It’s Thursday morning here in Casal de Loivos and it’s overcast.  We are being lazy and can’t quite decide what to do with the day.  Along with being cloudy, it’s also a bit chilly.  When we were originally planning our trip to Portugal we had considered heading north immediately after arriving and then working our way back south with the hope of staying ahead of the cool weather as we headed into November, the second half of our trip.

Alas, we were lulled into taking our time heading north as it was so warm, too hot actually, for the first few weeks of our trip.  I don’t want to make it sound like it’s frosty, as it’s not.  It’s just a bit cooler than we would prefer.

Having said that, yesterday, when the sun was blazing and warm, we went for a wonderful walk up in the mountains, near the inn where we are staying.

The view from the hotel is fabulous and got even better as we walked around and between the many vineyards that are carved out of the hillside.  “Carved” is the operative word here as the hillside is so steep that there is no way you could farm it without all of the soil washing away.  So, over the hundreds of years that this area has had vineyards, the hillsides have been totally transformed into a series of steps supported by perfectly constructed rock walls climbing up the sides of the mountains.

The visual textures are a feast for the eyes.  The “walls” built alongside of each row are about 8-10′ tall.   To put this sort of labor into a farm certainly suggests a view to the long term. As we walked along the road curving around the mountaintop, we enjoyed seeing the changing colors on the grapevines.   In the next few weeks every vine will be trimmed by hand to prepare the vines for next spring.The soil is impossibly rocky with what seems like more rock than dirt.  Interestingly, the posts that support the vines on strung wires are made of rock themselves.   That makes sense as these vines are expected to produce fruit for many years, far longer than wooden posts could be expected to last. The views along the way were really spectacular.   This spot, in particular, seemed like a great place to sit for a picnic.  Perhaps today if it warms up.  Cheese, bread and wine?  Yes, sounds good to me. We only saw one other person during the few hours that we walked around the roads, enjoying the view.   What an amazing place and we had it all to ourselves.
Even the littlest details caught our eye, like these pretty little plants sticking out of the side of a wall. There were olive trees everywhere, laden down with fruit.  The lemon and lime trees were particularly inviting.  Just outside of the village was a little chapel.  It seems that everywhere you turn there are churches and even little shrines built into the sides of roads and always with candles burning and flowers place in offering. 
The cemeteries are very scenic and always within walls.   After lunch we headed out in the car for a bit of exploring.  Along the way we came upon a huge lock in the river to allow boats and ships to pass.  The Douro river was once a wild river with rapids all along the way for the few hundred miles to Porto.  Now, with 4 massive locks to control water flow, larger vessels can go up and down the river at will.  Cruise ships are specially built to fit in the impossibly narrow locks.  This shot was vertigo inducing for me to photograph.  

Note the car parked on top of the lock.  That gives a pretty good sense of scale. Interestingly, the lock itself is over 100′ deep and when open in the lower position, as it is in this shot, the ships pass under the raised door.  The lock is so deep that control lines used to hold the boat in place move up and down with the water level to allow the line handlers to keep control of the boat in the lock.  The lock system was only put in place in the 60s, primarily to encourage river cruises that last a week at a time for tourists.  The boats look very plush.  This shot, taken from the top of the lock, gives a pretty good idea of how far below the top of the lock the lower section of the river is.  The water above the lock is very deep but below there is a narrow channel with rocks on each side giving a pretty good idea of what things must have been like prior to the “locking” of the river.Our ride along the river helped me get a bit more used to speeding along roads that seem way to narrow for the speeds that everyone uses to get around.  I have to say that sometimes I feel like the next corner can’t possibly get more hair raising and it does.   

Last night we went down the mountain for dinner at a very nice restaurant and after a few glasses of wine I went VERY SLOWLY back up the mountain.  In the dark, it was easier than I had expected as you could’t see now nasty the drop-off was at each turn and the oncoming headlights from other cars alerted us to their presence.  During the day you don’t know what’s going to be around each corner until you are half way through.  And, sometimes what’s coming around the bend, at breakneck speed, is a truck many times bigger than you.  Brenda particularly enjoys those encounters.

