Porto

day 2 porto and day one hiking camino

~ mymostrecentobsession ~ 2 Comments

WELL…. to begin with, Porto must be the most beautiful city in the world. Now that could have been the sunny day, or it could have been the lovely wine at lunch speaking but what a place.

We spent our last day in Porto hiking down to the historic area and over the bridge to Gai….sp. Which is the city across the river from Porto, the place where all of the Port “lodges” are. We were going to tour one of the “lodges” but decided rather to take in the amazing Duoro river sides.

This is the bridge that crosses over and as you can see it has 2 levels you can cross on, the higher one (that the metro crosses, and walkers) and a lower one that cars cross as well as walkers.

As you can see Porto has been built on a rather steep setting, it is just about a KM to the open ocean, so a tidal part of the river Duoro. We had a wonderful lunch across from Porto (so we could get the great pictures) and the man serving us was amazing, he could apparently speak whatever language the customers did and he could also apparently read their minds. He quickly moved us to an area where smoking was not allowed, I said how did you know we did not smoke, he said he could tell. OH and apparently this macdonalds is the most beautiful one in the world.

We have discovered that moreso than Port, Portuguese wines are amazing,…. and cheap. Both whites and reds.

So we went to a wine bar our last night in Porto and met a large group of Americans who had moved over to Porto in the past 3 years. 2 of them were US military and had just decided they could no longer live in the US, because they could not stand the politics, with regards to US foreign policy. They LOVE it here and would never go back. The wife of one the men, had cancer and in the US they had not been able to receive a diagnosis, yet coming here she receives the best possible care, and treatments.

We found the 3 different depictions of women interesting.

Well yesterday we started the camino with the thoughts that we had 25 KM to walk. Since we had walked so much the day before and actually hiked the first several KM of the trail on our way back to hotel, we decided to take an UBER to near the spot we walked to, FOZ. Good thing we did, since (despite cheating in the morning with the UBER) we ended up walking 33 KM on our first day. LOTS of Voltarin cream last night.

Our first camino shell sign of our trip. ( you follow these to know “the way”

Since we are traveling the Portugal coastal camino, it was no surprise that we walked along beaches most of the day. There were heavy rainfall warnings and even some severe rainfall warnings(whenever you go to get directions on Apple Maps they give you the weather warnings. Most of the “trail” is a board walk that stretches for miles, it appears to protect the landscape from erosion and provide a great platform to walk on.

The boards are not slippery as they have many small grooves in them, that I guess allows the water to pour out. While we were not on the boardwalk we were on tiny streets through towns.

There were an assortment of things like this scattered all the way along, I am sure on a dryer day it would have been a great place for picnic. They also have exercise stations with very odd “equipment”, so you can get in shape while you hike the camino 🤨. The boardwalk is not just used by hikers, also people in towns around walking, LOTS of runners, we even had a guy bouncing a basketball following us for ages…

We are currently staying at Hotel Costa Verde, in the town of Pavia de Varzim. The company that did the booking for us listed the Hotel as Costa Verde, rather the Hotel Costa Verde, so we hiked to Costa Verde, which was a LONG ways OFF the path, only to find that there was NO hotel there. From there we had to walk BACK to Hotel Costa Verde, which is basically how we ended up walking so far yesterday. We have also determined that the distances between places on the map are just “rough estimates”, and since we are staying to the north of Pavia de Varzim, that is another reason for the long distance yesterday . The good part of these “estimates” is that today is MUCH shorter, only 20m KM, so I guess the price we paid yesterday we reap today.

What would a blog be without a dog story. THIS is from a restaurant we stopped at yesterday, this little guy was on a LONG leash and doing exactly what Tucker does when he wants something. I guess dogs are pretty international beings. What tucker does when I do not seem to GET what he wants is to push down with his head on my lap (just to make sure I am paying attention.). We miss the guy, but have good reports that he is doing well at Dylan and Sarah’s, and instead of usually following me around like a puppy dog, he is following Sarah.

Thanks for reading, much love, Janet and Ken in Portugal

Porto: narrow sidewalks, wide umbrellas and PORT

~ mymostrecentobsession ~ 1 Comment

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.