Last Days

The last days of the trip creeped up on us rather quickly. Before we knew it it was May 31st and we were leaving for the United States the next day. However, before departing we visited one last place - the Our Lady of Fatima sanctuary.

Fatima is a symbol of the Virgin Mary and one of the world's most important religious sites. There were people all over the world visiting the sanctuary the day we went (you could tell from all the different languages being spoken around you). It was also exciting and rather busy because the Pope had actually visited not too long before our visit earlier in the month. The only rather dissapointed part of that trip was when we went to use the bathrooms .. I've just come to realize that we have almost nothing to complain about with our public bathrooms in the U.S.

Since it was our last night there, many of us decided to celebrate with one last trip to Bairro Alto. On our last morning, we all got up wearing our Portuguese soccer shirts with our slogan of the trip "I gotta feeling". This trip was truly amazing and all of us will remember it for the rest of our lives.

Guimarães // Braga

This day we started off with a bus ride to the famous city of Guimarães. This was the first capital of Portugal, where Afonso Henriques, Portugal's first king, was born. The bus drove us to the top of a very large hill and dropped us off at what looked like a very scenic, religious area. There were fountains and flowers and just beautiful landscape. There was also a hotel located at the top which I found very interesting, wondering what different types of people stayed at that hotel for vacation.

Once we looked around at the top we started to walk down the side of the hill which had a large staircase with fountains in the middle. Our tour guide told us that each fountain represented the 5 senses, and also the 3 virtues. It was an amazing view walking down the stairs and I enjoyed it very much.

After that we went to the City of Braga, which is the capital of the Minho province. When we arrived there we were surprised to find a Roman Festival going on (the town kept very close to its Roman roots). There were people dressed as in Roman time, shops, belly dancing, and really just a festival on the street. It was very exciting and was a sight to see.