Porto

Breakfast at our hotel was sumptuous, unless you wanted a truckie’s breakfast. We had plenty of choice and the staff were very helpful.

As we were leaving, one of the hotel staff suggested that we go to the church museum just up from the hotel, and, not wanting to appear rude, we took her advice. As we have found in the past it is awesome to be in the presence of paintings, or statues etc from many hundreds of years ago, with NO security. While there I heard the organ in the church start up so I went in, hoping to hear something really nice. The organ was nice, the acoustics were fine, and ... the organist was a young boy practising. Oh well ...

When travelling, we try to avoid tolls and did the same today, until it became obvious that we were doing it the hard way. So we changed the GPS and headed in to Porto , ending up in the old part of town. We were really early, and I wanted to scope the place out first, but all we could see was a garage entrance in a one-way street with no parking. This made for a difficult time. Anyway, we drove around until I could park (illegally) and we texted the owners to open up the garage door. In five minutes or so we came up the street and the owner was there with the door open. Good, except that we had to stop our line of traffic. The we had to wait until the other lane was relatively clear so I could swing out and then turn left into the very narrow entrance. I think we probably upset about 100 drivers in all!

That aside, our apartment is just wonderful - so roomy and well presented. We asked if it would be possible to stay another day, which was okay, so we can now settle in a bit and not live out of our suitcases for a little while.

We went for a brief walk to see what the lie of the land was. Then we returned to our apartment to do some washing (very important when travelling for some time) and then went for a much longer walk, over one bridge and back on another. Back for a shower, then had a drink in a local cafe, did some shopping and returned for dinner. All in all, another good day.Read more