Art may imitate life, but life imitates TV.: I'm Back!! Porto Pics

I still feel like I'm in limbo - between two worlds. Traveling always does that to me, where I get fully emersed and my normal life seems like a book I read or a movie I saw. But then I return to it and it seems strangely familiar yet still foreign. When we were stuck in Atlanta for a layover it was really strange interacting with people as they all spoke American, although it was still somewhat difficult to understand them sometimes with the accent.

I don't know where to begin. The trip was amazing and I had a wonderful time, which sounds so boring which the trip was anything but. It was a roller coaster of craziness so I will just post some pictures for now. Unfortunately I don't have them all yet as we ended up taking turns having dead cameras so still need to swap digital photos. And of course, it turns out I have a prediliction to take blurry photos, even with point and shoot cameras. But here is a little taste from my collection:

We missed our flight to Porto so stayed the first night in Madrid and our hotel was located near Don Quixote's statue which welcomed us to the country - quitessential Spain.

We met up with Arturo and Encar - the couple who were getting married the following weekend. We went to this really hip restaurant in the gay neighborhood of Madrid. The decor was very modern (as evidence by the birches)

Afterwards they gave us a tour of the city in their convertible - it was crazy cool. This is the place that they had their reception - very very fancy and hard to get into - private gentleman's club. And I realize we never made it out onto the balcony which would have been nice.

We finally made it to Porto the next day and so began my self-taking photo shoots which drove Dave a little crazy. This was us on the subway on our way into the city of Porto. I think it was then that it finally sunk in that I was abroad. Up until then it was just crazy travel, rushing around trying to get places and see people.

We wandered around the city - quite lovely and very european. We took it easy at first, chilling at cafes and enjoying the food and drinks.

We found one place where it wasn't touristy even though it was on the strip and we could watch the traffic go by. It was the "man" place - all these rough older local men hanging out. This was the only place where we had a darker beer which was quite good. And the wonderful cured ham sandwhiches - my favorite. In the end, even though I don't drink, I had a drink every day of the trip - they drink lite beer like water.

The next day we made our way outside of the old town center and got to see Rem Koolhaas's Music Hall in the outskirts of town and the contemporary art museum. I'm not a huge Rem fan but this was quite impressive. Very angular.

And inside, there were all these interesting, unique rooms. By this point, like all travel, we were a bit on the rocks and trying to figure out how to coexist together. Needless to say the whole relationship idea died before it even began. In the end it all worked out, but this definately added some craziness to the trip.

The next day we rented some scooters. I had never driven anything like this before so it took me a little while to get the hang of having the gas and brake in the handles. In the end, Dave taught me how to use the brake and gas together to accelerate smoothly which made a world of difference. I was still sore the next day though.

With the scooter's we were able to make it out to the coast and spend the day at the beach chilling. It was a little cold and windy and I got a bit of sun. Since I've gotten back everyone has been telling me how tan I look - something I never hear.Near by was an old fort that we could only walk around. I knocked, but noone answered.Out behind the fort were tons of rocks to climb around until you realized this was the local pee hole. THere were probably a handful of guys taking a leak. Really funny, but not somewhere you want to climb around anymore.By the end of hte day we made it up to the top of the town and had some wonderful views at sunset. It was a really beautiful city, and not too overrun by tourists (although alot of the tourists seemed german).