Meeting Up

Waiting at the Cafe

One of the coolest things when you travel is when you get together with friends from home when you are thousands of miles away in a foreign country.

When we travel, we usually stay in a place for a good period of time, often for a month and we try to rent a place with an extra bedroom so there is room for people to come visit. The first time this happened was in Spain. This was our first month long rental and we had a three bedroom apartment half a block from a Mediterranean beach. Our friends Brain & Andrea came from Egypt to spend a few days with us. We were sitting out on the balcony when they pulled up in their Rental car. It was just so cool to see them suddenly see us and start waving.

Since that first “meet-up” we have gotten together with people all over the globe, and it is always a nice feeling when you suddenly see someone you know coming towards you in a place thousands of miles away from home. It is not quite the same when you go meet someone in an airport or train station; it is when you suddenly recognize a friend or family member coming down the street towards your temporary home away from home.

Our apartment here in Porto, Portugal is situated on a steep hillside on the Douro riverbank. There is

Our Porto Apartment

no street access to the apartment so you either have to go up from the riverbank 100 steps, or down from the top a twisting winding 100 steps. We were in Braga, a town about an hour by train from Porto, and the children were flying from Toronto overnight to get here. Regis and I arrived at the Porto train station and walked to the steps leading down to the apartment. We were early, so the apartment was not ready yet, so we found a little cafe on the steps and piled the luggage up out of the way and sat with a beer and a coke to wait. The children had texted us to say they had arrived and were “UBERing” towards us.

Stairs Down

As we sat in the lovely Portuguese sunshine chatting with another tourist from Holland and watching the “cook” of the little cafe grill sardines on a tiny little charcoal barbecue balanced precariously on one of the steps , the children suddenly appeared struggling down the stairs with their luggage. Waves and hugs later we were all together here in Porto. A very cool experience!

Perched on the hill

The View From The Apartment

Some of the Locals were not happy with our visit

The hillside!