Trip to Portugal and Hyde Interview

Day 159: 2/7/09

Belén woke me up at 12 o’clock. I was a bit confused as to why she was waking me up at first, but then she told me that the family was planning a trip to Portugal today, and of course, she knew that I would be willing to come along. I ate a little bit of breakfast, showered, and then we set off to Portugal. By this time it was about 1, and it was an absolutely beautiful day—something that we all know doesn’t happen very often around here. The skies were blue, and it was only the second time it hasn’t rained in two weeks, I think. We took the scenic route to Portugal, which involved going on the same route that I rode my bike on a couple of weeks ago. It was much less brutal in car. After around an hour of driving, we arrived in Caminha, which is a tiny town right on the border of the Minho River, directly across the river from La Guardia, which I’ve visited before.

We were all hungry, so we went to a little restaurant for lunch called “Adega do Chico”. Apparently, in Portugal, one of the very typical things that they eat is cod, so everyone suggested that I get cod for lunch to enhance my Portuguese experience. I got this along with a typical Portuguese soup. The soup was pretty good, and then they brought out the cod. It was the Portuguese equivalent of Fish and Chips, I guess. It was a big hunk of fried cod with grilled onions, and then some thick potato chips that were halfway between a Potato Chip and French Fries. This was a very heavy meal, to say the least. After we all had eaten our fill, we walked around for a bit in Caminha. We went to a “Chino” store. These stores are the equivalent of dollar stores in the US. It’s a bunch of cheap, crappy things. Tito loves these kinds of stores. The “Engrish” factor is lost on them, but I got a good laugh out of most of the packaging. I also found ripoff perfume, as well as some bolt cutters for 15 Euros.

After this, we piled in the car again and headed to Valença, another town in northern Portugal. The outskirts of the town are pretty ugly, but the “old town” is actually really pretty. It has a long and ancient history, dating back to the first century AD and the Romans. However, in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, a fort was built to protect from the various invading Spanish armies. It’s a fort on top of two hills. If I had to describe it, I’d say it’s two polygons separated by a ditch/moat with four doors on each side. It’s kind of complicated, but it’s very ornate.

The coolest part about this is that you can drive into the fort, and there is a mini village in there, complete with churches, houses, and somewhat touristy shops. We walked around here for a while and I got some good photos of the town and the views of Spain and Portugal. You can view all of my photos, both of Caminha and Valença here.   For some reason, not all of the photos got uploaded, but I’ll try to get the rest of them uploaded later.  We spent an hour here and then drove back to Vigo.

When we got back, I uploaded and named all of the photos, and then I had my Hyde Interview. The person who interviewed me was rather devoid of personality. I’ve decided that I don’t like phone interviews because I can’t read the body personality of the other person. This probably made the interview a lot tougher than it should have been, but I think that I did okay. Of course, there were a lot of weird questions, but I came up with some decent responses, at least in my opinion. I wonder if the lady I interviewed thought any differently.

Then I hung out with the family. I was reading the newspaper and stumbled upon the TV Guide for the day. I started reading it, and I saw that at 1:40 in the morning, there was a TV show called “Larry David”—it’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm”, here in Spain! So of course, I stayed up to watch that. And then I went to bed. It is supposed to rain tomorrow, so I don’t know if we’ll do anything special. Peace.