Petersontravels

Our time in Porto didn’t really play out into individual days outiside of the first day, the Douro valley and Conimbriga. Part of the problem is Chris and Kim both got quite sick, Chris in particular, so we spent quite a bit of time in our room one day. With that being said, we still saw some cool and crazy stuff (or as Leonardo, our incredible driver liked to say, “Craze”….that is our new saying for anything crazy). I apologize in advance for the lengthy post.

First up is this line to get into the bookstore where J.K. Rowling supposedly wrote the first Harry Potter book. This store charges 8 euros just to walk in the door, and the line goes WAY down the street. WTF? I don’t get it at all. No, we did NOT go in. Holy crap are people stupid!

Maybe 25 meters away is this great view of my two favorite people in front of the Clerigos Tower, which we are about to climb. This tower marks the center of Porto.

The view from the top. This was not easy to climb up…the stairs are VERY narrow and most non-American (yes, I’m being biased) tourists have no concept of how two bodies fit past each other. I literally got stuck at one point and had to elbow a fat woman to get her to move! WTF? I think she was German. I don’t hate German’s, I just got that impression….”my fatness matters” or some such shit.

Remember that shot of Kim and Fletcher a little ways back? This is looking down on that park.

A final shot of the Tower before walking down the hill.

We then went to the Church of St. Francis, because we heard how much gold was covering the church. We were not disappointed. All of that money could have been spent on so many worthy causes….versus making wood shiny…..but that’s just me.

More shiny wood that could literally pay for a thousand homes for the poor.

This was a shot through the floor of the crypt area. Seemed odd to me that they just threw in all the bones so haphazardly

Sunset from the bridge crossing the Douro River. This is facing Gaia, on the opposite side from Porto.

Another sunset shot from our room in Gaia. We were pretty shocked at how crowded the entire Porto/Gaia area was for late December.

We went to the Yeatman, a luxury hotel with a 2 Michelin Star restaurant, for Fletcher’s birthday dinner. I saw this scuplture inside the hotel and had to get a photo.

The birthday boy!

We toured one port house in Gaia, Calem. I wanted to tour more, but with being sick and all of the houses being closed on New Year’s Day, we only fit one in. A very generic tour but still educational, and the tour guide had a good sense of humor. Followed up by a tasting of three types of Port.

Our New Year’s Eve dinner. Most of the restaurants on NYE need to be pre-booked well in advance and they almost all charge a fortune. This was the highest rated sushi place in Porto (Gion) and they were relatively inexpensive on this night, and obviously provided enough food for the 3 of us! This is just the main course. No, this is not what made us sick. We think it was the “shelf stable” milk we put in our coffee. There is something inherently wrong with milk that doesn’t require refrigeration.

New Years Eve fireworks! Pretty good show all up and down the Douro river, but this was the main show in central Porto.

We saw this car on New Years Day. Bet he was on his phone when this happened! You can see him on the phone now….”hello, Geico?….do you cover stupidity?” Not a good start to 2019!

One last shot looking down on Porto from the top of the Dom Luis Bridge.

Off to Barcelona first thing in the morning.

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.