Port In Portugal

My plan to travel around the northern coast of Spain to reach Ourense didn’t actually seem so practical once I was there. In hindsight, I probably could have hitchhiked quite easily, but I wasn’t so confident about hitchhiking then. So I had to find another route to this distant, isolated farm… I made for Portugal.

I spent my remaining full day in Bilbao washing clothes and working on my blog. I went for a burger at Baka Vieja Burger Shop, which was incredibly good.

The next day, whilst I waited for my blablacars to take me to Madrid, I met up with two Argentinien cousins who were on an epic journey themselves across Europe, and their next stop was San Sebastian. I don’t think I’ll be able to visit San Sebastian this time around, but I have heard it is beautiful from a multitude of people.

I returned to Madrid via blablacars and that was an unexpected experience. We could see rain falling from several miles away and when we actually drove through it, it happened to be a thunderstorm!

I’m not sure if it was the same one, but a huge thunderstorm hit Madrid that evening. It was impressive to watch.

I took my Flixbus from Madrid that evening, all the way to Porto, Portugal. It was something like six in the morning when I arrived, so I couldn’t check into my hostel, but they allowed me to sleep in the common area, thankfully, because it was pissing down outside in Porto.

As I walked in, there was a girl already on one of the sofas and I didn’t think too much of it. She was all wrapped up in clothing and I was wet and tired… little did I know, I would spend the next seventy-two hours with this girl. Polly.

I awoke to an American sitting at the end of my makeshift, sofa-bed.
“Good Morning”, he said.

“morning”
I grumbled back, as I rubbed my eyes and sat up.

I noticed he had some heavier duty traveling gear with him and I had heard of a hike called the Camino de Santiago in the area, so we conversed about it. An American woman joined the conversation and so did Polly, the girl who’d also been sleeping on the sofa.

The conversation moved onto breakfast and being in the same boat, Polly and I went together.

I didn’t actually notice anything, but Polly was nervous, because she had a tattoo appointment in the next hour, so as a brave champion I escorted Polly to the tattoo parlor to observe my first tattoo in live-action.

It was a cute one too – a jam jar filled with happy memories.

Once Polly’s tattoo was finished, we were hungry again and so we went looking for a light lunch that fit around her long list of dietary items to avoid after a tattoo.

Soup was the conclusion.

We were now also able to check-in once we were back at the Cats Hostel. So we checked-in and agreed to meet downstairs again at 3pm for the walking tour. It gave us about 30-40 minutes to relax if I remember correctly.

It rained heavily all walking tour, but it actually made it kinda fun. I borrowed a red umbrella from the walking tour guide to match my red coat and Polly had her (cheap, not-so-cheap) little pink umbrella, that she’d bought moments before the tour – either the handle kept falling off or it folded in on itself.

We finished the tour and returned to our rooms to dry out. We were both indecisive about dinner… concluding in McDonald’s being the choice – obviously.

Anyway, we planned to have a quiet night in the hostel bar with… and well… a beer-pong competition started up.

My recent inspiration meant I had to play.

Polly accepted my ping-pong teammate request, stating
“I’m not very good”.

Shyeaahh.

I explained my lack of ability to finish the final cup, the same as finishing the black ball in the pool. It just doesn’t happen for me. So we agreed that Polly just had to score the final cup and I’d get as many of the prior ones as possible.

Coincidentally that’s exactly how the first two games went, and so we went into the final.
(It was only a small competition)

Every game had its tensions, but now we had a crowd watching. The final was on. I can’t remember the girl’s name, but I doubt I’ll forget the guy,
Cocky Prick Mike.

Yeah, that was my nickname for him. Ironic, because I can be cocky as hell, but I was holding it back tonight.

An intense game left us both with one cup left and we were both trying for a while. I’d hit the rim with almost every shot I’d taken, which was painfully frustrating. And Cocky Prick Mike got into my head. He started making faces when we were taking shots, so I complained and the first time I did it back to him, he scored the final cup.

Gutted.

I genuinely feel like I gave him a reason to win, or lined him up for the shot. However, reaching the final was celebration enough so we joined all the other beer-pong competitors for drinks in a nearby nightclub.

We both slept in that morning, recovering from the alcohol. Polly had decided to stay another day, instead of returning to Lisbon.

I had no quarrels with this. Polly is super pretty, independent, funny, smart and inspirational. She has solo-traveled all over the place, including South America.

Eventually, when we woke and readied ourselves, we went for a quiet breakfast and walked 6km to the beach.

Polly mocked me for the GoPro chest mount I have, calling it a terrorist belt. Well, I caught some great footage using that terrorist belt, and once I get my video editing skills up, I’ll share some of it via YouTube.

We built a small cairn and watched the sunset from a huge rock, whilst the waves crashed and foamed at the cliff-face to our left.

We decided it was too far to walk back in the dark, so we grabbed some electric scooters and whizzed off back to a city-lit horizon. That was a super fun ride back and I made Polly wear my terrorist belt so that I could get some footage of myself.

We stopped at some fancy restaurants by the river and we drank port and ate a little French woman.

Just kidding! Kinda… There’s a dish in Porto called Francesinha, which translates to a little French woman. I’m underselling it here, but it’s essentially a sandwich packed with lots of different meats and covered in a cheese sauce.

Damn, it was good.

Polly invited me to join her in Lisbon, as she had a day left before her flight.

Listening to a financial advisor, I probably should have declined.
But I went.

“We’re having too good of a time today. We ain’t thinking about tomorrow.”

– John Dillinger

It was so much fun backpacking with Polly. It can relieve a lot of nerves and stress with two people. Well, I found that anyway… Polly, on the other hand, wasn’t too trusting of my navigational skills.

We didn’t have a lot of time in Lisbon, but we had a traditional Lisbon tart – I sprinkled cinnamon on top like a pro – and enjoyed it, with a cider atop a rooftop bar, watching another sunset.

Polly flew back to Germany the next morning to prepare for her university course and I had to make my way back North again to work on the farm in Ourense.

Although I expect to see Polly again in Germany when I make my way through, it feels like we both may have left a special moment of our lives in Lisbon… Memories in Polly’s jam jar.

As with Tibetan Sand Mandalas, everything is impermeable and we should enjoy the good experiences life gives us, as we will never know how brief they may be.