Portugal! A Quick Update

I've been quite busy lately and haven't had much time to update my blog. Last weekend I traveled to Porto, Portugal and this weekend we had midterms. About the time I have a chance to catch up on things, here I go traveling again this weekend to Sevilla, Spain. Sevilla is the 4th largest city in Spain and is located in the southern province of Andalucia. I was looking forward to the warmer weather but unfortunately it's supposed to rain most of the time we are there :(

The trip to Porto was very enjoyable. We flew from Madrid which meant we traveled 3 hours east to go 1 hour west which put is in Portugal (Salamanca hasn't turned out to be the best place to travel from). Porto is the second largest city in Portugal and is situated on the Douro River near the Atlantic coast. The Douro River Valley is internationally known for it's production of Port wines. That being said, we had a chance to take some of the famous port wine tours that are in Villa Nova de Gaia, which is located across the Douro River from Porto.

We also had a chance to visit Foz do Douro, which is a seaside community known for it's beaches, cafes, and shops. It was nice seeing the ocean for the second time in my life (the first being in Costa Rica), and the beach area was absolutely beautiful. I thought I remembered hearing somewhere that it was once one of the most dangerous beaches in the world due to its waves and rocks and...stuff (I obviously no nothing about the ocean and it's vocab). Anyways, it was beautiful, and we all really enjoyed walking around the beach and stopping to picnic on a nearby grassy area.

I found the whole Portuguese language thing quite interesting. As you may know, Portuguese is very similar to Spanish, but they prefer not to speak it. This was our first experience with a language barrier and it turned out quite interesting. We are all accustomed to saying things like gracias, hola, etc.-- some of which is the same in Portuguese, but some not. We were told by numerous natives to not speak Spanish, but it definitely slipped out of our mouths by habit. At one of the wine tours, someone responded with "gracias" and one of the workers told us to not say that unless we want to get killed (obviously he was joking but he explained more afterwards--turned out to be a really awesome guy). Luckily many people spoke English, but it was interesting trying to understand Portuguese. For me, understanding Portuguese would be like the following for English speakers..

-"bla bla bla when bla bla bla here bla bla bla ok?"
-"uh...sure"

So it was quite the experience. But I enjoyed the different culture, the cheaper prices, and of course the beauty of the seaside--oh, and the women were pretty cute, too...just sayin'

ANYWAYS...

here are some things that I've thought of for my "You know you're living in Spain when..." list

You know you're living in Spain when...

1. The dogs are dressed nicer than you
2. Everyone from ages 2-100 wear scarves
3. The milk is warm
4. You ask for a "cafe" and you get 2 ounces of espresso
5. Any woman over the age of 50 wears a $4000 fur coat
6. The least amount of space between parallel parked cars is 14 inches
7. Every child looks like a GAP model
8. There are pig legs hanging in a window every 5 stores
9. A bar or restaurant without the smell of smoke would just be weird
10. If you run outside (or probably do any exercise) in shorts, people stare
11. When 20 minutes of walking somewhere seems normal
12. When cars actually stop at the line where you're supposed to stop at a crosswalk
13. When you walk around at 7AM and still see groups of drunk people in the street.
14. When your English grammar deteriorates and you begin to say elementary phrases or spell things like you would in Spanish.

That's what I have for now.

I won't have time to put up pictures from the last week until after I get back from Sevilla, but if you'd like to check out my pictures from Porto, check out my flickr site at www.flickr.com/photos/nickjwelch

Miss you all!

Nico