Oporto

After a quick flight across a very arid Spain interior, we arrived in Porto and took the metro into town. It is very clean and new, and at 2.30E very cheap. Porto is fascinating. The home of the port industry, on the Douro River. The wine, made from grapes grown up the river, used to be shipped down the river, to be finished off and bottled here and then exported. Now it comes down in stainless steel tankers. Safer, but less romantic than the old boats moored on the river. Our hotel Hotel Pestana Porto http://www.pestana.com is on the riverside in the historic centre of the town (in the photo it is in the centre, to the left of the yellow building). It’s a great spot to watch all the action.

There are many port houses on the opposite bank. All the famous names like Sandemans and Cockburn, and lots I’d not heard of. We did a cellar visit and tasting at Sandemans. The tasting involved five different ports, a white, a ruby a single vineyard, then two tawny ports, the second 20 years old. It was quite pale in colour compared with the others, and absolutely delicious. Certainly an interesting experience and great background research for the start of our week’s walking amongst the grapes of the Douro Valley!!!! They say the harvest may still be on in places so maybe we’ll get to see it in action? There’s a train strike here so we won’t be catching the train up to the start of the walk, it will be a bus.

A Morning in the Old City

No after-effects from Ann’s research on the five port styles, but we are now encumbered with a bottle of Sandeman’s Imperial Reserve Porto, which was going to be part of a picnic dinner. It became apparent that it would be a bridge too far, so the luggage weight goes up. Talking of picnic dinners, there’s a narrow little shop near the hotel, and, wedging our way down the narrow aisle, we found some delicious local quieja (cheese) which tasted very good with fresh fruit and the ubiquitous jamon.

We had a lovely morning ambling around the place, across Ponte Luis 1, (very high and carries foot traffic and the metro train), bumped into more students doing initiation week stuff, more Catedrals, narrow streets.  

The historic Sao Bento railway station, typifies much of the architecture of the area, with beautiful blue and white tile images of moments in history. Lots of derelict old buildings, both houses and factories. The place needs a few billion Euros to refurbish some of the old infrastructure, but I guess that now is unlikely to happen in the next 20 years or so.

The funicular up the hill from Customs wharf was a smart bit of gear. The climb is very steep so, in the cabin there is a hydraulic system which  keeps the floor level. If you look hard in the photo you’ll see the funicular on a journey up the hill in the photo taken from the bridge, and see what I mean.