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Kya Travels
We had a sleep in today, then had a shower and went for a walk. We stopped by the souvenir shop where we said hi to our friend there from yesterday and got some directions from him to a music shop. We wandered over there and had a look for any half size steel string guitars. They didn't have any, but the girl who was working said they had a cheap nylon coming in the next day and maybe we could restring it with steel strings if we weren't worried about wrecking it... So with that good idea we left, saying we'd come in the next day. We crossed the road to a shoe shop where I finally found a pair of cheap thongs. It was so good to take my shoes off in this heat!! Then we walked back down the street and stopped at subway for a wrap! Yum! Reminds me of home, as its what we always used to get, and its the first subway we've seen over here that actually have wraps! (Not that we've particularly been looking!) So after a yummy wrap, we headed back towards the hostel and stopped at a bag shop where I picked up a little handbag. Having no pockets in my dress was starting to get annoying, and we no longer have Lyle's day bag! So I got a nice little blue bag, then we stopped at the souvenir shop where we bought our sticker (but our friend wasn't there!!), then we stopped at Clerigos, where we had had lunch yesterday and grabbed a couple of delicious looking dessert pastries. Turns out they look much better than they taste, as they were pretty dry and not so great. We walked back past our street and went into a place called Livraria Lello, which is a bookshop that is known to be one of the most beautiful bookshops. It has a massive red winding staircase that was apparently used in a scene in one of the Harry Potter movies! We walked around and had a look for a while, and I was considering finding a book to take as a souvenir but decided against it for now... Maybe I'll come back. There were some little old religious books from 1897, which had very beautiful covers, and were small enough to justify taking in a backpack, although they were written in Portuguese so it would be only for show! Maybe... On the way back we stopped at a little cafe across from our hostel called Itaipú where we went to grab a cold drink. They had fresh juices there and a list of fruits that you could combine for it. There were a couple of fruits that I had no idea what they were, one was Cherimoya, so I ordered one of those. She showed me what it looked like, and it was kind of like a cross between a passion fruit and a pine cone to look at! It was very tasty though, and had a flavor that I've tasted before but I just couldn't put my finger on it! After our juice we went back to the hostel and hung out in the common room for a bit and watched some TV. (They even had some cartoons in English!) A while later we took the wine that we'd got from the girl at the airport and went for a walk through the park we had seen the other day, Place da Cordoaria, and went down a little street to a small car park kind of place, which I think might have just been someone's front yard, where there was an amazing view out over Porto, the river Douro and Gaia which is the town on the other side of the river. The gate had a big sign on it saying tourists were free to enter, so we sat down in there and had some wine while the sun went down (although it was a little too cloudy to see it!) After a while a man came out of the house to lock up the gates, so we took the rest of our wine and walked back up to the park. We went to a little restaurant called Café Piolho D'Ouro, where I had five vegetarian options! Five! Crazy... We both ended up ordering lasagne, one meat and one veg, and I must say mine was amazing. The waiters even helped us out with directions to a place that we had been told to go for dinner, by one of the guys Darren was drinking with the other day. It was funny, two of the waiters were both trying to tell us, and one of them told us to come in after our meal and he'd tell us the best way, then the other one called Darren over where the first waiter couldn't see and pointed out what he thought was the best way! It was pretty funny! A fight over who could help us the best! After dinner we headed back to the hostel and brushed our teeth and got ready for bed, then as we were doing that, we could hear music from the balcony, so we thought, 'por quê não?' (Why not?), and went back out to Galerias de Paris for another beer. We got some little €1 beers and watched the band that was playing covers, and had a chat to a couple there who were from Exeter, UK. The girl was originally from Portugal and was giving us lots of recommendations for things to do and places to go. After a while there and a few more beers we said goodbye and headed back to the hostel and went to bed.
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