Starting the day off, most of us woke up in a great mood at approximately 7:50 AM and then a few of us woke up a little grumpy at 8:00 AM. Today we have some exciting news: IT'S MATT'S BIRTHDAY :) (he is turning 50 btw folks) If you forgot, don’t worry you can still text him and blame it on the time zone. For breakfast, several of us had some cheesy scrambled eggs with ham and scrumptious Portuguese bread. Kayla however had made herself the best breakfast on the face of the earth which included a fried egg with cheese and a slice of grilled ham cooked to perfection on a singular piece of golden brown toast.
Similar to yesterday morning, Kayla, Gage, and Jen were the only perky ones (probably just the most excited to have time to get a pastry) and went off to the train station to buy today's train tickets. At the train station we were standing in line and Gage was once again super excited to talk in Portuguese (aka show the train station worker the translated message on his phone even though they know English) and take a picture with his favorite person on the trip (see Figure 1 to see who his favorite is).
Figure 1 shown above :)
While standing in line to get the tickets, Kayla got stopped by a random lady who was either trying to say she was crazy for wearing a tank top, extremely muscular, or (probably the most likely scenario) that she was drop dead gorgeous. Gage was trying to talk to her in Spanish and after she left we asked him what she said and he proceeded to say he had no idea and that the only thing he semi-understood was that she may have been asking if we were from Ukraine. After that fun interaction, we headed to the best grocery store in Porto Portugal for some world famous Pastries (I am sure this tiny grocery store would have five stars on yelp if it was on yelp). Today we got three because we needed to get the pastry we knew we liked (a chocolate filled square pastry), a chocolate croissant (because it's fun to say the word croissant) and we needed to try something new so we got a rice muffin (which was the muffin of the day). Our ratings on the two chocolate filled pastries were 11/10 and our ratings on the rice muffin was a solid 7/10 (good but probably would not get again when we could instead spend our money on chocolate filled croissants).
We then head back to the train station and right before we were about to get on the train to Santo Tirso, Connor announces to everyone that he needs to go to the bathroom. See Peter (Kayla’s Father for any of our followers who are unfamiliar with the name) I told you Connor is always in the bathroom. However, two seconds later he comes back and says he needs to pay 50 cents (which Kayla was hoping Jen would veto so we would have more money for the croissant budget but unfortunately Jen said “if it is less than a Euro it is probably worth it”). We then boarded the train, fully prepared to leave Connor if he did not get on the train in time but luckily he made it.
Throughout the WHOLE train ride, Griffin and Gage wouldn’t stop bickering back and forth and poor Kayla was caught in the middle. Then, Griffin was being a bootybutt and took his dirty shoes and put a dusty footprint on Kayla's super cute pants (Kayla thought he should have scored his second BITCH MINT of the trip). However, Kayla got him back by making sure his legs also got a dusty footprint with Grandad’s boots and everything was good again. Shout out to Grandad for letting Kayla use his awesome boots (they are getting great use in Portugal). (Parent note: Dad, is it OK if we bring your boots on the trip for Kayla to use? It is? Thanks! 😊). Then we got to Santo Tirso and Luz and Gary brought us to their lovely home in two separate trips because there was only one car and 8 of us. Upon arriving at their beautiful home we got a house tour where we saw their incredible garden, two cats, four chickens, a pool table, and an orange tree (Connors favorite part). Gage and Griffin decided to try out the pool table first while Kayla and Connor decided to try out the oranges from the orange tree first. Jen and Matt were the smart ones and decided to start on the appetizers first which Gage, Griffin, Kayla and Connor soon joined. For appetizers they had some incredible bread, cheese, and two of the best jams on the planet (one was pink colored jam and one was correctly identified later as yellow colored jam but Kayla is 100% positive it was green colored jam). (Parent note: the red was homemade raspberry jam and the yellow was quince with a little lemon - both unbelievably delicious, especially with the wonderful and fresh Portuguese rye bread)
After the appetizers, we then started on the day's activities which included an insane drive up and down windy roads to the top of a mountain using a manual car (seriously I don’t know how Gary was able to do that). However, we nearly escaped death on one of the trips to the top of the mountain. There was a car in front of us that popped a tire and we had to swerve to the side to avoid crashing into them (let me tell you, a flat tire is never fun but it is really not fun at the top of a mountain).
At the top of the mountain we then began our hike. The hike was up into the mountain and brought us to this breathtaking stream and waterfall with the clearest water we had ever seen. However, in order to get to that waterfall and then hike alongside it, we all had to face some incredibly steep heights where we definitely were close to death (at least one of us thought so but were not calling people out here so that part will have to remain a mystery). Even though it was scary for some of us, I think we can all agree it was the coolest hike we had been on so far this trip.
