Port wine and football in Porto

The past few days have been excellent! I left the Knights Templar behind in Tomar and spent Thursday in the univerity town of Coimbra. The university is the third oldest in Europe and was situated atop a hill with great views of the surrounding valley. At night I met up with a few students and they showed me some of the popular student bars.

Yesterday I continued my journey north to Porto by train. It was my first train of the trip so far, and I had forgotten how enjoyable it is to witness the scenery drift by. When I found my hostel, two Australians were about to go across the river to do some port wine tasting. I dropped off my bags and joined them as we walked up and down narrow streets and pretended to look interested as we awaited the samples at the end. After wine tasting we squeezed onto a crowded metro train and went to a soccer match. FC Porto won 3-0 against another Portuguese team in what was an exciting game. Our seats were only 14 rows back from the field behind the goal where all the scores happened.

Today has been relaxing. Slept in past 8 for the first time in over a month, did laundry and then followed the river to where it meets the Atlantic and walked north along the ocean as the wind churned up a continuous batch of waves that pounded the shoreline.

Tomorrow I will take the train further north to the city of Braga that my guidebook describes as "the Rome of Portugal." On Monday I would like to go by bus to the northeast corner of Portugal and hike in the national park before returning to Porto to catch my flight on Wednesday morning.