Porto

While still sitting in the train to Porto my assumed host called me that she was not able to host me since she wasn't in the city these days but she offered me to meet for some coffee the next afternoon. There was another host who was probably able to offer me a couch but I had no contact data other than couchsurfing which I couldn't access on my old mobile and which would kill more than half of the battery of my smartphone. High tech, you know... So plans for tonight were finding an Internet café and either try to contact the maybe host in couchsurfing, try to get someone else on hospitalityclub.org (there you can see mobile phone numbers on some profiles) or find a hostel to an affordable price on booking.com or hostelworld.com or, if none of these happen to please me, walk on my two feet outside the city to find a place for my tent and shuffle the cards tomorrow again. But until now I was still sitting in the train. By the way, I mixed the time shift in my last posting: The arrival time 9:09pm is already Portuguese time and would be 10:09pm in Spanish time. So the train travel's duration was one hour longer than assumed. In fact we arrived in a delay but I thought that's part of the Portugu service, in addition, the station of the arrival was Porto Campanha where I couldn't find an Internet cafe. But as I asked for one in another café, the guy at the bar just gave me his tablet and let me use it to search in the web while I had a drink. I asked some people in couchsurfing, I even put a message in the Porto group, then I checked hospitalityclub.org and booking.com, only at hostelworld.com I found something not too expensive but instead of booking I saw a message on the Porto couchsurfing page that said that people wanted to meet at a bar called Adega Leonor and I found out that it was at Campo des Martres da Patria but neither did I know where this was nor how to get there by feet. I asked some people on the street who told me that it was far away. Anyways they showed me the direction and were very friendly, asking other people, guided me to taxi drivers who could finally tell me the right way so I could find it. The cheap hostel was also at that place, but hey, it was Saturday night, everybody was outside on the streets and in bars. I so would not hide myself in a hostel but pass the night among those partying people. I did not find the couchsurfing people there so I sat down and wrote some pages in my travel diary book and watch the people drinking and singing and laughing. Well, I was lucky because I got a mail from a girl from couchsurfing, Luanna, who invited me to her couch late at night. While I was searching for the station she told me, a young man was talking to me, offering to help me with hostels and stuff. He guided me to the right bus station and on the way there he showed me some buildings in Porto. You guessed right if you already thought that he wanted money for that. I gave him a bit and two oranges - for me, this was fine since he told me about the ace working conditions for young people in Portugal which I already knew from the news. Then he offered me to even get me a ticket for the bus which he did, asking for some money for it. The bus ticket did not work, who expected something different? About this I was quite disappointed since he fooled me in the end, unnecessarily. I had almost on coins but the bus driver didn't want to change for a big amount of money. Luckily there was another guy in the bus being able to change so in the end all was good and I arrived at Luanna's town Gaia at about 3:00am. She picked me up at the bus station and we spent a lot of time talking. At about 7:00am we went to sleep. The next day, of course we got up really late and in addition it took some time to decide what to do, whether to go to the beach or to the city. Finally I went alone to Serra do Pillar and met Helena on the way to there, a girl from couchsurfing who could not host but meet for some drink with me. She picked me up with her car for this spot where you can have the best sight over the city and after that we made a little tour, bought some bread, cheese, sausages and juice and went to Palacio do Cristal to have some picknick in half sun half shadow with a nice view over the river Douro. Later we met two friends of her, Sophie and Anne, to have dinner with, some fish, chicken and so, which was quite ok. Later we went to a bar to have some drinks. At 11:00pm local time we were still there and the evening was not over yet...

Per Mobiltelefon