Black and White and Cold All Over

Hello everyone!

I’m writing to you from Porto, the biggest city in the northern region of Portugal.  I must say that I didn’t really know what to expect from this relatively small city, and I don’t think that Zevi did either, but I’m enjoying my time here even more than I expected to.  Zevi and I have enjoyed the fact that it seems to be a bit more laid back than some of the larger cities that we’ve been in.  In my opinion, Porto is a city filled with romance, one where you can eat dinner on the banks of the Duoro river whlie looking out at the spectacularly crafted Dom Luis Bridge, crafted by the same man who designed the Tour Eiffel, or simply ramble among the old buildings covered in beautiful azulejos, which are the blue tiled designs often depicting intricate scenes that cover many buildings.  The Sao Bento train station has an especially gorgeous collection of these designs.  Throughout this trip I have often marvelled at the amount of detail work that was put in to the finishing touches of these buildings.  Each building in the old city, not just in Porto, but in most of the other towns we’ve been to as well, has it’s own unique and beautiful flair that makes them so exciting to look at.  It often makes me a little bit sad that our great great great great grandchildren won’t be able to see that type of craftsmenship as an artifact of our time…

But, anyways, back to Porto.    We’re staying in a hostel here called the Black and White hostel, and this is certainly not a misnomer, as almost every area of the hostel is decorated in those colours.  It actually makes for a pretty neat atmostphere.  Beyond the colour (or should I say shade?) scheme, this hostel is probably the best one we’ve stayed at so far; it has excellent kitchen facilities, the staff are very friendly and helpful, the bathrooms are clean, the location is good, there is free breakfast, and it is reasonably priced (something that is becoming increasingly important to us as we have begun to count every penny that we spend, and cringe when the Canadian dollar loses more value in comparison to the Euro).  We couldn’t help but laugh when we got here, though, as it looks like the owners of the hostel went to Ikea and grabbed every black and white (and sometimes silver, when black and white weren’t available) item they could find and used them to furnish the building.  I pretty much feel like I am part of a living Ikea commercial.  I can’t complain, though, as I am writing this on the communal computer with free internet access.

Today we went on a tour of a port wine cellar, and I tried port for the first time.  The jury’s still out for me on whether or not I liked it.  Maybe if I had some cheese to go along with it I’d be convinced.  Another highlight from the past few days was going to Segovia, a small town near Madrid.  The weather was dreadful, so cold that even Zevi was uncomfortable.  Being cold has become something of a norm for me lately, but I know that if Zevi is cold too, things are getting serious.  However, it was well worth the visit, as we saw an amazing aqueduct, the cathedral, and the alcazar, where Zevi rediscovered his hatred for spiral staircases as we climbed many steps up to get a magnificent view from the top tower.  We also spent an afternoon walking around in Madrid’s Parque del Retiro, which is a huge park in the middle of the city filled with statues, a ‘palace’ (which was really just a glass building filled with a whole lot of air… I’m not really sure what sort of kingdom was housed there), and many runners, bikers and people trying to earn their keep playing instruments from the saxophone to the accordian.  It was a fun place to be.

We’ve also done a lot of waiting in train stations lately, and I’ve managed to fill most of that time doing crosswords and playing scrabble games with Zevi on the travel scrabble board I bought right before we left (most definitely the best $30 I’ve ever spent).  I think my Grandpa would be proud.  We dream about scrabble these days… but maybe I wasn’t supposed to admit that.

Anyways, I hope everyone had a happy halloween.  If anyone has any good tips on how to stay warm, feel free to pass them along! I’m sure Zevi would appreciate it if I stopped complaining about being cold all the time.

Much Love

-Heather