Category: Portugal/Spain, Fall 2018

Our son Fletcher turned 22 on December 30th. For his birthday he wanted to see something “old”, as in Roman ruins. I had read up on Conimbriga, which has some of the most extensive Roman ruins in Portugal. It’s about an hour and a half drive south of Porto, so we hired our previous Daytrip driver, Leonardo, to take us. I need to make it clear, Leonardo is the best driver I have ever hired, and I’ve hired quite a few. If you are ever going to Porto, make sure you ask me for his contact info. Affordable and safe, and very endearing.

Conimbriga is “very expensive” to get into….I think it was 4 euros for adults, and 2.50 for students (Fletcher is indeed going back to school in January, so he qualifies). Ouch…what an outlay for this incredible piece of history!

This is a floor from a Roman home. This place has several floors that are quite similar, some of them quite interesing….stay tuned.

These mosaic floors were discovered in 1899 during preliminary excavations. This one is from a dining room in a house on the property (since relocated). It was built in the late 2nd or 3rd centuries.

Another floor of a house from the same time period, this time in the actual location of the house.

This one had a very distinctive pattern. Can you see it?

Maybe these shots of the floor will make it more obvious.

This was known as the House of the Swastika. Long before being used as a symbol by Hitler, it was a sign of divinity and spirtuality. I’m just glad some form of intolerance hasn’t forced them to cover this up here in Portugal. I can’t say the same if there was a similar historical site in America, but the Romans didn’t make it that far.

This area was called the House of the Fountains. It was discovered in 1939 and was built in the first half of the 2nd century. There are a lot of mosaic floors and well as water features. The original house that sat on this site was demolished for the building of a fortification called the Late-Empire wall….this seemed to be a trend. Most of the best preserved ruins were there because they were initially demolished for a fortification that was built right on top of them.

One of the mosaic floors.

It seemed like the bulk of the mosaics in this house were based on hunting, so this was obviously the redneck Roman house!

There were some areas where it was pretty obvious they had some recent extensive refurbishment.

I didn’t get a shot of it, but here is a Tripadvisor photo of the Forum the way it looks today.

Here is a shot from the museum that shows how it looked in Roman times.

This was a very good visit, and well worth going out of your way for. The history is amazing, and the restaurant on site actually serves some pretty good Portuguese food! Make this a must visit if you come to Portugal! It is right outside the city of Coimbra.

We spent our second day in Porto by taking a day trip to the Douro Valley. Ricardo was our guide for the day. The Douro is about 1.5 hours from Porto, so he talked about the history of the Douro region along the way.

The Douro river, which starts in Spain, runs through the valley which bears it’s name, eventually ending up in the Atlantic at Porto. The Romans were the first to start growing vineyards along the valley in the 1st Century. The church got involved via varioius monasteries making wine in the 12th and 13th centuries. England discovered Douro valley wines in the 17th Century, and became the main consumer of these wines, to the point that all of the wines exported to England were free from taxation.

The winemakers starting taking advantage of the English demand, and started mixing in crap wine to the point the English demand dropped precipitiously. A Portuguese guy named the Duke of Pombal stepped in and created the worlds first regulated wine region. With new rules (and subsequent quality) in place, the English demand picked back up, to the point that nearly all of the Port producers ended up being owned by the English, and why to this day they still have English names. Ok, enough history. The region is beautiful, even on a cold and somewhat foggy day.

Our trip included a boat ride on the Douro river, complete with snacks and Port (of course).

The city of Pinhao.

We visited two wineries. The first one was Quinta do Tedo, which happens to be owned by a French winery, Bouchard, located in Beaune, which we have visited in the past. Small wine world! I only took one photo from their property. The tour itself had at least 50 people, so it was way too crowded for us, particularly for any meaningful photos.

The second winery, Casa do Bucheiro, is a very small producer, and the owners barely speak any English, so Ricardo did most of the talking. They also served us a traditional Portuguese lunch, which means there had to be cod. Always with the cod!

They still crush all of their grapes by foot in this vat.

Our host discussing the aging of Ruby vs Tawny Ports

We had several of their wines with lunch, including a sparkling wine, and they were quite good. I noticed during the tour that they had quite a bit of 1996 vintage wine (dry red wine, not Port). Ricardo asked the owner if I could buy a bottle, and he said yes. When Ricardo told me the price was 12 euros (highway robbery!) I decided to buy two bottles. Ricardo then told the owner that it was my son’s birth year, so he had to throw in an extra bottle on him!

I only found out after getting in the van that the daughter of the owner was complaining to her father quite strongly, in Portuguese, that he should have charged me more. Glad I don’t speak Portuguese! Here is a shot of me with the owner and his daughter. She appears to have gotten over it.

One last shot of the valley. We will have to spend some more time here in the future.