Our next stop was to some extremely ancient Roman ruins. We got to the site where the Roman ruins were a short hike away by car and in order to do that we took two trips, the kids first and then the adults. This was a mistake because upon arriving the kids (Gage, Griffin, Kayla, and Connor) spent some time in the visitor center and then proceeded to try and find the ruins (which should have been easy because there are several signs telling you which path to take but again they were in Portuguese). So Connor sees a rock wall and says, “hey guys, I think this wall is some of the ancient ruins. Let’s go this way”). We then all decided to follow him and as we are walking along, we all started to question whether or not we were on the right path. It wasn’t until Kayla looked across the mountain to the other neighboring mountain and saw the ACTUAL part of some of the Roman ruins that we realized as a group that we had indeed taken the incorrect trail. However, once we finally got onto the correct trail, we were able to see some incredible remains that took our breaths away. (Parent note: the Roman ruins were from the first century AD, and right next to them were Moorish ruins dating from 500 BC. A little further along were ruins from a church built on around 1000 AD, which normally would have been cool but paled in comparison to something built 1500 years earlier!)
Then after spending some time visiting and experiencing the history of Santo Tirso, we moved on to our last stop of the day which was a lookout in the mountain. At the top of the mountain, Luz (Gary's partner) left to drive the car down and start on lunch. The rest of us then hiked back to the house through the forest where we got to see some incredible views and several water fountains that the monks had created a very long time ago. We then took a wrong turn and ended up walking some of the way on a road which again was still gorgeous because we are on top of a mountain until we finally made it back to Luz and Garys home to have lunch.
For lunch, we had an incredible spread that included several courses and table wine. First we had some incredible soup that was seasoned with a very good pepper and more of the very good bread. Then we had a main dish similar to soup but had lots of meat, beans, and other various things that were served over rice (Gage really enjoyed both the rice and the bread). After our main meal, we had some oranges, cheeses and the best part was the Port Wine (Griffin's Favorite). The Port wine was very sweet and is similar to a dessert wine but it is very strong (about 20% which Griffin found out was a lot different on the train ride back).
After the best meal in Portugal so far, we talked and chatted for a bit until we said our goodbyes. We all could agree that this was our favorite part of the trip so far and was an incredibly rare experience to be able to experience the actual culture of a place we visited. We were so thankful for our time visiting Gary and Luz and the incredible day we experienced. Gary and Luz sent us home with a bag of freshly picked oranges from their tree and gave Matt a bottle of aged red table wine for his birthday. (Parent note: Gary and Luz buy this red wine in large containers from a hiking friend of theirs. For the red wine drinkers among us, it was truly spectacular!)
Finally, on the train ride back we all decided that we ate way too much for lunch and we were more than happy to just have Gelato for dinner to celebrate our last night in Porto Portugal and MATT'S BIRTHDAY! (Parent note: the five of us who are not Matt had scouted out delicious restaurants for a birthday dinner to make up for pasta three days in a row. Kayla was even willing to sacrifice some croissant budget to ensure Matt had a great birthday. But after the wonderful meal and conversation and laughter and wine - and Port - with Gary and Luz, we all agreed we were too stuffed for a nice dinner and the day was so fabulous it needed nothing more than a bit of gelato to make it perfect.) Sadly, Connor can’t have gelato because he is severely allergic to peanuts and there is cross contamination but he brought an amazing orange (parent note: credit to Gary and Luz's tree) and he was perfectly content with having instead.
(Parent note: we hit our favorite grocery store after getting gelato to provision for breakfast and tomorrow's train ride to Lisbon. Unfortunately the baked goods were fairly picked over that late in the day. We also remembered to get paper towels and toilet paper, since we were completely out. Unfortunately, when we got home the first to hit the bathroom with the new toilet paper realized that it was also paper towels, just in a package that looked remarkably like toilet paper. So no toilet paper. But the bathroom included a bidet, and we now had plenty of paper towels, so enough said!).
While in the grocery store, we were incredibly surprised to see our new friends from Minnesota there as well (especially since what are the odds we see them again in Porto when we were in a different town all day AND there are hundreds of people everywhere). Upon seeing then we talked about our days and then parted ways to maybe see them again one day (again who knows).
After a very long but enjoyable day we took one final walk across the insanely high bridge and called it a night.
Sorry for the bit of a long read today but stay tuned to hear about the next place we travel tomorrow.
Signing off - Kayla Daniel
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