Cheers from Porto....

Well, I did have to consume some of the local product. As they same, when in Rome.....

Anyway, Porto rocks! Again, the architecture was beautiful and Porto had the extra advantage of being on the river Douro and therefore was even more picturesque than either Lisbon or Sintra. I had a short cruise along the river, called the 5 bridges tour for obvious reasons, and later tasted some good and not so good ports at 3 cellar doors. For some reason they seem to be big fans of chilled white port. Sweet or dry, neither is to my liking. The tawny and ruby ports, however, were worth the wait. I also did a tour at Taylor’s cellar door which was interesting. The vineyards are well up the river, Porto is simply the storage facility so it was all about the barrels and the end product.

Also visited the odd church just for something different.

I found the most magnificent bookshop, Lello, celebrating 100 years in 2006. It had an amazing staircase in the centre of the store that wound up and around. It was like something out of a fairytale. Just one of the great finds when wandering the streets!

I stayed in an interesting hotel. It had the old fashioned elevator, the kind with the 2 doors (a la the movie 'Charade'), and was basically art deco throughout. Not what I expected in Porto.

Had a day trip to Braga to see their cathedral and the Bom Jesus. The cathedral was lovely, the tour was even better. Nothing like a quiet day in May where only one English speaker wants a tour. As a result, I believe the tour went for much longer than it should have. I saw some interesting artefacts including a 10th century container made of ivory (with very intricate carving) that was used to store diamonds and rubies. Also an iron cross used for the first mass in Brazil following its discovery 506 years ago. Finally, one chapel contained the tombs of the ‘parents’ of Portugal, being the parents of Portugal’s first king, Alfonso Henrique. The tour guide was naturally very proud of this.

The Bom Jesus was all about many sets of stairs and the church at the top was not actually worth the effort. However, the stairs were really interesting and the views over Braga were great.

Form here, I am going back to Madrid and then onto a few Spanish cities before I start the Morocco trip. Stay tuned.

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