Tag Archives: Portugal

Porto

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Jack was keen to get to the river in Porto, I wasn’t really sure why but as I love rivers anyway I certainly wasn’t going to complain.

river 2

river cruise boat

Almost as soon as we got there we saw a river boat full of singing people! We surmised that they had probably been on a portery crawl, the Portuguese equivalent of a distillery crawl. The porteries are all above the river and they were apparently very generous with free glasses of port. Names like Sandemans, Fonseca and Cockburn.

We opted for a bridges trip on the river instead, so there was no singing on the boat we were on – shame. The boat took us under five bridges of various sorts. It was a very hot day and I forgot my hat and sunscreen cream – yes I got a bit burnt.

aBridge 11 K

And I forgot my sunglasses so my face is a bit more screwed up than usual!

Bridge 20 selfie

The cliffs along the riverside are pretty high and steep.

Buildings 17 river bank

aBuildings 15 river bank

Sadly when you go on holidays like this you don’t have time to make friends with any locals so there’s no way to see the inside of ordinary peoples’ homes. I would have loved to get a peek into these riverside houses.

Buildings 13 washing lines

Buildings 21 river bank

Below is an old warehouse with boats outside in various states of decay, I think they were about to undergo refurbishment.

Buildings 27 Warehouses + boats

The dome just visible above the trees is the only part of an exhibition in the 1950s that is still standing.

Buildings 25 Dome

And below we’re just getting back to the riverside to disembark. If you go to Porto you should definitely take a trip along the River Douro. We really enjoyed it although a young woman we spoke to in a shop said that there is an even better river trip, but it’s much longer and we wouldn’t have had time for that one. Maybe next time we’ll do that as Porto is a place we would definitely like to visit again.

aBuildings 20 yacht river bank

Porto in Portugal

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Back to the cruise and from Ferrol in Spain we sailed on to Porto in Portugal. For the first time we had to navigate a foreign transport system and were a bit daunted as of course neither of us spoke any Portuguese. But it couldn’t have been easier, the ticket machines were simple to operate and we couldn’t believe how cheap the tickets were. It was only 3.40 Euros for our two return tickets for a journey of around twelve miles or so. The tram was very clean too. I felt quite ashamed when I thought about how expensive public transport is in Britain.

metro 3

Porto is a very hilly city and when we reached our destination we had to walk down into the city centre, I was very impressed with the buildings but the first thing that took my fancy was the pavements. How grand they are – a type of marble I think or granite – but in lovely designs, they’re works of art.

paving

Porto railway station is also very grand, the photo below is of a tiled scene depicting the history of the city. There was a First World War exhibition on in the station hall with very interesting photos of Portuguese soldiers at the front. In my ignorance I hadn’t even realised they were involved in that war!

Buildings 3 Station 1

aBuildings 5 Station 3

Below is a photo of part of the station ceiling.

abuildings 7 Station ceiling

I think the building below might be the city hall.

Buildings 1

It’s a really vibrant city and we would definitely like to go back there for a holiday some time as you can’t do the place justice in the five hours or so that we had there. The people were very friendly and keen to try out their English!

Buildings 11

There was some sort of mini festival going on in this area in the photo below, those olive trees are actually growing on rooftops. The weight of it all must be incredible but there were people going in and out of the shops underneath.

roof top olive groves

After that we walked down to the river, and that will be my next post on Porto.