Tour of Porto

I'm pretending we took a high class tour of Porto the second day we were here but it was actually the HopOn-HopOff bus. We lucked out and got the last seats on the bus downstairs. The sun was blazing; upstairs looked too hot anyway.

Much of the tour goes along the river Duoro and you can see where it meets the Atlantic Ocean. We got off to have lunch where we could see the ocean. The two stops that have restaurants on the beach were packed. We found a place with open tables and the wait staff set up tables for 7 in the sun. Other people got sun umbrellas but apparently they thought the  Americans would enjoy the sun. It was the hottest day we've had in Portugal. 

Besides sailboats, we saw a someone surfing a wave that was around 2 feet high. Training for that 100 footer.

After the tour we went to the train station to see its famous tiles. While there are tiles everywhere, this station has huge pictures made of azulejos. The panels depict several historic events and some domestic scenes. The first one was installed in 1905. One tile maker designed the 20,000 tiles and the installation was completed in 1915.

We had been wondering why the city is so crowded. We saw a lot of students in black robes and cloaks and decided it was graduation day. We later found out that the black robes are uniforms for the public university. Underneath the robes, all the students wear white shirts and black ties. The students get the robes sophomore year. At some point they have a "baptism " ritual where they lay the cloaks on the ground and pour alcohol on them. They're never supposed to wash them--just put them in the sun to dry and get rid of the smell.  Each university has a fountain where the students are initiated with a ceremony and water "baptism."

The ceremonies are specific to each university. I'm guessing they learn their team song and secret handshake.

In Porto we've had two dinners that went on for hours, not because that's traditional but because of bad service. Part of the problem is lack of workers like all countries post-covid. I don't know what the other part is. One night when we were eating outside,  the street we had just walked on was blocked by two trucks so workers could remove a tall street sign. After they constructed more road blocks, a crane came down the street, turned around, almost hitting Joyce in the process, and got in position by a building. Somehow it worked with a crane on the other side of the building to remove some large blue boxlike contraptions off the roof. The entertainment went on for a long time. It must have been important because they started the project after dark and continued until after 11 when I think we actually got our entrees.