One hour behind but they speak English!

The kelp collectors.
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Ola (I have to say that because I'm in Portugal now),

I had fun getting to Viana. Nobody told me that Portugal was one hour behind. So at about 30 mins after my stop was meant to be I started freaking out. Maybe the train didn't stop in Viana, maybe I would end up in Portugal. So I asked the train gard dude and he just pointed to his watch which was one hour behind mine, and then to the timetable. So all was good. It was dark when I got there but I resisted the urge to take a taxi and decided to walk in the direction of the old town where my hotel was. I thought "how big can the old town really be?". It was big. So after wandering aimlessly for a while I decided to attempt my Portugese. I walked up to a waiter and said "desculpe". And he said "you can speak english its ok". I didnt realise that my only word of portugese was so appalling that it was obvious that I couldnt speak it. haha. Ive improved a bit since then. In spain they just talked spanish to me but in Portugal they could tell straight away and started talking english. But I still try to stay please and thank you in their language. Maybe I just dont look very portugese. Anyway the waiter didnt know where it was either so he left his restaurant (he was the only person working at the time, although he did only have one customer) but we went into the square and he asked people who then pointed us in the right direction, he then continued with me until he saw some of his friends who he passed me onto and they took me to the door. They also spoke english and were really nice. So first impressions of portugal were very good!

Kelp collecting and more churches

The view from the chapel.
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The hotel is amazing. It is a converted kind of palace with the traditional Portugese furnishings. A very freaky bed, I wish Id taken a pictureof it actually. The lady who runs it was very sweet (and also spoke english). I dropped off my bag and decided to head out for a beer before I went to bed. Unfortunatley about 10 minutes into my wandering I discovered that I had left my wallet back at the hotel so no ice cream for me. But it didnt matter I managed to stumble across a large crowd of people, some of whom were wearing what I assumed was typical Portugese attire. They were all dressed up for the folk festival that was on at the time. So I stood in the square waiting for about 1 hour for the thing to start, all the time thinking, I bet this will be fantastic; real Portugese culture this will be the experience of a life time. It wasn't. Eventually a guy came on stage and spoke in Portugese for almost another hour. Then some random people came on and played the accordian with some other people who played the drums and they were all out of time. Then the Portugese segment came on. They had these nets and they moved kelp from one side of the stage to the other while the others in the background chanted and sang. They moved the kelp for about 15 minutes. Then they packed up their stuff and left the stage. At this point I decided to give up and go home!

Random house on the way to the beach. They have some seriously funky tiling going on on their houses.
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The next day I got up early and went to the tourist office. I found out that there was a church at the top of a mountain so being my usual self I decided to walk the 4km up the steps to get there. It actually wasn't that bad although I was rather shagged when I got to the top. I was also wondering why I bothered since it was only another church, but the view was pretty good (although it was a hazy day). It was quite freaky walking up there though because there were eucalypt trees everywhere and it smelt like Australia. I kept expecting to come across a snake.

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After that I decided to walk to the beach. The beach was rather bizarre. The lady at the tourist office said it was good, but I guess their idea of a good beach is a little different to mine. It wasn't bad but there was a lot of kelp obviously the Portugese people were too busy collecting it on stage last night when usually they collect it from the beach! Anyway I lay there for a while and read my book on Spain and actually managed to get parts of my body other than my arms to be a little brown. Then I ate an ice cream and wandered around town for a while. Bought a bra for 2 euros. It fits perfectly. Amazing. The town is full of little Chinese shops.

Then I wandered around for a bit longer because my train didn't leave until 8.20 so I drank some coffee (the ordering of which I hadn't yet perfected in Portugese). My first attempt to get a latte style coffee was a "meia de leite" which turned out to be disgusting instant coffee. I wanted to try a um galao but I wasn't sure how to say it because I didn't trust my phrasebook. This non trust stems from the fact that it says please is pronounced "se fahsh fuvor". I'm sorry but I don't think my mouth is capable of making the sound of "fahsh". Then I discovered everyone just says por favor anyway so there was no need to worry. By the time I got to Porto I had perfected my "galao" and managed to get something quite tasty.

So I think that's the end of Viana, onto Porto.

Much love,

Cate xoxo