The Europe sector of our trip had arrived and we both had mixed feelings. South and Central America had exceeded expectation, not to mention being budget-friendly and spontaneous. Europe on the other hand was set to be pocket pinching and scheduled. Our once expansive European countries list had dwindled to Portugal, Spain, Italy and Germany, and we only had six weeks in which to see it all (another thing we’re not fond of, rushing). Before our jet setting expedition, however, we had a week in London. A week in a city I’ve been to on numerous occasions may seem like a long time, but with at least a third of my Charles Sturt University cohort living there and with friends from my USA exchange in Scotland, a week in London and night in Edinburgh wasn’t nearly enough. Then there were the bureaucratic difficulties we faced obtaining Bec’s visa for India. Australians note: if you apply for an tourist visa for India in London using an Australian passport, it takes 15 days! Thank you, Mum, for being British. Coupling this with a week of endless social activities, by the time we reached the Portuguese city of Porto we were both exhausted and in serious need of some down time.
Despite being weary, we took advantage of being out of the hustle and bustle of a big city and in a smaller, colonial one. Also nice was that we were joined by Sam, a close friend of mine from high school, and her travelling companion Michelle. Both were travelling in Portugal while we were and we’d hoped for our itineraries to overlap at some points along the way. So although the afternoon we arrived was spent dragging our feet around the beautiful Old Town, we enjoyed the sunset views of the port and river from high above on the bridge and stopped for dinner at ‘
Tapas e +’, a tapas restaurant with an edge (and some very target sharp seagulls, poor Sam!).
A riverbank of Port Houses
And what of the subject of this post? Well, it may have been obvious to some, but I didn’t realise before I arrived that Porto is all about port – the alcoholic variety, not the shipping. Now, my experience with port is limited. When I think port I either think of sipping it during communion at church at Christmas or Easter time, or I think of the day following an unfortunate evening at college when I thought port shots were a good idea. So with my very minimal port drinking background, a port ‘tasting’ wasn’t something that had been necessarily on my to-do-list, but apparently they are the thing to do in Porto. One other thing I came away with, apart from my new appreciation of port, is that a ‘tasting’ in Porto is not what you might get at home (i.e. in Australia, a measly mouthful, two at most). In Porto, it’s a full glass! So when the four of us approached one Port House and asked for four ‘tastings’ we were somewhat confused when the server suggested we have two. We’re Australians, we thought, we can handle a full ‘tasting’ for goodness sake! We were finally convinced to share one between two and after delighting in the red, the white, the sweet, the dry, the chocolate and the Christmas pudding flavours, we were pleased by our decision as we left the port house, a definite sway in all our steps. If anything, a Porto port tasting will guarantee you a good night’s sleep, which was precisely what we needed.
Our 'tasting'
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