First Day in Porto

Today we arrived in Porto and checked into the Rivoli Cinema Hostel.  I am happy to report that this hostel has a nicer bathroom, but unfortunately it’s co-ed, so now I’ll really have to be careful when getting out of the shower!  The other good thing about this hostel is that we have a private room with a “double” bed (which is really actually two single beds pushed together) and they have a washer and dryer you can use for free!  The bad thing about this hostel is there is an ant infestation in the kitchen, which makes us not want to store any food there, and there is no social atmosphere whatsoever.

We took our first train ride to get to Porto and I am amazed at how efficient and cheap the rail system is in Europe (only 19.50 euros to get from Lisbon to Porto).  The directions to the hostel were a little hard to understand so it took us 45 minutes to find something that is really only 5 minutes from the train station!  But we eventually got here and so far, Porto looks nicer than Lisbon!

For lunch, we tried a BBQ place which was pretty good, but the meat was still a little too salty for our liking.  For 15.70 euros we got an entire small chicken, a huge plate of rice, and some pork ribs.  Because it was a sort of a late lunch after getting lost, neither of us felt hungry at dinner time so we decided to pick up a small lasagna at the supermarket when we went to buy drinks.  It wasn’t great, but what can you expect for 2 euros?  We sure won’t do that again