tunnel, into the benches of the teams by the field, and up to the press box. The stadium is much more impressive than San Siro (Inter Milan), which is the eighth largest in Europe and where I watched the soccer match in my prior blog. That night we found a Chinese restaurant for dinner, something we all were craving. Barcelona is an extremely expensive city, so by this time we were starting to notice the effects of that. The next day, saturday, was Juan's birthday, who was one of the four of us on this trip together. So he asked, in his fluent spanish (he's from Peru), where a local salsa club was. That night we went to a Spanish salsa club in Barcelona. This was a very culturing and exciting experience. Everyone in the place was dancing and there wasn't anywhere to sit. After each song you change partners. So I watched and learned a few moves of salsa. But it was very impressive what some of these men and women could do, including Juan. Saturday we did what Juan wanted. So we walked down to the Port and started climbing a park to get to a gondola to cross the port to get to the beach and enjoy the view. On our way up two french girls came walking down a bit disgruntled. The asked us if we could help them. We said of course and they told us they had been robbed by 3 men in the park at knife point. They had all their money, credit cards, and passports taken. They were all worked up, which you would expect. We walked them to the closest police station with the help of Juan's spanish speaking ability. They got the help they needed and we left them after they thanked us. This whole situation got the heart rate going pretty good, but it felt good that we were able to help them. After that we found an Irish Pub to just sit and relax for a minute and watch a soccer match. It was Everton v. Chelsea. It was in extra time, Chelsea scored. Then with a few minutes left in extra time Everton scored. It put them into a shoot out aka PK's and Everton won with the help of American goal keeper Tim Howard. That was an exciting game because it was an Everton Pub so the game got real exciting near the end. That night we all went out for Juan's birthday to an Argentinean Steak House and I had the best Lasagna I have ever had. It was the best 7.50 I have ever spent. Clearly I was trying to save money. Sunday we made it back to Paderno del Grappa safe and sound.





Next weekend is the big weekend in Venice for Carnevale, which is the equivalent to Mardi Gras in New Orleans but with more of a European style to it and more civilized. Everyone wears masks and there are parades and such. Venice is the most popular city in Europe for Carnevale. That is where I will be for all of Saturday. I plan to just go for the day in an attempt to conserve cash. School is going well and moving right along. We have started planning our second travel break and several other weekends for the coming weeks this week and hopefully can get that all figured out. I'll post again next week.

Arrivederci

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Comments

[Grandma Finley]

Response to Portugal Spain Trip
Dear Sean, Love your blog and the pictures are wonderful. Looks cold at the beach. Happy Valentines- Thanks for your card! This is such a terrific experience for you. Save everything!! I'm sure that is a negative statement but it is the history of your life and you are an important person. Love, Grandma

[Joanne Huston]

Hi Sean!
Thanks for the great travel blog and the awesome pictures. Your picture of the cathedral is spectacular!! I was just wondering about the "stand with walker" ad below your blog - you didn't put that there did you? I hope with all my heart that you didn't. Love, Aunt Jo

[Gerry]

student
Sean, I've read your blog entries since January, and wanted to let you know that I have a Granddaughter who is attending classes there with you ===maybe not the same classes, but depending on the number of students, I'm sure you've seen her or met her somewhere along the way. Would be interesting to find out. If you are interested in knowing who she is, I will give you her name. She went to Carnivale this past weekend as well and was equally impressed. Have fun and take lots of pictures (that's what I tell her). Good Luck-Grandma Gerry.

[SeanFinley]

Yes that would be very interesting to find out. It is really cool to hear that others that have family members here are reading this as well. Very cool!