One thing that they don’t seem to spend much money on here in Portugal is guard rails.  To see a drop off of hundreds of feet with only a few feet between you and what seems like certain death, is taking some getting used to.

Well, enough of that, perhaps it’s time for a walk and perhaps a picnic lunch on the mountainside.  Yes, sounds like a plan and with no crowds around, we will have the whole place to ourselves.  That’s nice…

It’s Wednesday morning and we are here in Casa de Casal de Loivos, a lovely little inn perched on mountainside overlooking the Douro River.

The view is breathtaking, if a bit vertigo inducing, from here overlooking the river and nearby village on the river’s edge far below.    It was built in 1658 and has been in the same family since 1733.   That’s a long time.  I wonder if anyone has gone through their stuff in the attic since then?  Hope so.  Happily, it’s been heavily remodeled so the rooms and private baths are quite modern.  What a spot.

This is the view from the back patio.  Our room opens up directly to this view.There’s a lovely pool.  Too bad it’s not warm enough for a swim. This is a view of the back of the inn.   The sun streams into the windows in the morning.  We had quite a time finding the place as the online directions took us to a completely different village.  Never the less, it was a lovely spot.  Good thing I had stopped for gas earlier.  Not a place where you’d want to run out.

In the “wrong” village we got to by accident, Nobody could speak a word of English. Oops… We were totally lost.  Somehow we were able to get our point across to the very helpful folks that kept speaking louder and louder and slower and slower, as we did, hoping to get our point across.  Alas, we figured it out.  Whew…  Nice view though.This and the prior photo take in just about the entire village.  Very small and quaint.  In retrospect, while we didn’t realize it, we could actually see our destination from there.  Our destination was the village across the valley in this photo.  Well across several valleys actually, at the bend in the river, although high on the mountain side. It’s late in the season and workers are trimming the grape vines to prepare them for winter.  I expect it gets pretty cold here as it is over 3,500′ above sea level.  You can see wisps of smoke coming from burning waste that has been trimmed from he vineyards.  The hillsides are so steep that the fields are terraced to keep the soil from washing away.  These fields have been under cultivation for hundreds of years.  If you enjoy port wine, this area is the only place that the grapes can come from.  Far down stream, on the coast, is the city of Porto, home of all port wine. This morning we are going to go for a hike around this little village where we are staying.  And the emphasis is on “little” as there are only a dozen of so homes here.  The inn manager said it should take an hour.  We’ll see…

Perhaps we’ll be able to enjoy the views on foot better than behind the wheel.  Going around the switchbacks, with no guardrail, is a bit of a white knuckle ride.  So far, no nose bleeds but our ears kept popping yesterday as we headed up, down and up again making our way from village to village trying to find this lovely spot.  We’re here now and so happy to have found our way.

Now for a walk.  I guess we’d better get going and enjoy the view…

It’s Monday afternoon and we have just returned to our hotel here in Vila do Conde, the furthest north we will be headed while we are here in Portugal.  This area is not visited regularly by tourists and is very close to the northern border with Spain.  Our weather has been fabulous so far but today, for the first time since arriving here about three weeks ago, it’s raining.  Actually, it’s pouring buckets.

Last night we went out to dinner to a lovely little local restaurant and enjoyed perhaps the best dinner we’ve had on our trip. We had toured around town or should I say village when we got here yesterday and spied this very pretty little place that looked perfect for dinner called Adega da Vila.  We have found that the more off the beaten path we go the better the food.  In this case, we found a gem. The place was completely charming.  Notice the clay colored pitchers hung above the bar to the left.  They are the next part of the story.The owner, Alvaro Sa, spoke enough English so we could communicate and suggested a few dishes.  It was a treat to enjoy some things that we would never have tried unless we had been guided along the way.  We started with some thinly sliced cured meats followed by the most lovely steamed clams, the size of a quarter, or should I say a one Euro coin.  After that we had stewed chicken gizzards.  Yes gizzards!  They were to die for and were something we NEVER would have tried on our own. It’s a good thing that Brenda wasn’t totally clear on what they were when we ordered them.   Alvaro said we’d love them  He was right!  Yum…

We tried just about everything that we, or Alvaro, could think of including some lovely port wine after dinner made by one of Alvaro’s relatives.   And, the entire bill came to about 30 Euros, very reasonable.  Especially for the best dinner we have had yet.

