Porto, Portugal - And so it begins

 Blessedly, my travels to Portugal (by way of Philly and Madrid) were uneventful, sleepless, but uneventful.  My nascent Spanish does help in reading Portuguese (and some in listening comprehension), but does not help in figuring out how to pronounce things.  Portuguese is the 5th most spoken language in the world, granted, that's mostly because of Brazil, but it's still an impressive statistic for a language that doesn't come to mind when I think of languages most spoken around the world.  Oddly enough, the first Portuguese speakers I ever remember meeting was when I lived in Japan.  Anyway, back to Porto.  It is home to the second largest university in the country which was founded in 1911.  The country has both private and public schools (for primary, secondary, and university level).

I arrived at my hotel around 1pm, and my tour manager, Nelia, met me in the lobby - I must have been easy to spot because she asked right away if I was with Gate1 (maybe traveling alone does have its advantages at times).  I was relieved to know my room was ready and I could go relax and try to get a power nap (6am the previous day was a distant memory of when I'd last slept).  After gaining some energy I decided to walk to the market.  It was a fantastic spring afternoon with mid-60's weather, plenty of sunshine, and barely a cloud to be seen.

Casa da Musica

There were some lovely parks, the iconic Casa da Musica, stunning tile-fronted buildings on the Rue Alvares Carbal, and plenty of little shops.  I walked maybe 2k before I started feeling like I was getting blisters on my heels.  I had needed to stay awake, and it was lovely outside, so turning back despite not reaching my destination didn't bother me - I didn't want to start my tour with blisters anyway!  The walk did keep me awake and out of the room long enough that when I returned I was able to do some journaling before heading down to the tour orientation and welcome dinner.

Oddly enough, I'm the only solo traveler on this tour, normally there are a small handful of us.  Not a worry, I found a lovely group of 11 friends/family from Boston and they welcomed me to the open spot at their table.  We are 42 people total, and we did go around the room and give a brief introduction, but I couldn't hear everyone.  This tour is also comprised entirely of Americans (no Brits or Australians this time), although about 1/3 of those are first generation immigrants to the U.S.  We have Russians, Iranians, Chinese, and Sri Lankans which helps keep things interesting.  Dinner was a tasty meal of pumpkin soup, sea bass, cabbage, mashed potatoes, and a chocolate mouse torte for dessert.  By 9:30pm all of us where exhausted and everyone started to head off to bed.