Porto

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