Barbara Gao | Watercolour | Urban Sketching: Pandemic Home for Christmas

Because of the nature of travel restrictions for Christmas 2021 + New Years 2022, I opted to stay in Europe and not go home. That being said, it was way too depressing to endure 2 weeks of Swedish winter in solitude, so I ended up spending 2 work+holiday week in Porto. I didn't officially take any day off work, but since the 2 holidays all fell on Thursday and Friday that gave me enough time to explore the city and surroundings.

I chose an apartment out of downtown core, but with parking space and a huge terrace. Granted it was not terrace weather so the airbnb host packed together all the outdoor furnitures to protect them from the rain, but whenever the sun came out, I was still able to drag a chair outside and sipped my tea under the winter sun. Despite the miserable weather forecast (basically all rain for 2 weeks), the rain actually never stayed for long and there were ample periods of sunny weather during each day. In total, a "rainy" day in Porto still had more sunlight than a "sunny" day in Stockholm.

This was also my first time renting a car in Europe. Since I had very limited experience driving another manual car that is not my own, I had some real difficulties even finding the biting point of the rental car's clutch. I looked so clueless the rental car lady thought I had no idea how to drive a manual car! Well, there is a first time for everything! (although after driving numerous rental cars in Europe now, I realized that my car was the outlier, not them...)

Ponte da Arrábida + Duoro River