Mmm...Port Wine!

Tuesday, September 21, 2010
We got up this morning and my laundry was wet, of course! Well, it was at least damp and the dryer was being used by someone else. Brutal! So, I hung my clothes from my bed and turned on a fan to dry them. While we were down getting breakfast our stupid roomates shut it off eventhough they saw me hanging up my wet clothes and they had checked out early. What the heck? I was super annoyed. Anyhow, I turned the fan back on and tried to super quickly dry my clothes before we took off back to Lisbon. We checked out from the hostel and headed down to the river to check out the port wineries. We had wanted to go to a winery our whole trip but never made it. This was our very last chance and we wanted to take full advantage of it. But because we were so slack this morning and then had to wait for clothes to dry, the wineries were closed until 2pm. So we had lunch on the waterfront which was great! A pitcher of sangria and two great meals later we were heading back to the wineries for the tastings. I should mention Heather had this interesting traditional dish that you can only get in Porto and it consists of meat and bread with a spicy sauce covering it. Strange but kind of delicious. It had an egg on top too. Not your average lunch but hey, when in Rome. So then we headed to this winery that was recommended to us by the hostel as it's the oldest and meant to be the best. When we arrived however (and it was the furthest one) it was not offering an English tour until 4pm which was way too late since we had a train to catch around 430. So we found a smaller one that had a tour starting in a few minutes and we would have just enough time to do one tour and head back to grab our things. That's what we did!! It would have been nice to have more time in Porto but we had to move on. So we caught the train back to Lisbon. We had a dinner date with our friends Ari and Andrew. It's crazy how quickly time flies because their last stop is Lisbon before they head to Africa this weekend. WOW! We are super excited for them and slightly jealous. Anyhow, we had planned to meet them at their hostel at 8pm which turns out is owned by the same owners as our hostel. So we popped over there and they were waiting outside for us...YEAH!!! Super exciting to see them again! We all agreed that it was time for some Japanese (sushi in particular) since we never did get sushi together in Prague. Heather had found this place in the Lonely Planet guide and Andrew had mapped it out and got us there without a hitch. The streets in Lisbon can be a bit confusing but we made it. We had a great meal and got to catch up on each other's trips from the last time we saw them...must have been Budapest! Long time to catch up on! So after a great supper with great company, we all headed back to our hostel for some cocktails. I guess the cocktail bar switches between our hostel and theirs. So after a few amazing cocktails and some more chatting, we were pooped and all decided to call it a night and tuck 'er in.