He was a such a nice guy, Alvaro.  After dinner we asked him where he had purchased the lovely pottery that was decorating his bar. He thought a minute and told us of a potter that lived about a half hour north and gave us his address.

We have been looking for some pottery to bring back with us a just had to visit the source.  So, this morning, in the driving rain, we took off on a quest for pottery.   We got lost a few times (well, more than a few times) and it took more than an hour to get there but we finally did.   I have to say that the highway system here confounds me.  Where to get off?  Which exit?

Well, when we finally found the place it wasn’t the right one after all.  However, we were VERY CLOSE and the folks in the “factory”, actually an ancient dark warehouse, were very nice and while their pottery wasn’t the type that we were looking for, they knew someone who made the “right” kind.  And, after a bit of sign language and some broken English from one of our “helpers”, we were able to determine that the uncle of one of them was the place we were looking for, and he was close by.  Perfect.  And, as if that wasn’t good enough, one of them actually jumped into his car and guided us through the village to the correct place. 

Perfect.  We were thrilled as we had been looking for pottery of this type and to be able to visit the actual spot where it was being made was wonderful.  The shop, or should I say factory, was very small with only four employees, two men and two women.  And… we were offered a tour. 

There was pottery of many shapes and sizes.Some was hand formed and some was made using a simple pressing machine that took “blanks” and, in this case, were formed them into lovely bowls. These round blanks were fed into a press that pushed them into a mold and cut the lip. There were hundreds of bowls, fresh from the press, on shelves drying out prior to finishing. The finishing work is done by hand and then they were painted with colored glaze by the two women, both relatives.   Each piece is hand painted. Most of the production takes place from now until spring when everything is sold in bulk for sale in shops and markets, during the summer season, to tourists.   In spite of their only being four of them, they turn out a lot of finished work.   Everywhere we turned there were racks and racks of pottery, some drying and some already decorated and waiting to be fired in the kiln.

This is a huge rack of finished work fresh out of the kiln.  It must take a lot of gas to heat all of this up to 1,000 Celsius. Brenda was like a kid in a candy shop.  Alas, so much to choose from, so little room in our luggage.  And this was just the “leftover” that hadn’t been shipped last season. We finally settled on some lovely plates, wine pitchers and a pig.  Yes, a pig.  We may have to throw some clothing out to make room in our luggage for everything.  Looks like we’ll be doing some luggage shopping soon.  Good thing that United allows one checked piece of luggage for each passenger and up to 50lbs.  Fingers crossed that we can find a way to avoid paying extra.   

All along the way we have tried to find places to visit that were off of the beaten path and have made decisions on where to go next based on recommendations of folks we met along the way.  It’s turned out to be a great way to see the “real” Portugal.

Speaking of real, Vila do Conde is not a place that many tourists visit in spite of the fact that it’s a lovely little town.  They always loose out to the big tourist spots like Lisbon and Porto.  And many of the European tourists that visit in the summer head to the southern coast where there are lovely beaches.

As Vila do Conde is situated at the mouth of a river, there’s a small harbor and in the past it was a thriving ship building town.  There’s a charming little maritime museum complete with it’s own replica of a ship from the 15th century, the Age of Discovery.  These ships, only about 90′ long, sailed all over the world and as far away as China and Australia.  They must have rolled terribly all the while going really, really slowly.  The bow doesn’t have quite as narrow an entry as Pandora’s.The ship was made here in the city, on the same waterfront that had launched ships for hundreds of years.  She is in quite nice condition and seemed to be quite accurate in many details. You could go in the cabins but some spots weren’t lit enough to take photos. However, the ship’s hold had good lighting.  I can’t imagine how it must have been to travel for a year or more on a ship like this.  Not too many creature comforts.  Where’s the shower?  Hmm…Here’s a photo of the waterfront taken when this was a thriving ship building port.  Here’s the same view today.  The convent is still there as are many of the homes. The town has many beautiful buildings and everywhere you turn there is a lovely view, even in the rain.  It’s not much different than hundreds of years ago. This town is a real gem and not one we would have likely visited without local help.  It’s been wonderful to make last minute decisions on where to head next and to have a month to bounce from place to place is making for a really fun trip.

