Blogs from Northern, Portugal, Europe - page 17

The sort of thing that all travellers fear struck in the wee small hours of the night! Gretchen awoke with flu symptoms! Just how bad it was going to be might take a day or two to develop and it is fortunate that we have a short run down to Porto and don’t have to check out from here until midday. Our short stay here of 2 nights has been excellent with a nice location at the seaside and good weather even if it was a bit windy. We could have been on Porto in not much more than an hour if we took the highway but as usual we opted for the N13 which would take us close to the seaside practically all the way. With Gretchen’s symptoms starting to show like she was in ... read more

Thursday April 7 - Porto, Portugal Beautiful sunny morning, 55 now, promises to be 65 with no rain in the forecast until Saturday. We just beginning to explore our little corner of the city, the Ribeira or the river landing where the tour boats leave to go up and down this 210 K river. We are a few miles inland from the Atlantic but the Douro River, the second largest in Portugal runs for 210 K east to Spain. The areas inland 100 K to 210 K are some of the best wine growing areas in the world. Port Wine comes front here. My preference are the lighter Douro-Alto red wines, but we have been encouraged to try "green wines" too. We found a small restaurant/taverna about 3 blocks from here and had a wonderful, inexpensive ... read more

There is a song written in 1934 by a Spanish songwriter Maria Grever titled ‘What a diff'rence a day mades’ and today it couldn’t have been truer. The weather in Santiago hadn’t been that kind to us over the last 3 days just as we were starting to think that warmer temperatures for the northern spring might have been here.But this morning has dawned brilliantly fine and sunny,if a little cool still. Mind you we leave ourselves open to the changes in the weather by moving on every 2 or 3 days. Packing up was easy in this apartment because it is compact although in saying that there has been enough room to spread ourselves around too. It has been another find on Air BnB and despite the fact that the heating inside could have been ... read more

I set off for another life abroad on September 20, 2015. This time, my end destination was Ourense, Spain to be an English teaching assistant. But the cheapest plane tickets took me first to Porto, in Northern Portugal. No, I’d never heard of it either, even though it’s the second-largest city in Portugal and the namesake of Port wine. Once I booked my tickets, I was pretty chaotically continuing to work my multiple jobs and prepare for Spain, so I wasn’t exactly ‘excited’, just more focused on details. But when I started researching for my 1.5 days in Porto, I truly started to get motivated. And, it was way better than my high expectations! (Although the pictures are sub-par and not really representative of the sum total!) My flights were with an economy Portuguese airline, SATA, ... read more

I think it maybe feels as if this has not been one of our better holidays. So many things seem to have gone wrong. The weather for the first few days was unkind and Glenn has been unwell. Having said that there have been some wonderful things. Leon with its wall paintings and treasures in its museum, the Atlantic at Cabo, the pretty little Spanish town of Trujillo , the meal we ate there. We loved Bom Jesus and found Braganca with its lovely aire. Glenn has thought perhaps next year we may do something different and travel less but by Christmas he will have forgotten what he feels like. The Atlas, the camperstop book and the ACSI guide will be out and he will be planning again. I think a little like having a baby ... read more