Starting my series of photos from each city I’ve been to in my gap year so far, in no particular order, since the chaos of it all has been one of the best parts of it all. I’ll be including a little tidbit about experiences I enjoyed in each city. I’ve got lots of pics from the cities on my stories, so I’ll try to post more pics of me for my fans out here 🙄🥺
As my uber driver put it as he visibly swelled with pride, “Porto is an amazing small big city. We’ve got subway, train, bus, to get you everywhere – restaurants, shops, bars, castles, cinemas, discotecas, hotels, views, waterfront…”
I found his English to be incredible given that he’d lived in Porto all of his life – the eh’s and erm’s and the pauses in between as he searched for the right words in english seemed idiosyncratic in a pleasant way, imbuing more rather than taking away from his storytelling. His persistent manner of speech seemed to give away a great deal of confidence and tenacity.
This matched up perfectly with his story of how he met his wife – by nearly crashing his car into hers on a bachelor’s trip to Madrid before his buddy’s wedding. He and his friends apologized and subsequently found out that his future wife and friends in the car were locals to the area who could show them around, and the rest is history. The way he made long distance work purely by calling on landline phone and then later by blazing his motorcycle from Porto to Madrid and back EVERY single weekend + parts of Fri/Mon (despite the concerned disapproval by his well-meaning father) showed a commitment to love over career mobility, family approval, and all else that touched my heart. And having spent a few days in Porto, I felt I could start to see where a romantic like him was coming from.
