Porto: New friends and packing woes

We had three hours on the train and I planned to use that three hours to take a step back and try to assess any possible common denominator in what goes wrong in our travels and, while I’m sure we are all assuming it is Ron, a frank assessment seems to indicate that the real problem might be me.

My introspection was cut short, though, by the Portuguese National Rail organization because of the riveting video offering on train. For some reason, for our train full of hundreds…women, children, me…the sole offering – playing prominently in every car – was a video montage of mass casualty accidents. Body bags, backboards, helicopter rescues, bus crashes, mining accidents…the sole omission was a train accident, for which I was grateful as we moved along at 225km an hour.

We’re in Porto now and we haven’t seen much but we’ve met our Road Scholar group and guide. There’s only 11 of us on the tour. Apparently there were 13 – just over the minimum of 12 – and then one person broke their leg last week in a skiing accident and Road Scholar decided to operate the tour anyways.

Our hotel is the HF Tuela Porto, away from the pedestrian zone that I normally choose, which I though would be a problem, but it’s turned out fine! I therefore cannot show you any charming pictures of Old Porto yet, but I can share this information:

We travel with a tiny carryon suitcase each and a day bag – nothing further, no matter the length of the trip. So it is key that we acquire nothing as we travel. In keeping with that rule, so far, we have acquired: One pair of Birkenstocks, one t-shirt, one umbrella, one pair of pants to wear under my skirts because it is so cold up here, and a three-pack of Lacoste socks. And the weather is continuing to deteriorate to the point that we might even be acquiring rain jackets.

Our business hotel is attached to a wonderful mall and right next to a massive food court. The mall has been helpful in acquiring the above listed “corrective” clothing/accessories. Here’s the Birkenstocks – how could I ever pass these up, even if it means Ron has to throw out a few items to bring them home:

Here’s an offering from the food court, promising the freshest pulled pork sandwiches ever, I would think.

And then here was a bakery offering I liked. It’s a refreshing contrast to all those picture perfect French patisserie items people always want to peddle:

We wandered off from the food court and found – right next to the modern development – the Cemetery of Agramonte, from 1855. It was initially used to bury cholera victims but has since become the resting place of a lot of notable Portuguese artists that you and I have not heard of.

Before I head out today, I’ll confess this: In our initial Porto wanderings yesterday, we saw a member of our tour group, relaxing in front of our hotel. He looked just fine and happy. I had seen him checking in and recognized him but we had not yet met. At any rate, I introduced Ron and myself, invited him to take a walk to a park our Uber driver had pointed out and…promptly got us lost. We wandered with this poor tourmate for 40 minutes, GPS on, blinking but useless. We did finally find the park and, overall, I would say the walk allowed a nice change of pace for us from walk/GPS/walk/GPS to walk/GPS/apologize/walk/GPS/apologize. Best of all – as our new friend likes to point out – the walk back to the hotel was a mere 10 minutes:)

Which brings me back to my introspection from the train about who is the bigger travel hazard but hey, I’m out of time…Porto awaits.