We've made our way down to Porto, Portugal. What a gorgeous city! We took a tour of it on day 1 here. And while it is easy to see that some of the buildings need some significant repairs (apparently Lisbon gets all the money, according to the locals), it is still beautiful. The town is made up of lots of hills (some feel very steep when you have to walk up them) so the buildings are tiered. Therefore, many buildings have an amazing view of the river Douro running through the city. The river leads out to the ocean where we are staying - the campground is across the street from the beach. There is a nice walkway that runs down the beach and goes into Porto on the other side. We followed the beach-front road yesterday and the road and walkway both go on for at least a 30 minute drive. So, our tour gave us an overview of the town so we'd get the basics. We did a $1 tour (they count on tips, clearly) - it was good for an overview, despite the large number of attendees (maybe 25?). Afterwards, we did a port wine tasting. That was more fun - port wine is fully different than regular wine as it is "fortified" with "spirits". The "spirits" are brandy essentially - wine turned into a strong liquor and then put back into wine to make port. I hadn't realized that port also comes in a white version. Most everyone in our tasting (there were only 6 of us) preferred the tawny port (a red version that lasts longer once open) of the 5 types we tasted. Our sommelier also played us 2 local guitar songs. A style called Fado is very popular for music here. If you haven't heard this, it is worthwhile to find a link on UTube. Our sommelier was amazing and made it even more fun. I took so many pics of Porto that I don't even know which ones to upload. And speaking of pics, if you haven't noticed there are different pages for different topics. Be sure to check out the More Pics page if you want to see more.
One of the items on my bucket list was to do a sunset cruise of the Douro River (I really want to do a river cruise, but it seems silly to pay a bunch of money to do this when we have a great RV to stay in and while a river cruise would bring on too many logistical challenges today - maybe someday... )But as a second choice option, we did a river sunset cruise. This was awesome! We were on a small sailboat that held approx. 10-12 people. It had a crew of 2 people. We ended up sitting next to 2 lovely ladies from Ohio who were in Portugal for a wedding. We enjoyed chatting with them during the cruise. And, Porto by sunset on the water is totally worth the cost of a cruise - this is my favorite activity that we've done so far. Trying new cocktails while watching the sun set over the water was exactly the retirement I was looking for. It probably explains why we own a boat??? 😀
We've found ourselves on a bit of a scavenger hunt lately. I mentioned before that our great friends Maggie and Alex bought us a bon voyage and birthday gift (Marc's 60th is coming up soon) of all the kitchen stuff we'd need. They specifically sought out light-weight dishes for RVs as our weight challenge is real. Anyway, we have coffee cups and fancy plastic cups both for drinking out of. But, I decided that wine in a coffee cup or even a very fancy plastic cup doesn't have the same feeling. So I decided I needed a proper wine glass. But I wanted it to be something special - not just some plain IKEA wine glass. By the way, I suspect Alex knew I'd want a souvenir from our travels. So, we'd been keeping an eye out for something cool - maybe a hand-blown glass or something with a cool story. But, as soon as you look for hand-blown glasses, they can't be found. We did see a gorgeous set in a market in Santiago, but it was a set of 6 and we don't have room for 6 glasses - we only want 2. So, we didn't get them. But, since then, I was mad at myself that we didn't get them so I've been searching hard. This has turned into a ridiculous scavenger hunt. I decided that if we found an antique store, they'd have something cool (as finding cool markets is impossible when you want one) - every market here has food rather than handmade crafts - such an opportunity for someone). So, I've been dragging Marc to all the antique stores in Porto (based on what I can find in Apple Maps or TripAdvisor listed as an antique store). But, it turns out that being open during "normal" business hours in Porto isn't a thing. Small shops seem to just open whenever they feel like which is seldom. These small stores don't have a website ever and few have pics on Google or TripAdvisor (but bless all the people who do upload pics of stores so us dumb tourists don't race around for no reason. And, remind me to come back to the Marketing skills of Spanish and Portuguese stores and campgrounds). So, Marcus has been following me around to what feels like hundreds of "antique" stores (probably only about 10 -12 but did I mention the steep hills here??). I've now learned that many antique stores here specialize in Christmas decorations, but bad ones. I'd have stocked up on Christmas stuff if it was cool, handmade or seemed even remotely special. We've seen gorgeous old furniture, thousands of old coins, but very few wine glasses. You'd think the city that invented Port Wine would at least have port wine glasses, but also not. Such a missing sales opportunity - tourists would eat that up (or at least 2 of us would). So, after hundreds of miles of searching, we finally found a set of 2 that worked for us. Our biggest challenge after finding decent stores has been that Europeans like everything a bit smaller. I was looking for a Texas-sized wine glass and found tiny little glasses that I'd have to refill 10 times an evening. But our finally-found treasure are close to perfect - still a bit smaller than desired but came from a sweet old Portuguese lady. She was exactly what you'd expect a Portuguese a grandma should look like - a dark gray cotton dress with a white sweater, gray hair pulled back in a loose bun, a big smile and didn't speak a word of English, but her smile made you sure her grandkids were loved. Luckily her husband spoke decent English enough for us to buy the glasses. So, with that out of the way, our wine drinking has increased (how is that possible??) and now we can think about gifts for others as our kids seem interested in getting a gift out of this trip. I guess it's time to go shopping again....
(Yes the glasses are empty so you can see how pretty they are - don’t worry - we will fill them many times)
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