Saturday in Porto

Since the breakfast included at the hostel was only toast and cereal, we headed out early today and wandered into a cafe that seemed to serve our normal idea of breakfast (eggs, toast, etc).  The language barrier came into play again so we blindly ordered by pointing at things on the menu that looked like words we sort of recognized (such as ovo, which means egg).  We ended up ordering a heart-attack breakfast (2 eggs, a hamburger patty, and a hot dog style wiener for me and 1 egg, a small steak, and french fries for Paul), but it was delicious and it kept us full for most of the day

Before leaving Lisbon, we grabbed a few pages from a guidebook about Porto, and it came in very handy as we explored the city today!  We started by going to the Igreja de Sao Francisco (Church of Saint Francis) where we paid 4 euros each to go into the church, the museum, and the catacombs.  The church is an amazing demonstration of Baroque style wood gilding (unfortunately no pictures allowed inside), but the really cool part of the visit was the catacombs.  Apparently there were no public cementaries in Portugal until 1845 so people used to be buried inside and all over churches.  The place was spooky but pretty neat!

After the church, we walked across the lower part of the Ponte D. Luis bridge to get to the Vila Nova de Gaia area where all the Port wine lodges are located.  We had planned to go to a couple of tastings, but after touring the Calem lodge and tasting a white Port and a tawny (which were delicious), Paul told me he felt drunk and wanted to pass out so we decided we were done with Port.  This is the first time I have really wished we weren’t backpacking and had suitcases because I really wanted to buy some of the Port – some of their best bottles are only 50 euros!