Spain and Portugal

Although the journey was pretty fantastic, the main point of our trip was to meet our friend, Andy, in Barcelona and then travel to Porto, Portugal with him. We rented an Airbnb about 30 minutes south of Barcelona in a small beach town called Cubelles. Our apartment was directly on the beach, with the “boardwalk” right below us.

While we were in Spain, we visited Barcelona a few times and saw the Sagrada Familia, the FC Barcelona soccer stadium, and ate lots of tapas.

Pablo Picasso Museum

Sagrada Familia

Roman ruins in Tarragona

Sitges beach town

FC Barcelona Stadium

We also took a day trip to Monserrat, a monastery located in the Pyrenees mountains.

After a few days in Spain, we flew together to Porto, which was possibly my favorite place of the whole trip. We had not expected too much from Porto and chose it pretty much for its close proximity and cheap flights/accommodations, but it ended up being great.

The city is really photogenic and we got a lot of beautiful pictures along the Douro River and Maria Pia bridge. We also visited the Livraria Lello bookshop where J.K. Rowling started writing Harry Potter.

Atlantic Ocean

I also really liked the food in Porto, which was surprising because I typically don’t eat seafood. The best place we ate, by far, was called Petiscaria Santo António. We went for a late lunch and were the only customers in the restaurant. Our waitress suggested that since we were not familiar with Portuguese food, that we allow them to make us a variety of small dishes to share. She said they would keep bringing us food until we said “stop.” Everything that we tried was delicious …..including the FISH. Really tasty.

Appetizers: Cheese with honey, beans, and olives

Flaming sausage

Porto is also the home of Port wine, which we tried several times, but I didn't really enjoy it. To me, it tastes exactly like cough syrup. We even went on a tour of a wine cellar and learned about the fermentation process. They explained to us that they can age the wine for many, many years in special wooden barrels and then sell the barrels to French companies to use to make bourbon, using the residue/sediment left behind from the wine. I suppose that is all quite sophisticated gastronomy, but it’s still not my thing. ;)