{"id":1876,"date":"2016-04-03T15:13:19","date_gmt":"2016-04-03T21:13:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dltwt.com\/?p=1876"},"modified":"2016-04-03T15:16:36","modified_gmt":"2016-04-03T21:16:36","slug":"porto-in-the-rain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/?p=1876","title":{"rendered":"Porto in the rain"},"content":{"rendered":"
The train from Lisbon to Porto was a pleasant 2 1\/2 hour ride. \u00a0However, upon arriving we were faced with 2 1\/2 days of rain. \u00a0Our hotel, a beautiful old 18th century baroque palace with a separate building added for rooms, is very ornate but elegant. \u00a0It sits overlooking the river and the Feixer harbor. \u00a0Our room has a lovely view of the Douro River. \u00a0The hotel has 20+ foot ceilings with very elaborate designs. \u00a0Two foot thick granite walls are throughout the “palace”.<\/div>\n
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We walked the 2.5 miles to the center of Porto in spite of the drizzle. \u00a0The path follows the river with it’s tourist boats plodding up and down the Douro River. \u00a0Most 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. \u00a0We enjoyed the walk but the rain forced us into a taxi for the ride back.<\/div>\n
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On Sunday, we tried to wait the rain out as it poured in the morning. \u00a0We loaded our backpack with all of our rain gear, including rain pants, and headed off. \u00a0Our walk to town was not too wet with only light showers. \u00a0In anticipation of our rail trip on Monday, we found the Sao Bento rail station which has extensive blue\u00a0Portuguese\u00a0tiles depicting important historical events in the main lobby. \u00a0They were very impressive. \u00a0Thunder, lightening and heavy rain kept us in the train lobby longer than we wanted; and, the periods of rain varied throughout the day. \u00a0Porto is the home of Port wine and we headed to the Taylor Winery. \u00a0Lesley’s father used to give her Taylor port & ginger ale at age 8 as he bounced her on his legs. \u00a0She must have been something to require that\u00a0elixir\u00a0at that age!! \u00a0The Taylor Winery is one of a dozen+ port tasting rooms along the river bank. \u00a0We missed the tour in\u00a0English\u00a0but we may try to pick it up on Tuesday.<\/div>\n
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Porto is a lovely town of 250k people – the 2nd largest city in Portugal. \u00a0The town with many narrow winding streets is filled with brightly colored buildings, restaurants & small shops. \u00a0The riverfront is hopping with restaurants, tour boats, winery cruises and larger river cruise ships. \u00a0Most of the tourists in our hotel are English speaking, many from the UK. \u00a0There were many more\u00a0English\u00a0speaking tourists than we saw in Lisbon; most likely due to the close proximity of England to Porto. \u00a0We also have found that there are many more English speaking locals than in Lisbon. \u00a0It is probably because of the UK visitors and the importance of tourism.<\/div>\n
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\"The<\/a>
The “Palace” from our room<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"A<\/a>
A climb up the hill in Porto<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Porto\"<\/a>
Porto<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Tiles<\/a>
Tiles are common<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Tiles<\/a>
Tiles within Sao Bento Rail Station<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Sao<\/a>
Sao Bento Rail Station<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"OLYMPUS<\/a>
Riverfront<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\"OLYMPUS<\/a><\/p>\n

\"All<\/a>
All of the vineyards have river boats<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The train from Lisbon to Porto was a pleasant 2 1\/2 hour ride. \u00a0However, upon arriving we were faced with 2 1\/2 days of rain. \u00a0Our hotel, a beautiful old 18th century baroque palace with a separate building added for rooms, is very ornate but elegant. \u00a0It sits overlooking the river and the Feixer harbor. … Continue reading Porto in the rain<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Si9J-ug","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1876"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1876\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1890,"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1876\/revisions\/1890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dltwt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}