On to Porto with a bottle of Porto

To start off, we felt very proud of ourselves. We figured out how to pay the parking ticket by deciphering the Português instructions on the ticket without use of a translator or dictionary!!!! On our way to Porto, we had to drive through the town where we got the ticket anyways. There are machines on the street where you quickly pay your fine ($3) and we were able to do it. Actually a kind Portuguese firefighter wanted to help too, so he did. He told us it was his first time using the machine too so we all learned something.

Porto is not that far away using the toll road (2 hours) so we opted to use that road because of the rain. We have been lucky to have had only a handful of rainy days and a driving day in the rain with no cars on a well-maintained highway works for us.

We passed the town of Vila Real where the Mateus Palace is located. If you remember the Mateus bottles with candle drippings on it, we know how old you are!

We have had the car for a month and decided that we would return it a little earlier as we didn’t feel that we needed it in Porto, and onward. The area from Porto to Lisbon is very touristy so there is a good transportation system here. We drove to the Porto airport where things went smoothly. We still wonder how much we paid in tolls (we had a monitor). We avoided the toll roads in most situation and took the much nicer scenic roads. They were all in good condition and usually the dries were only a little longer and much more interesting.

The moment we arrived in Porto, the sun came out and it was a beautiful warm day.

We were excited about actually getting to Porto. Most people rave about it and we were meeting our friend Vaughan, from Toronto, there. We rented an apartment in the historic area of Porto very close to the Sao Bento train station, the Se Cathedral and the big bridge that goes over the Douro River. We couldn’t have asked for a better location. We can walk everywhere.

Remember that we have only been in small villages for the past month. Now we are in the big city and tourists. A brave new world.Read more