The Lady Cardinals have Landed in Portugal

While we finish our pre-season here in the Washington, DC area, De and Kelly are doing theirs in one of the most intriguing corners of Europe: Portugal.  They have accompanied the Lady Cardinals soccer team on their transatlantic voyage.  The team started the journey in Lisbon and are now enjoying Porto.  I've never been to Portugal, but I know Brazil pretty well.  The Portuguese traditions and language are warm and beautiful.  I can't wait to see the "old country" for myself.  Check out De's posts on the CUA Athletic Department website.  By the looks of things, the trip is fantastic cultural exchange, training exercise, and soccer vacation all wrapped up into one.  Will De take the time to appreciate the colonial architecture?  I guess we'll see when we get back.

Best wishes to the CUA team on their journey.

Below, I cross post De's most recent entry:

March 5 – Game Time!Today we started the day off with breakfast at the hotel and then headed to downtown Porto. We took a nice walk to the Metro and experienced public transportation.  Then, when we arrived at our destination we had the perfect view of the Porto riverfront from very high up so we could see all of the city.  Once we arrived we walked down a long cobble stone road with many hills until we arrived at a wine cellar for a tour and tasting. We went to the Calem Cellars and saw how all of the different Port wines were aged over time in the different barrels. The tour was very cool and interesting because they had many different wines, the barrels seemed like they went on forever and many of them were 60 thousand liters! We all had a great time. After the tour at Calem we walked over one of Porto's famous bridges and in the middle of it was an awesome view. When we crossed the bridge we took a tramcar that brought us up the side of a mountain and was like nothing any of us had experienced before. Once we got to the top it brought us to the city center area with many shops and restaurants, which was very busy. We were allowed free time to walk around and shop which we all took full advantage of and enjoyed thoroughly. Then we took a long walk to a traditional Portuguese cafe which had very good food that we all loved! This time the waiter spoke English so that was a great help because we actually knew what we were ordering. The food was delicious and it was the second most popular cafe in Porto so it was a good experience.  Next, we took a long walk back to the hotel to take a rest because we had a long night ahead of us with our first game. After we rested up we had dinner at the hotel again which was pretty good! Then we headed to our first game against a club called Salgeiros and none of us knew what to expect at all because they play in the Portuguese women's league Second Division, so we were all a little nervous. Within the first three minutes of the game we realized we could keep up with them and it would be a good game. They scored an early header goal off of a corner and we went into halftime down 1-0.  The second half was much better for us as we controlled the ball and had several scoring chances.  Annie scored an awesome goal with her left foot from about 30 yards out that was perfectly placed which made the game 1-1. That was the final score and when we shook hands at the end we began to attempt to communicate to the Portuguese players and started to have a great time with them. It was an experience like none of us have ever had before and every time we both understood a word everyone would cheer. Then we ended the game in an agreement to hang out with them at night and it was a great time!!! BOM DIA!