Tomorrow, we head back to the Douro river and up into the mountains to enjoy some of the most remote areas of Portugal. The mountains, where we are headed, top out at over 3,500 feet and are home to much of the grapes that are made into the port wine that Portugal is famous for.

This is indeed, the “real” Portugal and we are loving it.

 

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!!”

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.

It’s Friday morning and it’s a beautiful day here in Porto.  We will be here for a few more days and are really enjoying our time in this historic city.  One of teh best parts of our visit is seeing the Douro river that runs through the city.  This city is also the home of port wine and it’s the only place in the world that wine of this name comes from.

And there’s more.  As an added benefit of visiting the city, I get to do a real boating related post, finally, as the river is the home to a unique style of traditional sailing craft.  These boats were used for many years to transport wine in casks down the river from the wine country that is upstream from the city.

Port is a fortified wine that is made from either white or red wine that is made elsewhere and then brought to Porto where it is mixed with additional alcohol and aged a minimum of three years and often much longer to make the well known wine.  This is a good link to learn more about this type of wine.

While the wine is brought to the city via truck these days, the city still has a tradition of maintaining the historic boats that used to transport it from up river.  And, it seems that they are still building a few new ones.  And, the tour boats that are used today on the river are still built out of wood although they are now powered by engines.  We really enjoyed our short cruise on one these nice boats.  

The style is unique to the region with a high bow and stern, designed to manage the rapids in the river north of the city.   The current really rips when the tide is ebbing.  The force of the current is impressive.

Our hotel is a short distance from the river just off of a really impressive city square.  I guess that you could call this the “modern” section of the city.  As you go down to the river, you are in the really old section where the port wine business are located, even to this day. The sides of the river are very steep and there are a number of really impressive bridges.  In particular, this one was designed by Eiffel of Eiffel Tower fame.  It’s beautiful and has a pedestrian walkway on it’s top. The boat that we boarded for the river tour looked like this one.  It was constructed locally out of wood.  I like the design and was impressed with the speed it could make against the current that was ebbing at close to 5kts. Unlike so many tourist boats you see in historic areas that only barely resemble their traditional counterparts, these are very nice and there is a high attention to detail in their construction.   The interior was quite well appointed.  Brenda and I were the only ones on board that seemed to appreciate the need to stay out of the sun.  I guess it’s from our years aboard, always trying to avoid getting a “good tan”. We went under a number of great bridges but the Eiffel was clearly the most impressive. There is a boatyard perched on the bank of the river, right in the heart of the city where they are building and repairing traditional boats.   There were several traditional boats under construction and a big tour boat being made as well.

Quite a bit of activity.  Notice the chain saw near the guy on the scaffolding.  The builders are clearly all about efficiency and using the best tools for the job.The port wine companies are thriving and each “house” underwrites a traditional craft that’s moored on the river and flies their banner.  It’s impressive to see them lining the waterfront.   They appear to be in excellent condition.  It’s good to see a thriving classic wooden boat tradition living today. I found this wonderful video of the Douro wine boats making their way down the river back in the 20s.  It’s very well done.  Check it out.  Amazingly, the video only has a few hundred views.  

We also took a tour of the Ferreira Port caves.  It was very well done and the tasting was spectacular.  Bummer that we can’t bring more than a few bottles home with us.  The cellars were room after room of huge barrels, some holding 15,000 liters of wine and there were hundreds and hundreds of them.  After the tour and yet another tasting we enjoyed a terrific dinner overlooking the river as the sun set.  Yes, we even had wine with dinner.  What a spot.  Brenda and I have been wondering if it’s possible to die from too much cheese, bread and cured meets?  Yes, we know the hazards of too much wine as well.  However, no risk of DUI as our rental car is safely in a parking garage.   So far, we seem to be surviving on our “limited diet”.   Yumm…I just never get tired or nighttime views of these beautiful cities.  Well, today a walk over the top of the great Eiffel bridge.  We’d better get on with our day as it’s almost time for lunch.  Bread and cheese?  Hmm…