The tale of our epic journey begins after a very long plane ride across the Atlantic, with layovers in Denver and Frankfurt, Germany, and finally reaching our destination of Porto, Portugal at 6 pm, where a cute little missionary was waiting for us.
We were so excited to see Madi!
She and two of the elders took us to the mission home, where the mission president's wife cooked us a lovely dinner.
We got to be there for the testimony meeting of the missionaries that were released that week, and Grace got to play ping pong with the elders.
That was about all we could keep our eyes open for, and we took a taxi to our hotel for some much-needed sleep.
The next morning, we got up early to go to the most beautiful train station on the planet,
and bought tickets to our first destination, Guimaraes. We had a little time before the train left, so we got pastries for breakfast and took a few early morning pictures of Porto.
The train ride took about an hour through the beautiful countryside. I was amazed at how green it was, especially for January. We reached Guimaraes, which was one of the areas where Madi served.
It was amazing to wander and explore the town. Such beautiful old buildings and churches everywhere, and cobblestone streets and sidewalks.
My favorite thing we saw here was the Castle of Guimaraes, a 10th century castle where the first king of Portugal was born.
In the picture below, you can see white tents on the streets below. There was a huge market, which we visited after the castle. Not as charming as I'd hoped for - kind of the Portuguese gypsy version of the Preston Rodeo sidewalk sale - but they did have some cool stuff, too, including cheap Ronaldo soccer jerseys which I bought to take home to the boys.
Amazing place.
(Just to let you know - the word "amazing" will continue to be used frequently in the next few posts. Sorry. There just aren't many more words to accurately describe this trip.)
