Porto and Leixoes
On 2nd June we went by bus into Porto, and meandered slowly around the old city, which is very beautiful although the impression is that all the colours have faded a bit. Apart from the waterside, the city does not seem to be very spoilt by tourism. It was well worthwhile going, and we went to Crofts Port caves on the other side of the Rio Douro for a free tour and tasting. I sampled white port, which I never knew existed, it is normally used as an aperitif and is served chilled. It is sweet but does not taste very alcoholic even though it is as strong as red port. I loved it, and it was quite acceptable to Daniel too!
The river itself, and the setting of the city which is built up on hills above the banks of the river, is very beautiful and we took lots of photos and spent a long time just looking at it all.
The old boats used for taking the port are still moored in the river, one for each port company, and some of the postcards show them with square sails sailing up the river.
Several spectacular bridges cross the river, two of them are in iron, one designed by Eiffel and one by one of his pupils.
Although in some of the tourist shops good English was spoken, it seemed a lot of other people did not speak any.
In both northern Spain and Portugal we have been pleasantly surprised by the courtesy of car drivers towards pedestrians, particularly on zebra crossings. Quite unlike my experiences in France.
Another thing we found about Porto is that each shop has a purpose. For example if you want paint you go to the paint and roller shop. It only sells paint and rollers. If you want string, you go to the string shop, which only sells string. If you want stamps for your postcards, you have to go to the city central post
office (which was a long slog up the hill!) Then as Dan had conked out in his pushchair we decided to catch up on the internet and found an internet café nearby.
Afterwards we found our bus stop and went back to Leixoes, although we stopped at the fair/market/christmas lights for a while and browsed before finding the kids fairground rides. Dan flew a helicopter, a plane, two cars and a minibus. It was extremely late when we got home!