With a somewhat of a port (wine) glow, I apologise in advance if this blog makes no sense.

We are now in Porto, Portugal and preparing ourselves for the 300km pilgrim trek we are about to commence... well actually we arent really preparing, we have just spent the afternoon at distilleries sampling the best port in the world.

Arriving really late into Porto yesterday, we were excited to find that our hostel was very much alive - with a port and apple strudel evening on the terrace... no sooner had we put down our bags were we on the terrace tasting the fine port and eating lots of apple strudel. What a welcome to Portugal.

Our hostel is wicked, port evenings, breakfast included. Each room is also themed on a different director, I was hoping for Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Amelie), but we are in the room of Manoel de Oliveira - a Portugese director. Although we havent heard of him his movies look pretty cool, so I am very excited that I have a whole list of must see movies when I get back to Oz.

Porto is a wonderfully enchanting city to walk around. The architecture of the buildings is beautiful and part of the charm are derelict houses with their broken windows and graffiti over walls, mixed together with lovingly restored houses/shops.

As seems to be the case with this part of our trip, we dont have enough time to explore the city more...

Tomorrow we are starting our pilgrim trek, with the temperatures here in the middle of the day being above 33 degrees we have decided to head off early - 5am to be exact... sounds crazy, but tomorrow we are walking about 34km, so to ensure we are not caught in the heat of the day we need to leave early.

Already my bag is weighing 12kg, and this is with me throwing things out (including my sleeping bag). It is going to be a long day...

We have both spoken about returning to Oualidia for 2 weeks, pretending that we are walking this pilgrim trek. Sadly we only thought of the great idea once we were in Portugal and after a few glasses of port, so... it looks like we have to go through with the original plan to walk 300km to Santiago de Compostela.

Now I think it is time for more port and some sleep, tomorrow is going to be long...