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…
…and the lights of Gaia.
