The train from Lisbon to Porto was a pleasant 2 1/2 hour ride. However, upon arriving we were faced with 2 1/2 days of rain. Our hotel, a beautiful old 18th century baroque palace with a separate building added for rooms, is very ornate but elegant. It sits overlooking the river and the Feixer harbor. Our room has a lovely view of the Douro River. The hotel has 20+ foot ceilings with very elaborate designs. Two foot thick granite walls are throughout the “palace”.
We walked the 2.5 miles to the center of Porto in spite of the drizzle. The path follows the river with it’s tourist boats plodding up and down the Douro River. Most of Porto is on a hill directly above the river so the walk up the hill is either on endless steps or on curvy roads that meander up the hill. We enjoyed the walk but the rain forced us into a taxi for the ride back.
On Sunday, we tried to wait the rain out as it poured in the morning. We loaded our backpack with all of our rain gear, including rain pants, and headed off. Our walk to town was not too wet with only light showers. In anticipation of our rail trip on Monday, we found the Sao Bento rail station which has extensive blue Portuguese tiles depicting important historical events in the main lobby. They were very impressive. Thunder, lightening and heavy rain kept us in the train lobby longer than we wanted; and, the periods of rain varied throughout the day. Porto is the home of Port wine and we headed to the Taylor Winery. Lesley’s father used to give her Taylor port & ginger ale at age 8 as he bounced her on his legs. She must have been something to require that elixir at that age!! The Taylor Winery is one of a dozen+ port tasting rooms along the river bank. We missed the tour in English but we may try to pick it up on Tuesday.
Porto is a lovely town of 250k people – the 2nd largest city in Portugal. The town with many narrow winding streets is filled with brightly colored buildings, restaurants & small shops. The riverfront is hopping with restaurants, tour boats, winery cruises and larger river cruise ships. Most of the tourists in our hotel are English speaking, many from the UK. There were many more English speaking tourists than we saw in Lisbon; most likely due to the close proximity of England to Porto. We also have found that there are many more English speaking locals than in Lisbon. It is probably because of the UK visitors and the importance of tourism.
