spiderbraids

The Cidade do Porto Shopping Mall next to our hotel. We actually went to this mall every day in Porto.

With nothing else to do after hitting the mall, we took the tour bus back to downtown Porto again. Here's a lion statue at the Boavista Circle while we were waiting for the bus.

Here's a better look at the statue at the Atlantic...

Another Dom Pedro statue, this one of Dom Pedro V.

Lunch at a "churrasqueira": grilled ribs and french fries.

Back at Santa Catarina shopping street for some shopping (duh)... That tram there is actually a museum.

Here's some Winx Club lip gloss I got at a perfume shop on Santa Catarina. ~~Layla~~Aisha makes a perfect figurehead for lip gloss ;-)

Wonder what's all the hubbub about?

Well, a bunch of buskers playing their musical instruments.

Another church, the Capela de Santa Catarina, covered in blue.

Back at the big screen again, and people have shown up to watch the opening match of the World Cup between South Africa and Mexico.

More old-style architecture, with a clock tower.

Vegging out in front of the TV again... and a rather strange anomaly with Code Lyoko going out in English with subtitles. Now would be a good time to explain: Unlike most other countries in Europe, imported TV programming in Portugal (and for that matter, the Netherlands) usually goes out in its original soundtrack with subtitles. The exception, however, is for kids' programmes, which are supposed to be dubbed-over, and one would think that Lyoko would fall under that category... (This wasn't a one-off either, as it happened again the next day.)

A commercial for Winx Believix dolls.

Dinner at the Cape Negra II... (within walking distance of the hotel)

...with a local delicacy, Francesinha, basically, a pork and cheese sandwich with tomato gravy. Mmmm...

A Winx comic book. For some reason, comic books are apparently sold in Portugal with a really big backing board like this one, which had to be folded to fit in my backpack.

Long after the fact, here's something else I bought that day: a pen in the form of a small Enchantix figurine (I only saw it was a pen when I unboxed it). Actual Winx dolls were going for like 24 Euros, and that's just the casuals. Fairy mode dolls were going for even higher. This pen? Only 7 Euros. And in any case, they didn't have anything Musa or Tecna (or in the pixies' case, Tune or Digit), which is probably understandable since these were Mattel dolls (some even had the 4KidsTV logo on their packaging!) Despite the commercial above, the store I bought it from (part of a chain, I might add) only had Enchantix on the shelves, no Believix... hmm...