PEI to Portugal-Porto

The next day we stayed home and rested,if you can call a long walk with the doggies a rest.
On Sept.15 Steve and Nicola drove us to Porto for a brief stay.What a beautiful city and such fun to explore.With magnificent churches,castles,cobblestone streets,shops full of cork products,chocolate shops and of course port tastings,Porto has lots to offer.The waterfront is so interesting.Homes are tall and narrow,colourful and famous for laundry hanging out of windows.We climbed up 232 steps from the waterfront to the top of the Luis 1 bridge to cross over the river to the far side.The far side is very popular with visitors and locals as well as it too has shops,restaurants and scenic views .My dinner that evening was a famous Portuguese dish called Francesinha .This massive meal is made with ham,linquica,sausage,steak and cheese,covered with beer,tomato sauce and served with fries.Enormous!!! Thank goodness I then had to climb back up all those steps again and cross over the bridge.Otherwise I am quite sure I would have gained 5 pounds just from that meal-witch,by the way,I could not finish.We strolled home that night ,visiting all the shops that were open and buying"a little something"of course
The port tasting we did was delicious with 3 ports to taste with fruit,nuts and chocolate.My favourite was the white port.The service was so slow because the shop was so busy that the waiter gave us extra samples for free with the chocolate to boot.We were fairly snickerdoodled after that. Dinner was at a restaurant we had discovered earlier in the day and had actually sat with the owners for over 2 hours drinking wine and learning more about this city and country. We stayed at a hotel that was central and close to the Bento railway station.Talk about tiny rooms and beds. Glad I was not 6 FT.6"-I'd never fit the bed or room.
We left Porto from the Bento station-a must see for it's architecture and ancient tile designs.Taking the train back to Averio to meet up with our hosts was another adventure.Who knew that when you buy your train ticket it tells you what seat to take on the train-it was all in Portuguese. Thank goodness we had carry on bags.There were 3 ladies ahead of us with huge suitcases and it was no fun bumping through 5 rail cars going in the wrong direction while the train moved along to get to our designated seats.And that train moved at 210 km/hr..But we made it.Read more