Day 1: The city of 1 EURO

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Day 1: The city of 1 EURO

We arrived in Porto in time. To be more exact, we arrived in Porto ahead of schedule....about an hour or so! This is a nice way to start our vacation, isn´t it? Anyway, get in Porto an hour early was a lucky break that we could use, because our first major stop was in Lamego.
Lamego itself is nothing worth writting about except if you like the small town village life with nothing to do but just hang around the town square. But, Lamego IS worth writting about if you like Catholic festivals.

So we left Porto heading towards Lamego.

First up: Finding a train station.
Just take your local metro to the center and take a train....no biggie!

Second take: Ordering a ticket in Portugues knowing you're on a tight schedule
Just take your phrase book and brabbel something like: "Quira dois billietas, ida, par Lamego.*"...no biggie!

Take three: Coming to accept the fact that the possibility exists that we won't make to Lamego 'cause the train only goes te Peso de Régua
Just relax and sit on the train, kick your feet back and enjoy THE most beautifull railway system of Portugal. The train to Régua follows the Rio Douro through its valley...one problem...the sun set at 18H and it's about 21H...and the sun sets fast in Portugal. So we're actually staring into a pitch black surrounding!

Anyway arriving in Régua we noticed that there are no more busses to Lamego.....Taxi!....I asked the driver to take us to the camping site in Lamego.

Where was I? Oh yeah, Catholic festivals! We were expecting a sober genuine boring procession tomorrow...but our taxi drove us through a vibrant town with hordes of people everywhere. No dull Catholics here! Our driver tried to take us the camping site but after leaving the town for about fifteen minutes into the mountains with no street lights and crazy drivers, we decided to halt our road trip and ask the driver to takes back to town.

Back in town we noticed that people from the whole of Portugal were gathering here for the festival and that people were just camping in public areas...and so did we ;-)

After placing our tent in the park we went in search of food as it is 00.00h! We maneuvered through the crowd and started of with a beer...guess the price....€1 per half liter...every beverage costs about €1...moving on we found this temporary placed restaurant and they were still serving....€13 por dois personas with snacks, traditional paté, lean beef, french fries and a 1/2 red COLD wine! Not bad, don´t you think?

Aferwards we saw and consumed fully fledged caipinhas for €2!!! I love this country!

During our caipirinha adventure they started to fire of fireworks...kind of chaotic...but nice nevertheless.

With a couple drinks in our stomach we proceeded to climb the Sancturio de Nossa Senhora dos Remidos....not on our knees like the real ones!! And we actually saw somebody do it!!!!!

Time for bed, it's 3h!
The funny part is that everybody in this little town is still at it little children, old people, couples, singles, musiscians, vendors........

Seeing you soon,

the backpackers

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Photos

train safety
only in Portugal