Porto, Portugal May 2nd

Our ship arrived in Porto, Portugal early this morning. On our way into the port was the very old lighthouse to mark the entry to the port.
We had already visited Porto on an earlier trip, so we decided to take and excursion to Coimbra and Aveiro. It was about an hour bus ride to Aviero, which they call 'Venice of Portugal' which is a canal with painted boats and drivers like in Venice Italy. We stopped at a local pastry shop for more of the local specialty pastries.
Our next stop was the city of Coimbra with is famous for its Portuguese university. We had lunch there of salad, tomatoes and cheese, cod and potato casserole and desert of fresh fruit. They also had a really impressive live performance of Fado music. Fado is traditional Portuguese songs that began in the early 1800's and speak of life, struggle and passion.
The views of the hillsides were a nice different view of the old town Porto that we had visited before. Along the way we saw electrical towers with Stork nests in them. The area we drove through had many storks and while flamingos native to this part of Portugal. The countryside was dotted with fields of grape vines for their port wine and 'Green Wine' which is a sparkling white wine made just in Portugal. There were also cork trees that last many, many years since they harvest the cork bark every 10 years and it does not kill the tree. The cork grows back to be harvested again. It rained, then was sunny, then rained again due to this part of Portugal having many micro-climates.
Then back to the ship for our sail back to Spain tomorrow...Read more