Category: Portugal/Spain, Fall 2018

We arrived back in Portugal on Dec 26, Porto to be exact. Our son Fletcher joined us later that evening. We took the local Metro out to the airport to meet him. This is his first time in Europe since he was about 8 years old. He flew Business Class so he was very spoiled on his way here.

We are staying in Gaia, across the river from Porto. This is where all of the Port wine storage warehouses are. We walked around that first evening and saw this really cool rabbit on a building that was made out of trash.

The next day we took a walking tour of the City with superhost Carlotta from Airbnb. These Airbnb experiences are excellent.

First we went into the Cathedral of Porto (free….I like free).

Then we walked down to the waterfront and saw what our guide referred to as the Lego Saint. Definitely looked like the ruler of Legoland.

Here is our guide talking about a fishermans house. The caged area in the upper right would have held some sort of religious icon back in the day that gave the fisherman good luck on his travels.

The original Porto was walled off to prevent invasion, and had 18 doors leading into the CIty. This is the last remaining doorway that leads from the once walled city to the docks.

A view of Porto across to Gaia, where we are staying. The Doruo River runs between both cities, and they are two distinct cities….the locals will make that clear.

This is the Clerigos Tower, which marks the center of the City. This will come up later in another post. You can pretty much see this tower from anywhere in the city.

We walked into another church after the tour….because it was raining….and because we were told this church normally charges to get in, but there was a service, so of course it’s free then! This was a pretty bizzare experience. A woman at the front was chanting what I assume was religious text, and all of these other older women (they were all old women in the church….no men) all chanted back in unison. It was freaky! Anyway, we were not supposed to take photos during a service, so here is a photo (rules? what rules?).

 

I don’t know about you, but that looks like a Trump wedding cake behind the altar!

More Porto to come…..

We drove from Santiago de Compostella to Vigo to drop off our car. As I have mentioned before, taking a car across country borders is a huge cost…..like 3 times the cost of dropping it off in the same country, so we dropped it in the nearest city in Spain and had a driver take us from Vigo to Porto. Along the way, we had a prearranged stop in Braga to see the Bom Jesus de Monte. The Bom Jesus de Monte? Is that a Chinese dessert with a baby Jesus inside? No. It’s a church with a very cool set of steps.

Here is the church itself.

Here is the view from the top….specifically from the restaurant where we had lunch. The smog is due to all of the local farmers burning their “organic” material from their farms. This has been fairly common in Spain, but not so much in Portugal.

Here is a shot of the church from further down the steps.

This is from the bottom of the steps that look straight up towards the church. There are more steps but they curve off away from the church view. You know it’s Portugal from the inlaid white and black pattern in the rocks. This type of pattern is everywhere in Portugal.

Off to the side of the path down the steps are these little church scenes. I don’t know for sure, but I think the Roman dude and the guy with the weird crowbar on his right went straight to hell when they died. Not sure who they are messing with, but the lady with the Admiral Stars in her halo is not happy!

After Braga we were off to Porto, where our son Fletcher will be joining us for the last two weeks of our trip.