The flight to Chicago was rather uneventful, and then the flight to Paris was on a huge jet, two aisles, and our own personal video station to watch movies, TV shows, whatever you need to keep you going. Frank and I played some card games and paper/pencil games, such as Dots and Boxes as well as my prototype of Gene Pool. We ate dinner on the plane, and then the lights were turned off so everyone could sleep. A few hours later, it was time for a French breakfast, with pastries and weird-tasting yogurt. By the time we arrived in Paris, the sun was just rising, and we had to quickly try to make our joining flight to Porto. However, the passport customs had other ideas, and heavy traffic delayed us enough to push us to the next flight. We stood in line for a while at one ticket counter waiting to be rebooked, and after about 45 minutes the person who was in front of us and had left came back to tell us there was another counter down the hall that was free, so we scooted over and got everything taken care of early. We had breakfast in the airport cafe and I saw my first taste of european sandwiches, which for some reason taste so much better than American subs (except for Big Mikes of course). Still going on the no sleep idea, we boarded our plane to Portugal and struggled to keep our brains active, and only conked out for about half an hour. While Paris still seemed like we had a touch of English to carry us through, Porto was a very foreign place. It was good that we had our hotel written down, and our cab driver was a speed-demon driving through the streets with abandon, until we finished at our hotel. I'd converted some money into Euros at the AmEx counter with my travelers checks, so I paid for the cab and tipped probably too generously, beceause he was very insistant we take his card for later. Now it was about noon, and we still had no sleep, but we had found our european home for the weekend.
Our hotel was an interesting experience in itself. Even though things had all been arranged through the ILP conference, and we knew many other grad-students would be staying here as well, it was surprizing to me that the hotel staff spoke no English at all. After a bit of miscommunication, we learned where we would be staying and were introduced to the custom of leaving the key at the desk when we headed out. How they would recognize us I'll never know, but it worked. We headed downstairs to our room, which turned out to be in the basement with no windows and only one door, they must have a different firecode, especially since the buildings were all packed in close next to one another. We were starting to get exhausted, but we still had to keep moving until abotu 6 or 7, that was our goal. The conference started in two days and I wanted to be adjusted to the time change by then, because my talk was on the first day. Frank and I headed out to find the conference center, a nice 15 minute walk from the hotel, down a couple side streets, up and over a major highway, and around the back to the FEUP engineering university. The place was barren when we arrived, it was a Saturday, but still it seemed so empty, almost crypt-like. And since all the buildings were rectangular and granite I felt like we were in the future past a nuclear fallout time. But enough doomsday images, it was time to find some dinner and a phone-card so I could call Laura and let her know everything went fine. I wish she could have come over with me, we'll make sure to get that taken care of for next trip. We found a small cafe that served sandwiches and ate some dinner, and then headed back to the hotel for some phone conversation and then finally off to sleep.
The next morning I woke up to my alarm clock, but no sunlight, as we were sleeping in the basement. Even though it was about 8 am local time, we could not tell, and this might have been the soundest sleep I've had in a long time. There was still one day until the conference began, and my advisor Jude had arrived in the afternoon yesterday, so today's plan was to do some sightseeing around Porto. We were persuaded by the hotel owner that we should come into the kitchen, where she prepared us our breakfast, and what a breakfast it was, with hard rolls, fresh sliced ham and cheese, and orange juice and water. Frank learned how to ask for Coffee, his morning lifeblood, without milk, thanks to my trusty Portugese handbook. Portugese was close to Spanish, but not quite, as we said Obregado for Thank You for the wonderful breakfast. It turned out it was about a 1 hour hike to find Jude's hotel, much more central to downtown than our accomodations, with a breakfast buffet, front desk with people speaking English, elevators, the works. We sat with him eating breakfast for a bit, as he was still off from the time change, and then headed out to explore the city.
As I had the map, we all sort of wandered around a bit in the general direction of the riverfront, past a large garden area to a great view of the river down below. I tried to head us up toward the largest tower according to the guidebook, but we ended up heading further downhill. There were many narrow sidestreets, only passable by the tiny cars they have over here, I didn't see an SUV once on our whole trip, even on the highways in the taxi. It was in one of these streets that I stepped in dog poo, a common sidewalk pitfall over here, and it was a while until I found an open spot of grass to clean things off. On our travels, we stopped by a law library, across from a large statue of Portugal's famous Henry the Navigator. I also learned that europeans never wear shorts, even in summer, so I was a little conspicuous as the American tourist, but I didn't care, I was having fun. Jude had seen signs of a tour bus, and from his experience, these were the best ways to sightsee in a new town, as they took you to all the hotspots around town. Unfortunately there were less people able to speak English, so finding the bus stops was a bit of a puzzle. We headed over to the most tourist spot, across the river to the Port Wine locations, and while we did not see the bus, we did find a great spot for lunch, which served rice Paella with chicken and fish. Frank was adventurous and tried the black squid ink variety. On a full stomach, we headed out once again to find the tour bus, and after a few stops at unhelpful tourist locations, we eventually flagged down the bus at the wrong stop.
Finally on the tour bus, we manged to see a very large cathedral, with many relics and beautiful blue-painted tiles, one of the themes of Porto it seemed, and took the tour bus around on two circuts around the city. I don't know if it was her accent, but our tour guide reading the announcements of the sights through the microphone sounded very bored with her job, every sentence ended on a down note without so much as an expression. Frank and I headed out for the hotel on the last circut. We managed to find a diner that was open that night, which tried to serve sandwiches as if from New Orleans, so we picked up some Po' Boys and headed back to try and sleep before the first day of the conference tomorrow.
