It IS pretty amazing what 12 hours of sleep will do to impressions. WE LOVE Porto. What a cool city. Of course we DID go out and bought an umbrella. I think more out of self defence. Having never lived anywhere that umbrellas were used I have always had this fear of getting my eye poked out. Living in Oregon for 13 years, it DID rain a lot, but never straight down, and umbrellas did not last long there.

We spent yesterday getting our bearings……. and getting rain gear. I DID check the weather before we came and it looked like 2 weeks of clear weather, but we get here and not so. SOO the only rain gear I brought was a sack jacket that is basically plastic and for emergency rainfall only. Being in a “plastic jacket” is very uncomfortable in the extremely humid situation here….. heavy rains, but warm and humid.

We walked down to the historic area of Porto, with the plans of doing a walking tour today. IE “training” for the camino which we start tomorrow with 25 KM.

A few interesting things we found with our wanderings …

It seems that the way that buildings are “sided” here is with tiles, and many are extremely exquisite, both in colours and design. You can see from the picture above that the tiles are all different colours and shapes. They ALSO do not seem to last forever, and seems to likely take much upkeep. Being “master “tilers” ourselves we like that kind of thing

This is a table we just finished at home with tiles we bought in Mexico. There seems to be very intricate tiles for sale here…..for my next project 🤔. With that in mind… this trip we have splurged and had all our hotels booked for us and our luggage carried from place to place, so we only have to do the walk with a day pack (water, change of clothes etc). SOOO we can buy souvenirs as we go along, because someone else is carrying them 🙃

The other interesting thing we saw yesterday was a graveyard right next to our hotel. It was built/started….in the late 1800s and is known for the exquisite carvings, but what we found interesting is that it was like a large town of mini “houses”

Each of which is walls, roof and a space inside with area for coffins on each side.

Some had only one coffin within… and others we full, with additional family members denoted with placards lined up on the floor.

It struck me as odd that you could actually see the coffins, but then I rationalized thinking perhaps this is a better system in that a family spends a fortune on an expensive box to place a loved one, only for it to be buried within a few days, now THAT seems more odd…. if you think about it.

Not all of the graves were “houses” some were a bit more rudimentary. I was wondering about the plaques placed on the grave, (we also saw them in France), but I figured it out that these were likely family members who were cremated. I had not realized that cremation in a formal was was only started in the early 1900s, and to some it was an abhorrent thing to do with a loved one then. But we tend to take a long time to accept new concepts. I wonder if everyone were to be buried now ….if we would run out of ground space.

This is the “front door” of the little houses. I took this one for Gwen, who loves door pictures.

Oh and what would a day in the city be without a dog story. This was a meat store…..you can just imagine the story. THIS would not happen in Canada. We looked back later on to see him walking down the road with a bone in his mouth.

We DO miss our little Tucker.

Thanks for reading ….love Janet and Ken.

PS I DO want to say that I only included our negative experience as a way to warn others, not as a statement of Portugal, after all we have scammers back home who prey on those who are vulnerable. AND in a new country without knowing language we are vulnerable here. In Canada it seems that they prey on those who are not totally computer savvy. (a real vulnerability these days) I also wanted to say that everyone we have dealt with since has been totally wonderful, kind and helpful. I am sure dealing with tourists can be trying.