Fate, Wine, and Surfing

 It’s been a couple days since I’ve written, but not for lack of things to share. We get up and out of our apartment by 8am and aren’t usually back until about 10pm, if not later. It’s been a busy and fun couple days. As I type this, I’m in a van to Porto, Portugal., home of, you guessed it….PORT WINE! It’s about a 4 hours drive north or where we’ve been staying so I was able to catch up on sleep and this blog. Here’s what you’ve missed in the life of Lauren in Europe:

Fado

There isn’t anything in American culture to describe what Fado means to the Portuguese.  Fado is a style of music, typically a sad story of a song.  The tradition of going to listen to Fado dates back pretty far. How far? I can’t remember, but it’s been around for hundreds of years. “Fado” translates to “fate”.  The Portuguese have a belief that whatever happens to you, it was your fate. If you blew a tire on the way to work, it was your fate. If an entire Roman army takes over your castle, it was fate. This peculiar culture doesn’t get up in arms about the mishaps of life. Instead, they say “that’s fate” and move on. Being able to sit and listen to this beautiful music was quite a treat. Even though I couldn’t understand what they were saying, I could feel the emotion behind each song. It was moving.

Wine

The next day we drove out to meet at wine seller at a restaurant. The wine seller was a guy names Joe from Huntington Beach. He was traveling to Portugal on a surf trip when he met his future wife. It’s about 20 years later and now Joe, his wife and 3 kids live in Portugal. In between tasting wine and eating lunch, Joe found out there were a few surfers amongst the group. While I would not consider myself a surfer by any means, I jumped on the offer to join the group for a surf session the next morning. See pictures from that adventure below. Now…back to wine. After lunch, we took a short tour of a local winery. It was the craziest thing. The vines grew in sand on the ground. They looked like weeds or a short bush. The wine maker was telling us that the grapes get a distinct flavor from the sand, which is unique to each area of Portugal. Each wine made in a specific region will taste different because of the sand.  It was honestly the coolest thing ever! After our tour, we went back to the Institute where local church ladies made us an authentic Portuguese meal. Yum!

These are actually grape vines:

  

Surfing

I can officially say I’ve surfed in the Atlantic!!! Ok, so maybe I only got one ride before realizing that this was actually a really bad idea because of my knee, but hey, I rode one wave and then got to play around in the water and sit on the beach…in Portugal.  :)

I took a break in the middle of writing this blog to tour a Port Cellar in Porto, Portugal. It was outstanding! And…fortunately my knee feels SO much better than it did after surfing. Unfortunately….I’m sick. Really sick. Sore throat, body aches, feeling exhausted. It’s awful. We’re here in Porto for the night and have a nice hotel room. Everyone is out and about and I stayed back, grabbed some soup with Cathy, one of the staff at PLNU, and am about to shower, watch some Portuguese TV and go to bed. Even though I’m feeling sick, I’m actually really enjoying the quite of my room and this down time. It’s been go, go, go, which is great because we’ve seen so much, but tonight I finally get to be alone…one of my favorite places to be. Oh, how I love my alone time! Being an only child for 8 years, it makes sense why I love it so much. I think I need to learn to balance alone time and group time for the next 4 weeks, so I don’t burn out on people. Being too alone it just down right depressing, but never getting a moment to hear your own thoughts is overwhelming, too. This was a very long paragraph about alone time, but bottom line is, I don’t like that I’m sick, I hope I feel better tomorrow, but I’m SO appreciative that I got sick at a time when I’m able to have a hotel room to myself for just a few hours.

Here’s a pic from the Knight’s Templar in Tomar that we went to today. I’m going to do a whole photo blog on this place later, because it was so amazing. But for tonight…I’m off to bed. Ciao!