2024 Portugal

 Leaving Porto was pretty straightforward, taking an Uber to the bus terminal. I wouldn't recommend taking the bus. It was very cramped and there were no "comfort" stops for the 3 1/4 hour trip to Lisbon. The Lisbon bus terminal is huge and it took us a while to find our way out. I used the Uber app to get a ride but when the car arrived we couldn't figure out where it was - it was marked on the map but we had no indication of where we were. We eventually decided to take a taxi to the Hotel Britania. We really lucked out at the hotel as they gave us a penthouse suite on the top floor with a king-size bed, a living room with complimentary ruby port and a huge outside balcony, big enough for a party! Don't know why we were so lucky. It is a historic boutique hotel which had many notable people stay there including Jean-Paul Sartre. We took the metro down to the port area to visit the Cod History museum which was quite interesting. The Portuguese sailors discovered c...

The ship left our overnight port at 7am and went through the last lock on the Douro River. We docked a little further down at 9:30 and left by bus for downtown Porto. It took us about an hour to get to Porto and along the way we passed through vast areas affected by the forest fires just a few months ago that came close to the outskirts of Porto. The bus let us off in Gaia on the south side of the river just opposite Porto. From there we had a beautiful view of the Porto seaside just opposite. The buildings were historically painted different colors because there was often very heavy fog and the colors made it easier for the sailors to find where they needed to stop. We walked over the river on a steel bridge from the 1800s that was built by a student of Eiffel. The highlight was a visit to the main train station which is elaborately decorated with painted tiles of historic scenes. Our guide told us a funny story about the building of the train station. The location was a convent until...

We are on our way back down the river. All this morning we are cruising from Pinhao to Peso da Regua where we will dock after lunch and then take a bus to Amarante. The ship will continue on to Porto Antigo where we will meet it later in the afternoon. We went through the deepest lock at 115'. It is pretty impressive that it only takes a few minutes for the ship to drop that distance. Travel is always full of adventures. We wanted to make a train reservation for Porto to Lisbon and discovered the trains are on strike for a week. Then I tried FlixBus which was recommended but the web site wasn't working to take my payment. Then we finally got tickets on another bus line. The bus only takes 3 hours and 15 minutes compared with 2 hours and 45 minutes for the high-speed train. After lunch we took a one hour bus ride to the city of Amarante in the mountains north of the river. This city is famous for the priest Goncalo who came here in the 1200s and believed that if a bridge was bui...

 Last night was the change out of Daylight Saving Time in Europe so we had to set our watches back - this actually happened automatically with the phone. But another complication is that we were on the border with Spain which is in a different time zone an hour later so we had to make sure that our phone didn't change to Spanish time as all our departure times were in Portugal time. We had an early departure at 8am but the time change helped a bit with this. The bus ride to Salamanca was about 2 1/2 hours. The geography changes quickly from the steep Douro Valley up to a high plain in Spain. Instead of vineyards and olive trees there are flat fields and pastures with grazing cattle. We had a brief "comfort" stop at a cafe which was rather chaotic with 5 busloads of people all on their way to Salamanca. It was interesting to see all the dry hams hanging from the ceiling with little cups below to catch any fluids that might drain down.\ Getting off the bus in Salamanca, we ...

 It must be quite a challenge scheduling all the cruise ships that are going up and down the Douro River as it is very narrow in many places with no room for two ships to pass. Before one of the locks there was only about 20' on each side of the ship to the boulders on the shore. We wonder how much dredging it took to make the river navigable for the cruise ships. Several times we had to stop in a wider part of the river and wait for a ship coming downstream. The river doesn't appear to be used for commercial shipping with just a few pleasure boats. In the afternoon we went to the Coa Museum which was created to highlight the exceptional Paleolithic carvings that have been found in the Coa valley. So far, 1500 have been found dating from 12,000 to 18,000 years ago. We had a very good interpretive guide at the museum who showed the types of implements that would have been used at the time and how they would have been constructed. The museum had replicas of many of the carvings w...

 We both came down with colds and aren't feeling very energetic. Carmen stayed onboard this morning. I went on the trip to Lamego to see the cathedral of Mary with nursing child. One thing very distinctive of the cathedral organs in Portugal and Spain is the use of horizontal pipes and was able to get a photo. Another interesting aspect of the churches and cathedrals that we've visited have LED votive "candles". Instead of putting in a coin and lighting a regular candle. one puts in a coin and some number of the LED "candles" light up for some period of time. Then to Regua to the museum of the Duoro region. It was interesting to see old photos of wine boats going down the raging river - like going down the Colorado River. The wine casks were all marked with the owner so that they could be retrieved if the boat capsized in the rapids. With the creation of the dam and lock system, the transportation of wine by the traditional sailing boats ended. The dams have...