Back to Porto

This morning we were docked just upstream from the last of the downstream locks.  We were taken off to Porto in a bus while the ship was going to catch us up later.  We had a short walking tour of the area around the Cathedral to begin with.

For those of you who have heard of the Camino de santiago pilgrimage route, the Camino Portugues, or Portuguese route,  is the second most popular route after the Camino Frances.  Pilgrims can choose from multiple different  starting points, including this one outside Porto cathedral. 

The route is marked by these symbols,  which represent a scallop shell, and many of the pilgrims wear a shell like this on their backpacks.

Then we went to see the railway station.  Most sightseeing tours probably wouldn't take you to a railway station,  but in this case it was worthwhile.  Porto has what must be one of the most beautiful railway stations in the world, decorated with these painted tiles.

We had a choice of taking the bus back to the ship (which had now caught us up and was docked down on the opposite side of the river), or to walk back. We decided to walk back to the ship by ourselves. Porto is built on a hill and has 6 bridges crossing the river.  The particular bridge we had to walk over had 2 levels.  But if you went across the top route, you had to take a cable car on the other side of the bridge to get back to river level.

Deb and I  chose the lower level, so we had to go down hundreds of steps towards the river before going across. Becky and Dave  went across the top and took the cable car ride down. 

In the afternoon,  the excursion was yet another port tasting. We were getting a bit tired of port tasting by now, so only Deb went.  Becky,  Dave and I took one the old style rabelo boats that used to bring the port barrels down river from the vineyards into Porto and had a cruise up and down under the 6 bridges.  All the port companies own one of these Rabelo boats and they have a regatta once a year.

This bridge was built by the famous  engineer Gustave Eifel.  If it looks similar to the photo of the 2 level bridge I mentioned earlier,  that's because that earlier one was designed by one of Eifel's proteges.  Apparently,  Eifel wanted to build a tower in Porto as well,  but the mayor said they didn't need one, so he went off to build it in Paris instead. 

Becky and I had been finding the dinners onboard were served too late in the day, so we decided to eat onshore at tea time.  We found a  lovely local restaurant,  which served  top notch mohitos. Becky tried the local specialty cod dish called bacalhau and I had sea bass.