portuguese road trip: northward ho

We picked up a rental car yesterday morning and set out northwards from Porto. Driving here is a bit nuts, especially while I'm trying to remember how to drive stick, and the roads wind all over the place and have terrible signage, but overall the exerience has been surprisingly good. The driving style is definitely aggressive but also kind of laid back: I've cut people off a few times by mistake (these roundabouts are nuts), stalled the car at green lights, and so on, but I haven't been honked at even once.

From Porto we drove up to Guimarães, where we saw another castle (which, unfortunately, paled in comparison to the Cathar ruins) and had a good traditional local lunch: alheira (smoked chicken & pork sausage) with a fried egg, batatas fritas (fries), and a tuna salad.

Next we got lost, but finally found our next stop: the ruins of an iron-age town on top of a hill, dating back to around 500 BC — "one of the earliest sites on the Iberian peninsula that could reasonably be described as an urban settlement" (Rough Guide, 2014).

On our way into Braga, where we ended up staying the night, we stopped at Bom Jesus do Monte, which is a cathedral at the top of a set of crazy white stairs. It's a pilgrimage site, where people sometimes climb all of the steps on their knees.