It’s Saturday morning and we are about to head out for another day of sightseeing here in Porto. Yesterday was a great day and in spite of trying not to cover too much ground, we ended up walking for hours, up hills both ways. When we got back to the hotel we were pretty pooped.
Anyway, I won’t bore you with endless pictures of yet another church or castle. And yes, there are plenty of them to marvel at here. So, instead, as Monty Python once said, “and now for something completely different”.
How about someone leaping from a bridge? Yes, that qualifies as “different”.
Yesterday, while we were doing our usual up and down and up again, as we walked around the city and took time to tour yet another port wine house, we happened upon a young woman perched on the outside rail of a bridge, high above the water, clearly ready to jump. Yes, jump…
Now, that’s not something that you see every day… The normal reaction when you see someone about to jump off of a bridge is to say, well, “Don’t Jump, it can’t be that bad”. No wait, she has a huge smile on her face and so do her two friends, who were standing there with her, sopping wet from their own jumps. No, no despair here. 
My first reaction was “what? is she nuts?” then “No wait, don’t jump… Not yet anyway… Let me get into position to take pictures!” 
Perhaps she was thinking “Facebook post” when she saw me standing below ready to document her jump. Of she went, with a yell.
And down…
And she hit the water. Splat! That must have hurt.
After taking a few moments to recover, she swam to shore, climbed out on the slippery rocks and casually asked “can you send me the photos?”.
“Sure”, I said and gave her our boat card thinking that it would somehow be obscene for me, a guy in his “upper mid 50s”, to ask a young women for her e-mail.
Inbox…”Hi Bob! We were the girls who jumped off the bridge today into the river and were wondering if you could send us pictures/videos. Thanks!!”
So, yes, we did have a great wine tour but isn’t this just so much more interesting?
And yes, lunch was great and so much better, for us at least, than leaping from a bridge in November.
And that’s my report.
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