Portugal

Day 1:  BOOM land in Porto via RyanAir at 00:00 against all odds:

I had taken a ride on the Hot Mess Express the night before.  It was one of my most successful rides and therefore I didn't get home to pack for Portugal until 17:00.  There is one bus that leaves for the RyanAir airport at 19:50, and if you miss it, you are fucked, because the only other option is a taxi.  Although it might appear otherwise, I do not have money for taxis in Paris.  It takes half an hour to get to the bus via metro from where I live.  This all might seem possible, however...
I have barely slept, I have not eaten, I am yet to be sober/am borderline hungover.  There are dirty dishes everywhere, the trash needs to be taken out.  Basically, in this moment my life is a mess.
To add to the excitement, I have yet to print out my boarding pass.  If I fail to do so, I will be charged a 40euro fee by the RyanAssholes, which is more than it cost for my flight!  Why I never manage to print out a ticket avant la dernière minute?  We may never know.
I discover, toute de suite, that there are also no internet cafés in my quartier.  Parfait.  I'm running out of time!  But then, my landlady pops into my head!  She probably has a printer!  Call her.  Oh wait, I have no credit.  SKYPE to the rescue!  And yes she does have a printer at work and can bring me home my ticket :)  Miracle of miracles.  However, by the time we figure out how she can open the link to my boarding pass and she gets back from work with it, the chances are high that I will miss this bus.  I am very lucky though, my landlady es un vrai ange and says it will be better if she just drives me to the bus, rather than having to deal with my suitcase on the metro.  My savoir, really.  So, I arrive with some time to spare at the bus station, grâce au dieu je crois.  Or rather, Michèle.
Kristen somehow manages to arrive as well!  She had to literallyrun to make her connections (her flight from Nice flew into a different airport than the one we were leaving from), but she did it!
I arrive before her and occupy myself with the Belgian beer Josh had brought with him the weekend before that I decided to bring along in my suitcase.  This logic because I believe very much in the 'hair of the dog that bit you' theory.  I was going to drink it on the bus, however I didn't have an opener.  Merde.  Or a lighter, or a highlighter, or anything that would be useful.  When I get to the airport, I decide to try to use the end of my deodorant for leverage.  However, I only manage to cut my fingers up before giving up.  Epic Fail.  Here marks the first time not having an opener has thwarted me.  Haha.  Kristen shows up and we think the hard part is over!
Touchdown in Porto-town.  We are so excited!  Our CouchSurfer is supposed to pick us up from the airport and take us back to his place.  Unfortunately, that doesn't happen.  We are pretty much the last people left at the airport.  Typical.  My dumb ass forgot to write the guy's number down in my rush to make the flight.  This is one of those moments where a Smartphone would be ideal.  During our wait, something awesome happened.  The Portugal futbol bus pulled up and parked in front of us.  Half an hour later the entire Porto team, which had just beat Sevilla, marched out in their adorable suits to the bus.  We both regret not hopping on the bus with them.
But back to real life:  we were feeling pretty doomed around 1:30 and then realize we can call someone to check my CS account to get his  number!  Harriet saves the day and we are able to call him!  He's pretty pissed...apparently he was there and didn't see us and the police wouldn't let him stop his car.  Anyways, he comes back to get us and all is well.  He reminds us exactly of one of our best tranny friends Leo!  And we get along really well.  He takes us on a driving tour through the city, showing us all the coolest spots and best views of the city.  After, we stay up till 5 drinking Port with him around the dinner table, discussing Portugal and life in general.  He's a super interesting guy and speaks tons of languages (just like our Leo...they even had the same 'lack of accent'!).  He's actually from Poland and has only been living in Portugal for 8 months, before that he lived in Denmark for 10 years.  At 5:00 we turned in.  We had our own chambre and everthing was lovely.  Except we froze!  The blanket was a mattress cover hahah so we bundled up, and cuddled up, and I put on my Furry hat.  We survived.


Day 2:  For breakfast he made us a 'very typical' Portuguese breakfast of eggs, cod, onions, cheese and olives.  Pretty delicious.  Then, he dropped us off to our next CouchSurfer, Ricardo.  Ricardo was so friendly!  We dropped our bags off quickly though because we didn't wanna lose the day, and we were off to explore the city.  He told us about his couchsurfing friend Fernando, who was giving a tour that day.  We decided to go meet up with them on the 'tour'.  Haha, funniest tour ever.  It was pretty rainy and Fernando, this big grandpa looking man, just walked us around some streets cracking women jokes.  There were 3 Russian girls that were his couchsurfers taking the tour as well.  He would walk us into a café and be like 'this is where you take your boyfriend to buy you drink!'.  And tell jokes like 'What is the hardest language to understand?'  'WOMAN!!'  Haha he cracked himself up!  It was cute.  He didn't seem to like the rain very much, which is why we didn't get to see too much.  We did see some things though.  For example:

The markets! which I was surprised to find were Completely run by women, unlike in France where they are run by Arab men.

