On Wednesday afternoon, we arrived in Porto a bit late (these are Portuguese trains, not Swiss Rail). With a bit of effort, we finally located our transfer driver outside the train station. After another realization of why we don’t drive in Europe, we arrived at our hotel, checked in and went up to our room…
…where we found a note along with a couple of candies waiting on the bed for us.
Now, that’s something we’ve never gotten at a Motel 6!
Our room overlooked an Italian-themed restaurant. We went down and ordered a lasagne. The waiter suggested a bottle of the Pacheca red wine. He’d apparently visited the winery and said that they have rooms for overnight guests built into some of the huge wine barrels used to make ruby port. We’ll book a night there on our next trip to Portugal, I assured him.
After dinner, we walked along the riverfront walkway. As we passed some folks dining on a narrow walkway above the river, Dianne heard them mention our travel agent’s name. Yes, they were also on our cruise.
We continued onward, watching as lights lit up the Monastery of Serra do Pilar across the river…
Our cruise didn’t board until Friday night so we had all day Thursday to wander around Porto on foot. We started the day with the hotel breakfast, which included the usual array of salad and sandwich fixings. Fortunately, for us Americans, there were also scrambled eggs, bacon and sausage weenies along with an array of Portuguese pastries.
After eating, we wandered down to the walkway along the riverfront where we watched tour boats haul tourists out for a cruise under Porto’s six bridges.
Above us, we watched a man along a wall cook fish on a pair of hibachis. We weren’t sure if it was for a restaurant or he was getting ready to host a fish feast.
Sidewalk shops line the riverfront walkway, offering great bargains on tons of things we don’t need and didn’t buy.
And, of course, there are restaurants and more restaurants. Nobody with a working credit card needs to go hungry out here.
We spent the day walking around, savoring the sights and snapping photos of things of stuff we just found interesting…
That night we had more Italian food, this time a pepperoni pizza from an al fresco restaurant across the street from the hotel.
Noting that we had previously purchased pizza in Lisbon, Dianne complained that we were becoming Portugal pizza people.
We don’t board our Douro River cruise boat until later this afternoon, so we had all day to wander more of the city. We decided to cross the Dom Luis I Bridge and check out Porto’s across-the-river neighbor, Vila Nova de Gaia.
The famous wine from here may be named Port for the port city of Porto, but the wineries that cellar this distinctive Portuguese beverage are all located in Gaia.
The grapes for this sweet, fortified wine grow in vineyards along the Douro River upstream. Before the advent of highways, railways and river-taming dams, barrels of the wine floated down the Douro in rabelo boats. A number of these classic craft line the riverfront in Gaia, each advertising a sponsoring brand of port.
Like Porto, Gaia lies on riverside hills. Instead of elevators and funiculars, Gaia offers a ski-style gondola to ferry folks from the river to a park near the hilltop Monastery. We’re skiers, so riding in a gondola on steel cables is no big thrill, so we chose to stay down today.
After unsavory sandwiches but bountiful brews at an outdoor café/bar, we wandered up a side street where we encountered a hare-brained sidewalk mural.
A short distance beyond, we came to the WOW, which we later learned is an acronym for World of Wine. After dodging a swarm of yellow-clad apprentice people meandering by…
we entered. We discovered this was a self-proclaimed “cultural district” filled with museums, shops, bars and restaurants.
At what is literally an openair fern bar on its top level deck…
…we ordered glasses of white port…
…and chatted with a man holding a Harris hawk, whose job is to scare away any seagulls that might think about pooping by.
The views from the fifth-floor deck were splendid.
The thing I liked most about the WOW was that every floor offered sets of restrooms that were close, convenient, clean and free.
Europeans, I figure, must have metric-sized bladders. While most restaurants have restrooms for customers, public restrooms around these parts are few and far between. That meant stopping at bars and ordering brews so we could use their restroom to deposit the last brews we ordered.
Our favorite two letters in Portuguese were WC,
In the afternoon, we recrossed the river and back at the hotel, watched our luggage being loaded into a van. We followed it down to the river where our cruise boat awaited. We boarded and headed to our cabin…
…turned off the TV…
…checked out the bathroom…
…then headed up to the lounge along with our 28 fellow passengers.
Douro river cruises do not travel after dark, so on our first night we would not leave the dock in Porto. After dinner onboard, we went out on the sundeck (moondeck?) and savored glasses of wine while admiring the beauty of the illuminated bridge, monastery…
