paris.to.porto

Okay. So that train ride was rough. Very rough. The first leg was great. We had a nice comfortable little cabin (at one point a smelly guy sat with us, and we thought the train was full. It turns out he just wanted to sit with us, so we moved to a different, empty car) and it only took about 5 hours. Then we got to irun in northern spain where we had to wait a bit for our next train. Irun was pretty much in the middle of nowhere. This train was the one we got to sleep on. I wsa thinking that it wouldn't be too full since it was a wednesday night, but it was packed. We got a cabin with four other people- a french mother/daughter, and a cute little french couple. The guy of the couple was the only one who spoke english, so we had a fairly quiet train ride! After an hour or so, we pulled down the beds. *t* and I had the middle bunks, the couple had the top bunks, and the mom/daughter had the bottom. The train kept stopping during the night, so I didn't really sleep at all. We were supposed to arrive in coimbra (portugal) at 8:33am, but the train was delayed for some reason, which meant we didn't get there until 10:30, therefore missing the 10:02 train we were supposed to take to porto. Luckily, we got on the 11:16, and got to porto by 12:30ish. While portugal is beautiful with all the old buildings, as *t* says, it's kind of rough. It's really humbling to realize that so many people can live very happily with so little. Porto is amazing. We saw churches, climbed towers (and yes- *t* joined me) and sat in the sweltering heat watching adorable portugese children jumping of a 70 foot bridge into the douro river. Today we went to the taylor port wine place. We got free tastings, and a great tour into the caves. We had a really good lunch (which was needed since we've been surviving on crackers, fruit, bread and peanut butter for days now). Tomorrow we're taking the train to lisbon, but for now, we're avoiding the ninety something heat and fry-your-skin-off sun by spending some quality time inside!