Awaking with the dawn, I set forth on the final leg of this tour to Porto. I plan to spend the afternoon in Porto and only need to ride about 50km. As my couchsurfing host Jean-Marc is not available until 17:09, I take the more circuitous route along the impressively bike-friendly coastal road : beautiful coastline with extensive beaches all the way to Porto.
I take the wrong bridge over the river from Gaia to Lisbon. This bridge is strictly for cars only, but it's Portugal so, hey, it's not enforced and I even pass by some traffic cops and the motorists try to make way as best they can for me.
Jean-Marc is a Couchsurfing embassador which entails organising events, keeping the city's CS community safe and feeding back to HQ. For which he is paid nowt, except in karma points. He has hosted and travelled extensively and we compare CS stories and far-flung lands visited over some beers. There is a large festival in Portugal on 25th April each year celebrating the country's liberation from fascism. This being the eve of Liberation Day, there is a large concert and fireworks display in the city's central plaza.
Despite Jean-Marc having only moved to Lisbon 10 days ago, he has already his favourite patisseries, bars and galleries: a real local guide. I spend most of the day with Baptiste, another CS guest who has just joined us chez Jean-Marc from his Camino de Santiago walk. Jean-Marc's apartment is incidentally on the Camino route. Baptiste has completed more than 90,000km hitchhiking, despite being only 24 and plans to make a video guide on how to hitchhike. He is now heading south to Morocco to do some more research there.
We have a big dinner at home, full of colours and tapas-style and my calorie deficit from biking possibly goes back into the black after all these weeks.
No comments:
Post a Comment