[creative title about Portugal]

Olaaa hombres!

It's a new year! 2009, the year of the ox (although our English teacher insists that it's the year of the buffalo *eyeroll*). After my final exam this semester, I had almost a full month ahead of me with no school so me and my buddy S decided to go to Portugal.
Portugal had never been very high on my list of dream holiday locations. I'm not even sure that it was on the list. But I thought, what the hell, the tickets were reasonably priced and we didn't need to book a hotel 'cause we could stay at a friends house so it seemed like a good idea.

We got to Porto quite late and didn't stay up very late but I remember the next morning very clearly. The sky was totally cloudless and the sun was shining. It was so amazing because Estonia has been under a constant cloud cover since October. And even cooler were the palm trees and orange trees that grew everywhere in the little town of Feira (where we were staying). For breakfast we went to a little cafe on our street and had grilled sandwiches with cheese and ham. Later we discovered that those sandwiches are almost like a national food because they serve them everywhere.

Although we had two weeks to spend in Portugal, we always had something to do. We had some plans beforehand about where we could go but in the end we didn't visit half of the places we planned but had twice as much fun. :)
We went to some birthday parties (it was really awkward at first but when everyone was drunk enough, we fit right in :D) and checked out some local bars (they're all quite similar - crowded and full of smoke, yuck) and hit the clubs (that didn't turn out too well but what can I say, it was an interesting experience). We even went to a football game - FC Porto vs some random loser. The game itself wasn't that entertaining, it ended with a 0-0 score. But the stadium looked awesome and the people were really excited. The Porto fanclub had these huge flags with them that they kept waving and they kept singing ... it seemed that they never got tired. It's also possible that they brought some illegal immigrants with them to sing and wave flags when they got tired. o.o

We went to Porto many times. The beach is incredible.



The river that goes through the city is awesome too but I don't have any good pics of it. S has some nice pictures of the city at night. The city looks really cool with all the bright lights and the huge river and all. Very pretty.

We went on one of those "hop on-hop off-hop wadewa" busses that give you a tour of the city. It was strange because we were the only people on the bus and we rode on the second floor of the bus and in the very front so everyone kept staring at us. D: But the tour itself was nice, they have some awesome old houses mixed with more modern buildings and of course there are plam trees everywhere. There was one shop I really liked:



O rly? Ya rly.

Another cool thing about Porto are the shopping centers. First of all, they're HUGE. Secondly, they have whole movie theaters inside them. Thirdly, they have these areas that are filled with all kinds of different cafes/restaurants but with one huge seating area. It was really cool. We could all buy different food from different places and still all sit together at one table. Brilliant. :D But yeah, usually we headed straight for McDonalds and ordered a "BigMac menu" (it was the only thing the salespeople understood and it was the only thing in the menu that we understood).
But the cinemas are totally awesome too. The one we went to was bigger than the largest cinema in Estonia... The popcorn was weird though. It was all sweet and sticky and bleh. For me it's either salty popcorn or no popcorn at all.
And the shops... ou meeeen. There were so many of them! I don't remember how many times we visited those shopping malls but we always found some cool shops to check out and I got carried away and spent all my cash in the first week lolz.

We took a two day trip to Lisbon and visited a shopping center there too. We wanted to buy some food to take back to the hotel so we could eat all night :D so went to some Selver-like thing inside the shopping center. It had this weird smell I thought. When we moved deeper into the shop I thought, damn, it smells like someone left a pile of dead fish to rot in some corner. And wouldn't you know, when we made it to the back wall where they sold fish... we found a pile of dead fish just lying around. The smell was AWFUL. It was unbearably awful. I had to cover my face and run in the other direction. It was like toxic... I felt it burning my lungs... At that moment I felt like some terrorist unit was trying out a new biological weapon or something... I can't imagine how the people who have to shop there all the time handle it. Maybe if you breathe it in for a few years, you'll get used to it. But I doubt it for some reason.
Moving on from those sharp memories lolz... We visited a sea world museum which was cool. S mentioned our friieeeeeeeeeeend. Here it is:



Yeah. It's.... I don't know how to describe it. Disconcerting.
We were just walking around the fish tank (it was really big, I'd say bigger than my house) and we took pictures of the sharks and other fish who swam there and then suddenly I saw that thing. It was swimming out from behind a corner. I thought "that's a weird fish". But as it swam closer and I saw how huge it was, I was like "ohmygod what is that thing??"
Later we read that they are usually up to 4 meters long and weight around 5 tons.
Friiieeeeeeend.

A lot of the time we just hung out at the house, watched Gs to Gents or the OC. We had a lot of fun at the house, we had time to laugh over the weird people we'd seen and all the stuff we'd done each day. Like once S saw a man walking funnily up some stairs and she thought he was just joking so she started laughing but then we understood that the guy had somekind of physical disability which made us feel really bad for laughing at him but at the same time it was totally hilarious.

One of the best things about Porto were the cafes. There were so many different cafes and they all had really good food. But one cafe shone over all the rest because of one reason...



Crepes. But not just any crepes. The most perfect crepes with dark chocolate sauce and vanilla ice cream. They are like a taste of heaven. OUMEEEN. I can't even look at them without drooling.







*droooooooooooooooooooool*

Sorry, where was I?

*sigh* I can honestly say it was one of the best vacations I've ever had. I didn't know or expect much of Portugal but it turned out to be an awesome place. We didn't spend too much time on boring tours of museums or castles. We saw everything we wanted to see and so much more. We had time to really see what life in Portugal is like and we had time to sleep in late. ;D And we even got a pair of pimped out shoes with our names on them! How awesome is that? :DDDD
The trip wouldn't have been the same thing without my friends so I'm really glad F invited S to Porto and that I got to tag along. We met some interesting new people and we have so many new jokes to laugh at... :D

Obrigado for reading but this is getting kinda long, so Imma stop right here.