Sailing to Pinhao

We set sail from Porto early in the morning and Kev and I managed to get up on the sundeck with our coffees to watch Porto go by. The Douro river valley is truly beautiful. The landscape changes as you sail inland and as you watch the steep vineyard terraces start to appear. There are small villages with homes built right into the steep hills and you marvel at the tenacity of the people who chose to build there.
As we sailed to our first stop of Regua we passed through locks along the river, including the deepest lock on the river - Carrapatelo. The locks on the Rideau Canal are nothing compared to these locks – they’re huge!
We arrived in Regua and disembarked for our afternoon excursion to the Mateus Palace and the Sandeman Winery. We returned to our ship where it had docked in Pinhao.
There’s truly no way to describe the roads in Portugal – small, winding and just a little bit on the nerve wracking side. Our bus drivers are some of the most impressively skilled people I’ve ever seen. How they manage to get those big tour buses down those steep hills and through the narrow winding streets of those Portuguese villages is truly beyond me – very impressive!!
No Bordalo’s in Pinhao but Kev and I did manage to find a geocache and got to explore some of the little village.Read more