Family Vacation

Finally, vacation time is over, and the school year has begun. Since I've been lazy and haven't done much blog-writing I'll talk a little now about some of the adventures I've been on since the last post.

These people came to visit

I was a little busy with private lessons and starting my new job at Lamas de Abade, so I wasn't able to join in on some of the little trips Celeste and Johnny went on, but I did manage to rearrange my schedule enough to make time for a nice little trip to one of my favorite places--Portugal.

I'd already been to Porto, but last time I went it dumped rain the entire time and I missed out on a lot of the things I wanted to see. 

Johnny had gone off on a solo adventure to Barcelona and Marseilles, so for the first couple days it was just Celeste and I to poke around the city of wine and tiles. We got up before dawn to catch the 6am train and watched the sunrise through the smoke of the forest fires that have been ravaging the peninsula. Then, thanks to the magic of time travel changing time zones, we arrived at the hostel at 10am five hours later.

From there on, it was the typical tourist things--go on a tour of the city, meet other tourists and spend money on unnecessary things. 

It's a melon boat with ham sails

After some trial and error, Johnny made his way to the hostel and Celeste set out for this place:

It's Morocco

Johnny and I poked around Porto some more, and saw some pretty awesome stuff, such as:

This little church

A Francesinha

some nice plazas

From there we went to Braga, the little city that Spanish adolescents find absolutely hilarious. (Braga is Spanish for "panties")

If you haven't been to Braga, and you're in the area of northwestern Iberia, it is worth the trip. Once upon a time it was the capital of the Galician kingdom, and before then, one of the outposts of the Roman empire. These days, it's a quiet mid-size town and one of the prettiest places I've been. 

There were roughly 10,000 churches in the city of 100,000, and enough flowers to build another 10,000, if flowers were a viable construction material. And like in Porto, most of the streets and sidewalks were paved with black and white stones, making painting street lines and arrows a thing of the past.

Just a flower garden next to a castle.

The next day we took the bus out of town to the church on the mountain, Bom Jesus. 

The church itself was not that impressive on the inside, but the 600 stairs leading up to it were, and the gardens surrounding it make the trek (or the funicular ride) worth the effort. Each landing on the stairs had a different pattern of black and white tiles, and a fountain of some kind.

Fountains

Gardens

After a long walk back down the 600 stairs, Johnny and I grabbed a quick coffee in the city center, and caught the one and only bus back to Spain by the skin of our teeth. This involved a lot of frantic running around, missing passports (not ours, thank God) and melting icecream. We did make it back to Santiago however, just in time to grab a tapa at the bar down the street.

It wasn't too long after that that Johnny set off for Seattle via Madrid, and Celeste returned from the north of Africa with tan lines and a bag full of dirty clothes. The two of us hung out in Santiago for a few days, with another little trip to Lugo to eat pulpo and watch fireworks at San Froilan. The quantity of octopus eaten at the festival is incredible. I find it amazing that the fishermen are capable of finding and catching so many tons of octopus each year and shipping it to this random inland city. 

Ecological ramifications aside, it was a fun experience, and nice to catch up with some old and new Lucences.

After one final night out on the town in Santiago, Celeste jetted off once again for sunnier climes leaving Meghan behind in the comforting drizzle of the northwest.