We made a mistake yesterday. The weather was very good when we arrived at the campsite and it was warm enough to open up the doors and windows of the van. Jane had also washed out some clothes, so we hung them in the bathroom and put on the electric heater to help them to dry – with the bathroom window open, this works very well. This meant that we had windows open after dusk, not advisable in Summer due to the mosquitoes but in January not a problem. Wrong!! We were plagued by mosquitoes during the night. We ended up putting the electric mosquito killer on but this takes time to take effect. I killed at least 9 mosquitoes, a number of which had obviously bitten. In the morning I woke up with 3 bites on my face and Jane discovered a number of bites during the day. Once again, I had the look of a prizefighter with a swollen eye and this would take three days before it went down.
Off then to Porto to visit the city and the Port lodges. There was a direct bus from just outside the campsite to the centre of Porto and we caught the 09:40. The bus was quite busy and quite exciting. Porto centre was probably about 15 minutes away by the direct route but, even given that we had to stop at all of the bus stops, 45 minutes was excessive. I had my suspicions when we turned away from Porto as soon as we started. I think that we saw almost every street in Madalena, and there are many of them. The bus driver was very skilled, we went round very tight bends with houses on both sides giving only a couple of inches clearance. This was done quite slowly but when we had plenty of space, i.e. at least 9 inches on either side (no pavements, so it was the house fronts that we were just missing), he was able to speed along at 30 miles per hour. I nearly closed my eyes at times and decided that a second career as a Portuguese bus driver was not an option. I have to say that if I had been driving the, much narrower, motorhome along these lanes, Jane would have been having a fit!
We arrived safe and sound in the centre of Porto and got off the bus near the railway station.
We walked up to the Torre dos Clerigos, which has a fantastic view over Porto and beyond. We were surprised to find it closed but, given the misty conditions, the view would probably not have been worth seeing. As we walked back down towards the station, Jane remarked that she had seen two clocks that showed the time as an hour earlier than we thought it was. One incorrect clock would have been understandable but two was suspicious. I suggested that the station clocks would certainly be correct. And that is how we gained an hour and were very impressed that we had woken up at 06:45 for the last two days and had got into Porto centre before 09:30. We decided that we would leave our clocks as they were – getting up early gave us the best of the daylight and, as the saying goes, early to bed and early to rise ......
We walked around the centre but, given that it was now raining considerably, we decided to take a guided tour around the Stock Exchange building. This proved to be very interesting and, as we were the only people on the tour, we were able to have a good chat with our guide. We learned that spoken Portuguese is very difficult to understand (we already had an inkling of this!) and, even though the Spanish can understand written Portuguese, they cannot understand it when it is spoken. This is because there are so many different sounds in the language, many more than in Spanish.
In the same building, there is a area devoted to Portuguese wine where they promote it by giving free tastings. This was very enjoyable and we had another long chat with our hostess, leaving with a free wine thermometer (of course we won't drink wine unless it is at precisely the correct temperature) and a clever little device called a 'drop stop' that you put in the bottle so that you can pour the wine without it dripping over the table or down the outside of the glass – a gift for someone who has everything!
On then to church of San Francisco next door (it was still raining), that had a fascinating burial area in the crypt with tombs and an osseria – thousands of bones stored ready for the day of judgement.
We stopped for lunch at a tiny restaurant called 'Adega S. Nicolau' in a side street on the way back to the bridge Ponte Dom Luis I. The food was of excellent quality and came in large quantity – I had to leave some of the very tasty beans and rice that came with my sardines. I can thoroughly recommend this restaurant and we will certainly find it again when we are next in Porto.
We wanted to visit two Port lodges that were not British owned but only managed to find one that was open – most of the smaller lodges and some of the larger ones were closed. The Vasconcellos tour was quite interesting but the tour at Graham's was far superior. The young man who greeted us spotted my Bath Rugby shirt and said that he had been in Bath a month ago and went to watch his first ever live rugby match – Bath v Parma, which Bath won by a large margin. He was a big rugby fan and was, justifiably proud of Portugal's performance in the Rugby World Cup. He told us that the team were going professional in preparation for the next World Cup after Portugal's largest beer company had given 1 million euros in sponsorship. Again being out of season, we had our own personalised tour and a very good tasting of six different ports between us. We came away from the two tours with two, probably overpriced, bottles of white port. We chose white port because it is difficult to get hold of in England and we both really like it. They are very different ports, we chose the dry Vasconcellos and the Graham's medium dry.
On the way to the bus stop we passed a local butcher's shop and I decided to buy a rabbit. I didn't however want it whole so I had to use sign language to ask for it to be jointed - “off with his head” was quite easy!
The bus journey back was less hair-raising due to a number of different factors – it was dark, the route was more straightforward and we had drunk quite a lot of port!
Photos: View from the cathedral of houses in the centre of Porto; The osseria of San Francisco church; The number 1 tram being prepared for the return journey; View of the north bank of the Douro with 'barcos rabelos' (originally used to transport the wine down the Duoro to Porto) moored in the foreground; Port maturing in oak barrels in the Graham's Port Lodge.
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