Petersontravels

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.

 

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…..