Porto, the Radias and Oh, Porto!

Our travel day from Madrid to Porto began at 6am and ended at 11:30pm at the doorstep of Vibha and Tina Radia, friends of Amir's dad Fee when he was growing up in Uganda. We were pretty tired at the end of that day and ended up sleeping in the next morning. Tina and Vibha are amazing hosts and took such good care of us while we were there. Tina cooked up delicious meals like potato curry, chicken curry and shepherd's pie! And Vibha opened up a vintage bottle of 1985 port that he and 11 friends had bought from a winery and bottled with their own label. It was the best port of my life.

Tina took me on a long walk down the boardwalk along the beach. There had been a storm up until 8am that morning. The waves were HUGE, coming in three at a time and breaking into huge sprays against the wave barrier. The beach was covered in sea foam and the local kids were in 7th heaven playing in it.

On our last morning there, we awoke thinking we would leave the next day on an evening and then overnight train to The Netherlands. When we started looking up train info so we could book our tickets, we found a warning in German that, thanks to Google's Translator, told us the French rail system would be on strike the next day starting at 8pm. So we booked ourselves a hostel in Amsterdam for the next night, packed up our things, received the world's best lunch/dinner care package from Tina and left for the Porto train station unexpectedly.