Alexandra was the lucky recipient of a surprise birthday dinner on Saturday night - and seeing as it was at a Japanese restaurant, even the better! It was a teppanyaki place and the chef was fantastic, cooking everything deliciously (and amazingly, there was heaps of food), but also making sure we were all having a rip-roaring time.
As you can see, Alexandra was much better at the egg-toss than me!
Monday, 23 May 2011
Sunday, 22 May 2011
Fancy a port? Don't mind if I do...
To take advantage of a work meeting of Amelia's which was (every so conveniently) arranged for a Monday morning (now how on earth did that happen to get organised like that I wonder...), we spent the weekend soaking up the sun (and a lot of port) in Porto.
Now, it may have been the sheer delight in seeing sun again, or all the wonderful food and drink, but Porto would definitely have to be up there in my favourite weekend holiday destination list. It was cheap, interesting, and not so taxing on the 'must-see' list that you didn't feel bad spending most of your time debating the relative merits of white or tawny port... We did see some interesting things however, like climbing up the Torre de Clerigos to get a great view over the city, heading out to the beach to the Atlantic Ocean (I think I've got my geography right there), and stumbling across a bird market with every kind of parrot or canary you could think of.
The port houses in and of themselves are really interesting too - I learnt heaps of stuff about how port is made (essentially wine + brandy = port) and we tried to think that we could tell the difference between the aged and straight in the bottle stuff, but in hindsight who knows what we were talking about! It was great that they're all so close together along the river and you really get a sense of how different some of them are in their approach to things (depsite most of the industry being owned by a few companies with several different labels).
The city itself is really interesting in terms of its buildings and layout. There's the labyrinthine old town on the banks of the river, replete with red tiled roofs and blue tiled walls and which is basically crumbling away, then across the river is the Villa Nova de Gaia - essentially the 'new town'. It was only joined to the old town by the Luiz I bridge, designed by a student of Gustave Eiffel. Then back on the same side as the old town you've got Foz which is a beach area out the west of the city, then the newer areas further north. We had an unlimited travel card which we definitely made use of during our three days there!
We managed to bring three bottles of port home with us - one white, one normal tawny, and one 10 year old tawny. I'm now on the hunt for port glasses from the op shops so we can drink it in style!
Check out the rest of the photos here.
Now, it may have been the sheer delight in seeing sun again, or all the wonderful food and drink, but Porto would definitely have to be up there in my favourite weekend holiday destination list. It was cheap, interesting, and not so taxing on the 'must-see' list that you didn't feel bad spending most of your time debating the relative merits of white or tawny port... We did see some interesting things however, like climbing up the Torre de Clerigos to get a great view over the city, heading out to the beach to the Atlantic Ocean (I think I've got my geography right there), and stumbling across a bird market with every kind of parrot or canary you could think of.
The port houses in and of themselves are really interesting too - I learnt heaps of stuff about how port is made (essentially wine + brandy = port) and we tried to think that we could tell the difference between the aged and straight in the bottle stuff, but in hindsight who knows what we were talking about! It was great that they're all so close together along the river and you really get a sense of how different some of them are in their approach to things (depsite most of the industry being owned by a few companies with several different labels).
The city itself is really interesting in terms of its buildings and layout. There's the labyrinthine old town on the banks of the river, replete with red tiled roofs and blue tiled walls and which is basically crumbling away, then across the river is the Villa Nova de Gaia - essentially the 'new town'. It was only joined to the old town by the Luiz I bridge, designed by a student of Gustave Eiffel. Then back on the same side as the old town you've got Foz which is a beach area out the west of the city, then the newer areas further north. We had an unlimited travel card which we definitely made use of during our three days there!
We managed to bring three bottles of port home with us - one white, one normal tawny, and one 10 year old tawny. I'm now on the hunt for port glasses from the op shops so we can drink it in style!
Check out the rest of the photos here.
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