Today was the big port tasting day, but we commenced it with a few other activities first.
We had booked an hour trip on one of the semi-traditional boats up the Douro River for 10.00am which went under the six bridges that cross over the Douro in this short space.
The bridges range in various ages with one of them in moth balls for the last 20 years and everything from the beautiful lattice steel bridges to single arch concrete structures.
Next activity was to St Francis church which is notable for its ornately wood carved interior which has then been covered in gold leaf. You were not allowed to take any photos, so we pinched one off the outside advertisement. It was quite something and the wood carving was layered upon layers. Upkeep must be a blimin nightmare let alone the dusting.
Onto the next activity which was the stock exchange. This is where it got amusing. We had a wine tasting in just over two hours but couldn’t fit in the English version of this tour so we opted to tag onto the earlier Spanish tour as you could not go into the place unless you were on a tour. Long winded sentence but hope you got it.
We got the gist of what the guide was saying but felt we were missing out on a lot when Fraser came upon the bright idea of using the audio portion of google translate.
The guide is in the southeast corner of this photo below, and luckily for us she had a clear voice with very little background noise.
The beginning of the second paragraph down demonstrates that things got a little lost in translation.
After that we were just a couple of stupid giggly teenagers.
Having said that, we certainly appreciated the beauty of the building. It was built in the second half of the 19th century in the neoclassical style and the headquarters of the Porto Commercial Association, which reflects the importance of this activity in the city’s history. The building began to be used as the Stock Exchange at the orders of the queen Dona Maria II in 1841, but now it is a museum.
We then made our way back to the river and walked over the Louis Bridge to the Calem Cellar door for our wine tasting.
There are heaps of these cellar doors along this section of the river and it is big business!!! We reckon on our tour alone which lasted an hour that they pulled in over 700 euro for a small outlay.
The wines are grown about 200k further up the river valley where we will go tomorrow.
Once the grapes are picked and processed, they are brought down to the cellar doors where they are aged in the oak barrels.
We very much enjoyed our tour guide who was informative and imparted lots of port knowledge our way. Our big understanding out of it is that all ports are blended as an each way bet in case one year is crap and blending hides that crappiness.
Di had been looking forward to this port experience as she loves a well rounded, heavy, flavoursome quaff but apart from sticking the tip of her tongue into each of the glasses she just didn’t want to risk it. What she did taste test didn’t do it for her. Maybe our trip up the valley tomorrow might change that. We loved this photo they had on display.
Meanwhile, Fraser was easy pleased!!!
Time to make our back across the river by a cute and quick ferry.
We had been out for seven hours at this stage and we needed a bit of down time to recharge the batteries. This is where the location of our hotel worked brilliantly for us.
Our plan was to rest up then head out again but slight change as we are desperately running out of clothes. Luckily there was a first-class laundromat a couple of blocks away so we felt it a good idea to utilize this opportunity.
Fras found himself another tram whilst the clothes were washing. We might get a chance to take this one in a couple of days.
It was then time to go out and forage for food at a time when the gorgeous surreal early evening colours are starting to appear.
As the sun sets in the west over the Atlantic Ocean which is about two kilometres away, the partying for the young ones starts🤪. Steps were 7,829.
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