Always fresh

The house with the Beatles on the wall!

The famous blue tile on a church

All things very typical of Porto :)

That night we made dinner with them and another Russian lady, another man, and Ricardo.  Kristen and I made a dank salad, and the Russian girls made pancakes.  Yum.

Me, Kristen, the 4 Russians + Fernando

Later, Kristen and I went back with Ricardo to change before we went out.  The Portuguese don't go out till 2am!  And they party till 8, it's fucking nuts!  We made sure to have some espresso.

Around 23:00 Ricardo took us to this cool bar where we got our first caïpirinhas of the trip!  So delicious.  With cheese toasties!  Aka grilled cheese, so good.

Did I mention it was raining?  And windy!

Fail.

Around 2 we went to the club, where they played awesome minimal in one room, and swing music in the other.  Very fun night, we got home when the sun was well and up.  Very typical! - We encountered this expression by every Portuguese we met, so silly.


Day 3:  We managed to get up at a decent hour the next day, and went about exploring all the key points of the city.  Porto is one of the most beautiful cities I have ever been to - on par with Florence.  I haven't felt awe or wonder like that in quite some time, it was refreshing.  The views are amazing because it's such a hilly city.  First we saw the views from the bridge.  There is a bridge there made by Eiffel :)

Amazing

Hillsides

The bookstore from the Harry Potter movies!

Taste us

The street next to the river is comprised soley of Port wineries. Awesome. Port is not really my preferred drink, way too sweet! The wineries were neat though. After checking Sandeman and Croft out, we headed to the train station to catch our train to Lisbon. Accidentally sat in 1st class and had to lug all of our tranny shit through the train to the back when the conductor came through! Classy.We arrived in Lisbon around 23:30 Saturday night and were picked up by our next CSer, João!  Drank for a bit at his place with his friends and then went to an Awesome club called Lux.

The line

Inside

The club was right on the water, beautiful sunrise :)

The morning after

Day 4:  Somehow woke up at a reasonable hour again and set off to tour the nearby city Sintra and to deliver fish to João's uncle's house.  The drive was along the coast, so beautiful!  Cliffs everywhere.  In parts it looked just like Santa Barbara.  Kristen said it looked like Half Moon Bay (she's from NorCal).  I guess coasts always have their similarities.  João's uncle's house turned out to be the sickest house ever!  I would have No problem living there.  As we looked from afar at the houses, he asked which one we would pick to live in.   Kristen replied 'the one with the blue shutters'.  Ten minutes later we show up at that house.  Turns out his uncle lives there :)  So cool.  The house was quaint, and the view was fantastic.  The uncle's lady friend was there and she was so sweet.  She was french and immediately offered us a drink.  We were both still feeling the night before so Kristen went with espresso and I went with the white wine.  The lady told me we are part of the same club haha.  I wish I had taken a picture of her, she was awesome.  I wanna live like her when I grow up.

Our engagement photo - you can kinda see the blue shutters on the left house up top

Patio of The House with the Blue Shutters

View

Unfortunately, I'm not the best with video cameras.  Apparently you can't change your mind half-way about the direction, but hopefully you can still see sideways.

Next we allons-y-eed to the most Western Point of Europe.  Awesome!  Never thought I'd be there.

 Cabo da Roca

After we got Pastries at the best pastry shop in Lisbon.  I'm not a big pastry fan, but I do admit they were deeelicious.

MIAM-MIAM

Afterwards, we were dropped off at our next host...Mustafa?  We never actually caught his name :-o  He was very nice though.  We went straight to bed that night.

Day 5:  We woke up at 9:30 and set off to explore Lisbon!

The yellow trollies are very typical of Lisboa

And the Golden Gate bridge replica! California, tu me manques.

The Bellini

The fountain!

Bairro Alto

We walked at least 5 miles to make to to this little contraption. The walk was beautiful, what with the Golden Gate and being on the coast, but our feet definitely felt it. So it goes when you're too cheap to buy a metro pass. That night we went out to Bairro Alto again, with Joao and got PINTS of caïpirinha. That is what happens when I go to the bathroom and let Kristen order drinks. Fun night. I forgot to mention we went to Bairro Alto the first night in Lisbon before club Lux. The street is so packed on weekends you can barely walk. Vive le nightlife Portuguese!

Day 6:   Day trip to Sintra! Sintra holds the coolest castle I've seen. It's techni-colored! And up so high, we had to take a train and then a bus and then hike uphill. The forest was beautiful as well.

Alex in Wonderland

Pena Palace

And dinner!

We went to sleep early that night so we could catch a train to Lagos in the morning.  Thank god taxis are cheap in Portugal or getting to the station would have been un cauchemar.

Part 2