Porto and the Douro River

Our first trip abroad together this year was a joined-up effort with Donald and Julie and Rose and Steve, we'd decided between us to go on a river cruise and settled on the Douro River in Portugal in late Spring.

We wended our various ways to Porto airport before our transfer to our home for the next week, a purpose built river boat docked on the Douro River in Gaia, looking across to Porto:

The cruise included a lot of off-ship activities, centred around food and drink and exploration of the Douro Valley (often these are food and drink related too).  We'd done plenty of 'exploring' of Douro Valley wines before the trip and were looking forward to this.

The first one we all did together was to visit the Mateus Palace, we decided to explore the grounds, our fellow travellers the Palace first, we snapped them emerging into the garden:

The gardens are mostly formal in style, lots of Roses for example:

From Mateus it was on to the Sandeman tourist tour, visiting the central processing facility with accompanying tasting and shop:

I think everyone enjoyed the tasting:

The next morning i was up bright and early and spent an hour alone on the bow as we gently motored up the river, enjoying the still, warm Portuguese morning:

Another stop on the journey was a visit to Castle Rodrigo, a dusty old town nestled around the ruins of a castle.   It is slowly regenerating funded by investment from the EU and the increasing tourist trade, but still has a very 'oldy worldy' feel to it:

One of the neighbourhood cats was keeping a close eye on us:

Towards the end of the outward journey we moored for an early start to Salamanca, my personal highlight of the trip.   We broke off from the scheduled tour and explored for ourselves, starting with the cathedral, this a view to the ornate and opulent ceiling in the centre:

We headed out of the old city, across the river, finding this strange monument to the Scouting movement in Salamanca:

Before crossing the nearly intact Roman bridge across the River:

We then joined-up with the balance of the city tour getting a really good insight into the politics and history of the city.

That night back on board we all enjoyed a port tasting including 10, 20, 30 and 40 year-old Tawny Port wines together with a Ruby.   The jury was split with some preferring the 40 and others the 30:

The next morning it was time to head back, taking in the scenery along the way:

A further stop was made at Lamego, where we were driven up to the Shrine to then walk down into the town:

We walked off the main path through the adjacent woodland listening to the bells from the Church and the song from the birds:

Back in Porto we decided to finally have a morning which didn't involve an early start and to head over in our own time to explore the city, crossing the river and looking out toward the coast:

We stumbled across an exhibition of part of the Terracotta army, unexpectedly, which we really enjoyed:

We met-up with everyone early afternoon having dined in one of the many vegan and vegetarian restaurants in Porto before joining the city and port tasting tour that Helen had booked.   As well as a very detailed history we enjoyed walking through some of the back streets, literally just behind the main tourist thoroughfares:

A final dinner and then sunset drew the trip to a close:

We had a lot of fun on the trip, learned a lot about port wine, mostly by drinking it has to be said, and many of the other local and regional wines and foods too.   It was our fist time in Portugal, first proper cruise, first such trip with friends too, so lots of new experiences.  Now back to reality until the next trip...