Beautiful Day Photography’s Weblog

When we FIRST arrived in Porto, within minutes I did the most STUPID thing I think I have EVER done while traveling. I left my purse in the airport bathroom with BOTH Rob and my passports, wallets, cell phones, credit cards, all cash, jewelry and just about ANYTHING that you would deem important! We went ALL the way to our hotel a half an hour away until I realized when I tried to pay and my purse was not there what had happened. Although there was a slight language barrier, our cab driver at least understood my Spanish, he understood how F-ed we were and went like mach 10 back to the airport. Rob did not speak one word to me and I was praying to my travel guardian angel and I went back to the airport, convinced the cops to let me back through security and it was GONE. I almost had a nervous breakdown, until another guard came over and said something was turned in. He took me over to the police station and SURE enough there it was!! EVERYTHING was in it too! It was a miracle, saved the trip, and gave me JUST a little more hope in humanity that there really ARE good people out there. I would have done the same thing, so I was PRAYING for my karma to kick in and it did. The weather was pretty miserable that night, but it did not stop us from having one of the most fun nights we had on the trip. I think it was, because it was the first night we had ALONE without family and we weren’t feeling completely jetlagged. We were excited for a nice dinner out and to be on our OWN schedule.

The bride to be Diana told us to go to the old part of the city called Ribeira (translated into Riviera) because it is on a river. It was built almost 1000 years ago and the original city wall is there and it used to be the entrance into the city FROM the river through the wall. Back then they had warehouses and shops inside of the wall and today is not much different. Instead they have AMAZING restaurants in the walls and as you can see in the photo below, people INSIDE of the wall eating dinner through the glass. It’s deceiving how thick the wall is. The restaurant inside went back like 30 feet in! While going to the bathroom I discovered a hidden tunnel that connected some of the shops from the original wall… so cool and creepy! The ENTIRE old section of the city was a maze of these interconnected alleyways and staircases. I couldn’t living there you truly felt like you were back in time hundreds of years!

While we were waiting for a table at dinner, Rob saw these boys playing soccer in one of alleyways, so he joined for a while. They were trying to shoot in this tunnel as a goal, so they let me take a shot….I ended up missing and blasting this drainpipe at full speed ripping it off the wall. The owner of the house opened the door and sneered at the boys and then slammed the door shut. The boys (who didn’t speak any English) were like, “No problem, no problem” to me. It was REALLY funny…We both ran like scared little kids LOL! Here is a picture of his Portuguese soccer team;)

While at dinner at a restaurant in the wall called Don Tonhio’s, we went outside to check out the view of the river at night and met a whole group of Russians. They invited us to join them at their table and ordered expensive cognac and champagne. They were Hotelier’s that are working with a Portuguese furniture design company for their new hotel opening up in Moscow called “Garden Ring”. Only one guy knew a little English, but we managed to somehow communicate. It was SO funny, because all they knew how to say was “Barrack Obama”. So every time we toasted, we all toasted to Barrack Obama and every time they didn’t know how to express something or a word for something they would substitute the word with “Barrack Obama”…It was SO hilarious. At one point this Russian guy Michael was trying to express that in life family and relationships are more important than money and having “loving relations” as much as possible is the key to a happy life…It came out like this, “Have Barrack Obama EVERY NIGHT…Every night Barrack Obama…You be Happy”. If only Barrack could see that he was the language barrier link and that his name could mean SO many different things…LOL