2024 Portugal

 We left the hotel for the airport at 7am in a car that had been reserved and got to the airport a little after 7:30. Everything went smoothly at the airport and we enjoyed some time and breakfast in the Air Portugal lounge. The lines through security and passport control were very long and it was a very long walk to our gate - I got in over 3000 steps just at the airport. We had a good flight which was a bit bumpy at times but not too bad. We got in an hour early (!) and fortunately a gate was available although the jetway wasn't working and it took over 10 minutes to get it to the plane. It was interesting using Global Entry. You just stand in front of a kiosk where it takes a photo and verifies that it is you. Then you go through another line with an immigration agent looking at a tablet who then looks at you and says "welcome David". Not even a need to show a passport. We were in our car less than an hour after getting off the plane and home just two hours later. 84 d...

 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...

We had a more relaxed morning and didn't have to leave until 9am. It was about an hour drive to Braga, first stopping at Bom Jesus do Monte Cathedral on a mountain overlooking the city. The legend is that a cross was found there in the 1300s, before the presence of Christianity in the area and as a consequence, a chapel was built here and it become a site for pilgrimages. The cathedral was built in the 1700s and is now part of a large complex with hotels and beautiful gardens. The most striking aspect is the unusual area under the cross at the front of the church which has a 3-dimensional scene of the crucifixion with the women supporters and soldiers below Jesus and the two convicts. Braga was first founded by the Romans in 16BC and was subsequently occupied by the Moors, barbarians,  and various European countries. After visiting the main cathedral dating back to the 12th century we had two hours to enjoy lunch and explore the historic part of the town. Then to Guimaraes which is...

 We left Lisbon at 7:15, an early start. It was a 2 1/2 hour bus ride to Coimbra. Many of the forests in Portugal are eucalyptus which is not indigenous and was imported from Australia in the 1600s by Portuguese mariners. It likes the climate here and grows well, almost too well. In the early 20th century it was discovered that this is good for making paper and many private lands were planted with eucalyptus. It grows much more quickly than most trees grown for paper and can be harvested in 8 years. The downside is that it is high in oil which makes it very flammable. In recent years with increasing temperatures and drought, the fires have been catastrophic. We saw areas of forest fire for miles along both sides of the road. Coimbra was a Roman city until 409AD when it was conquered by the barbarians and Visigoths. Then by the Muslims in 710 and retaken by the Christians in 1096. Over the past 1000 years it has been under the control of the French, Spanish and their own Portuguese ...

 We are on our own this morning. We walked down to one of the historic funicular that goes up the steep slopes saving a lot of exercise. The control panel shows it was made by General Electric in 1905! It is so steep that the back of the car is raised up in order to keep the floor level as it travels up. There is quite a spectacular overlook of the city from there. We used Google Maps to find the bus route up to Sao Jorge Castle which overlooks the city. It is quite a bus ride up narrow winding streets - I give the bus drivers a lot of credit! We thought we could walk around the castle grounds to view the city without a ticket but unfortunately we could not and hundreds of people were in line so we didn't go in. Strangely, Google Maps only showed the way back as walking all the way down but we were able to go back to the bus station by the castle and take it back down. We stopped for lunch at a little shop and had the strangest salmon sandwich which had coal-black bread. We were su...

 After a delicious breakfast at the hotel, we had a morning bus tour of Lisbon. The highlight was a visit to a shop founded in 1837 that makes the Pastel de Nata which Lisbon is famous for. They are egg custard tarts and we each had one warm out of the oven - delicious! The restaurant sells 20,000 a day! Our tour guide said these are the only "real" ones. Several of these were provided in our hotel room but they didn't compare - cold and firm. We stopped at a massive sculpture memorial of 500 years of Portuguese navigation from 1460 to 1960. There is a huge mosaic in front of the monument with a map of the world showing where Portuguese sailors had visited ports all along the coast of Africa to Asia. After the tour, we took the metro to a recommended beer garden which was closed😓 but wandering down the street we found a seafood restaurant where I had a delicious shrimp curry which was more than I could eat. After lunch we took a bus to the Lisbon Story Center near the wa...

 Everything went smoothly until we approached Lisbon. The Lisbon airport was fogged in and the plane couldn't land. We were diverted to Faro, Portugal about 30 minutes away so they could put more fuel in the plane. Eventually we took off back for Lisbon and were able to land there but no gates were available. We had to wait for buses to come out to the plane which took about an hour. Going through customs only took about 30 minutes but by the time we exited, it was about 4 hours after our scheduled arrival. The rest of our group came on Delta about 45 minutes earlier and were able to land without difficulty before the airport shut down. The real confusion came with trying to get a ride with Uber. We ordered the ride on the Uber app and the driver said he had arrived about 10 minutes later but we couldn't find him. He didn't seem to understand English enough to explain where he was. There was a big sign in the terminal saying to go to P2 to get Uber and we found...

 A beautiful sunny day in Woodstock as we get ready to travel. We are taking our Kia EV6 to the airport. Hopefully there will be enough "juice" to get us there and back as well as sitting in the parking garage for two weeks. If not, there are high speed charging stations on the way back. We left at 3:00 and arrived at Snap parking at 5:15, a distance of 114 miles and used 25kWh of energy for the trip. An effective 138mpge. We have 61% of battery left, enough to get back home. We are traveling in a group organized by our friend and travel agent Ginny Barthel (European Travel Whisper). There are 12 people in the group, some of whom we've traveled with before. We will be spending 3 days in Lisbon before traveling to Porto to board the Avalon Alegra for a cruise up the Duoro River. Carmen ready for take-off