Porto

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Our 11-week trip is ending in Porto, a very different city than we´ve visited before. It is huge: 1.2 million in the Greater Porto area. It is built on loads of small (unless you´re trying to walk up them) hills so that getting geographically oriented is tough. We were warned not to attempt driving in the city, so we left our rental car at the airport and took a taxi in.

Our first day we bought a 10 euro ticket on the city tour bus. It was a great investment. They have three different routes and you can get off and on at any point. In a day, we only had time for two of the tours, the historic city and the bridges. We took a long lunch between the two down along the river at an outdoor cafe where en enjoyed the sunshine, the people walking by and boats plying the river. My architect friends will appreciate the fact that whenever the tour guide pointed out a significant building, she always named the architect that designed the building!

I have to tell a story about people walking by. When we were in Coimbra, we visited the University´s old baroque library. It was a magnificent place and there were three other people visiting when we arrived. They were talking to the curator of the library and we sort of joined in the conversation. The curator went to the front door, locked it, and gave the five of us an incredible tour! Speaking no English, except "fantastic" he was able to convey to us and the three people from the Netherlands all kinds of little secrets about the place. Our favorite was that he showed us where the bats come out at night and eat all of the bugs that might be harmful to the books in the library, some of which are 600 years old!

Anyway, the Dutch people and we were so charmed by our "private" tour, that we chatted together about twenty minutes before moving on. Three days later, we ran into them again in Conimbriga, the site of ancient Roman ruins. It was like old home week. Then, while we were having lunch by the river in Porto, they walked by! This time we greeted each other with hugs and ended up exchanging e-mail addresses. We ran into them again two days later in a restaurant and by this time, we're inviting each other to visit us in our countries if we ever we're visiting in the area. The upshot of all of this is that we don't know their names!!

The next day was a glorious, sunny day and we took a boat up the Duoro River. Breakfast and lunch were served below deck, but the rest of the seven-hour trip we were on top soaking up the sunshine and enjoying the scenery floating by. We saw the landscape change from urban to suburban to small farms, then to large vineyards. The port wine exported by Portugal from Porto comes down the Douro River. It was a great day and we took the train back into Porto.

Our last day was to be devoted to visiting the port houses across the river from Porto in the town of Gaia. We started out walking from the hotel, but as is typical with us, we got distracted at about every turn and it took us a couple of hours to get across the river. By then it was raining quite hard and we only made it to one port house. We had a tasting there of their white and tawny ports. We'd hoped to take a tour, but the only English-speaking tour left that day wasn't going to be for a couple hours. We bagged it and caught a taxi back to the hotel and started packing for our trip home.

We've thoroughly enjoyed our second trip to Portugal. We've learned so much more about its history and met many more wonderful people. We watched the dollar slide over the last couple of months with alarm and don't know if it will be economically feasible for us to visit next year. But I'll always have so many wonderful memories of the country. It's been a pleasure to share just little snippets of our trip as we've gone along. Thanks to everyone who has "tuned in" and those who left encouraging comments.

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Photos

Approaching Riberia
This was our first glimpse of the colorful riverside.

Porto from across the River
Taken from behind the port houses in Gaia.

Along the Douro River
This was along the small farm section of the river.

Vineyards and Pear Trees
All farming along the riverbanks is terraced.

Boat Docked at Regua
The end of the cruise.

Comments

[peter42y]

i very much like porto
I very much like porto and the north of portugal. Women in Braga are very beautifull. And you know what ? Years ago I showed a russian online acquaitance traditional clothes of Braga women...,and ( believe it or not ) she commented they looked like russian clothes. Some people in the north came from northern europe centuries ago. In a fruit shop in porto there were 4 employees , 2 portuguese and 2 russians and one could not figure out who was portuguese and who was russian. People in the south is more arabic.