The holidays took over and I realized I didn’t share the rest of my honeymoon with you! I really, really loved Porto, as I knew I would, and am excited to show you some of my favorite things about our time there. First up the PORT! We had port every day we were there. We did a tasting early on at one of the markets which turned out to be even more exciting than we could have planned. As we sat there we witnessed a group of film students running through the narrow aisles making a film and soon after a band of musicians lively playing their songs. It was great to see how excited even the merchants were as the band played. They even joined in on the port tasting when they were done playing.
The next day we did a tasting at one of the port makers and a tour of the caves in the evening-followed by another tasting-like I said lots of port. The following day we went to Kopke and tried a 1983 vintage tawny port (shown above). We had a very philosophical conversation about drinking something older than the both of us and then slowly sipped it until it was gone.
We stayed one night in a room with the view above which was quite nice. The morning we checked out we were blessed with the most beautiful rainbow over the river. But when we checked into the place we were staying right on the river I was blown away! We had the best view of everything! It was perfect for people watching, river watching, boat watching, bridge watching, bird watching, everything watching! We joked that we felt like a king and a queen being up on that balcony because everyone walking by was looking up at and taking pictures of the historic buildings we were staying in. With the sun shining on our faces I could have stayed there all day (which we did a lot of but not all day).
We happened to be in the city during Halloween which I figured we wouldn’t be celebrating but when we were on
the other side of the river port tasting we ran across what looked to be Halloween decorations. We wandered in and were told they were indeed hosting a party later on that night. They don’t really celebrate the holiday but they do like to have parties so why not! My thoughts exactly. We didn’t come prepared to dress up so I wore my black top and black pants, put my black eye makeup on to look old and a bit scary, wrapped my scarf around my head and grabbed an apple and poof I was the witch from sleeping beauty or something like that. Not bad. I felt a bit silly walking back over across the river since, like I mentioned, they don’t really celebrate Halloween. The only people I saw dressed up were at the party. The party was slow to get started but eventually it started to fill up and so did the dance floor. We showed off our amazing dance skills before calling it a night.
On our last day we took a walk up to a high point in the city to some beautiful gardens. I was pretty tired by the time we made it up there but I did end up having a nice walk around. Also it was a very nice and warm day-look at all that sun! Eventually we made our way back for some lunch and took a bit of a rest.
On our last night there I insisted we head back to the other side of the river to get some chestnuts. We had them one night and I thought they were the best thing ever! The perfect amount of salty and sweet. I wish I had a bag of them right now. Once we were back in the room and all packed for the next day we just sat on the balcony and tried to soak it all up. I think it worked because if I close my eyes right now I can imagine it perfectly.
Category Archives: walker
I’m 32 and it’s a New Year!
January 6, 2016
I mentioned in the last post but my birthday was on January 1st and I turned 32! Ah! Where are the years going? Haha! Really though I love my birthday and I love celebrating and if you know me you know I will try and keep celebrating through the very end of January.
What I have been contemplating is my need to make the day and surrounding days super important. There is this natural feeling when the new year begins to make goals and work extra hard for the things we want or to contemplate the future and what’s next. These thoughts also come about when we turn a year older. Thinking about what we’ve done up until this point and what we would like to do next. I get a little overwhelmed because for me these 2 events happen at the same time. Therefore I think I place a huge importance on this time of year. Frankly it’s a tad exhausting and has me wanting to do nothing. Yikes.
Luckily I found a few posts to help me not take things so seriously, to add to some of the things I’ve already been enjoying and loving, and using prompts to help further growth and change. Jesse from Style and Pepper talks about adding more “ingredients” to her life so it feels more like whipping up something fun when looking at the new year and not like a chore. I love the 5 simple reminders from The Fresh Exchange-especially the one about cutting yourself some slack-I really needed to hear that. Finally my gal Moorea Seal wrote a book called The 52 List Project and it was featured on Oprah! In case you want to join in the fun but aren’t quite ready to purchase you can find a few of the lists here.
(P.S. These pictures were not taken on my birthday but during the weekend and we were still celebrating so Walker kept saying that the snow was my birthday miracle. I agree! It was simply magic and I could have stayed out and watched it all day but my husband is a Texan and he got cold. Haha!)
New Year’s Eve 2015
January 5, 2016
If you don’t know by now New Year’s is a big time of the year for me. My birthday is on January 1st so growing up New Year’s Eve was full of traditions and after midnight full of birthday wishes and present opening (more on that in the next post).
This year we had plans to head to a few parties close by to drink, mingle, and watch the fireworks off the space needle. BUT I didn’t want to wait until 8 or 9 to start celebrating. Super last minute (on the 30th) I decided to host a small dinner party at my house and I decided it would be a 7 course affair with pairings. I researched all over and looked at some menus and substituted as I saw fit and finally came up with a wonderful menu. I cooked all the courses (after a moment of what was I thinking I was really excited to see it coming together) and my friends brought cheese for the cheese course and wine and champagne. Below is the menu:
A few more details: We had French Champagne, Washington dry Riesling, the Klinker Brick is a Zinfindel from California, Walker helped make the plum wine and we all picked plums for it last summer, the port is a 10 year Tawny from Kopke-a port maker in Porto that we visited on our honeymoon, and finally the grapefruit was served 2 ways-fresh and dried. It was seriously so fun. We enjoyed the rest of our evening but we all agreed this was our favorite part. It was especially funny when I started to get a bit tipsy about half way through was stopped paying any attention to when what was supposed to come out. I seriously can’t wait to do it again and I’ve been dreaming up some fun ideas.
A couple photos from the rest of the evening and a close up of Walker’s Michigan cuff links.
