Saturday - 28 July 2018

This was our major sightseeing day in Porto, and I can thoroughly recommend it. It is a beautiful city, alive with tourists and today, Newcastle United supporters in town to see their team play a pre-season friendly against Porto.

We headed into town on the metro having walked from the marina and across a bridge over the industrial port here.  The metro system is somewhere between a tram and the Docklands Light Railway.  The rails are laid on dedicated tracks, but sometimes run very close to the roads.  The traffic lights are controlled to give the metro trains priority as it winds its way into town.  There are about 6 different lines crossing the city.

Not the metro, we also found San Francisco style streetcars.

We alighted at one of the main interchanges and started to walk towards the river that is the focal point of the city.  There are charming narrow cobbled streets, typical of a hot country, and many churches. We investigated going up a church tower that apparently gives unprecedented views across the city but were put off by the length of the queue.  Maybe tomorrow?

We stopped at the railway station as we passed and this is really quite something.  There are tiles forming vast pictures on the walls, incredibly intricate and beautiful.  We also visited the birthplace of Henry the Navigator, and saw the statue of him on a grass square nearby.

After lunch we took a river boat trip to see the 6 bridges that the city is famed for.  The vessels used for these trips are all derived from the boats used to transport barrels of Port up and down the river, and seem to be fairly unique to this area. The river has cut a deep valley and most of the bridges cross from high up the valley sides, giving a big clearance below.  Remarkably one of the bridges closest to the sea is much lower, and therefore restricts the size of water bourn traffic that can pass up the river.  The trip was very enjoyable and we were able to see much of the city from the river. 

On the other side of the river you are no longer in Porto but in Gaia.  This is the heartland of Port production and storage, and we felt obliged to take a tour of at least one of the cellars. We had an informative half hour learning about the history and production of port and then were given tasters of 2 different varieties.  There are many different cellars offering tours and I am sure that if you visited several you could be somewhat the worse for wear at the end.  We stuck to just one.

After we had returned to the marina at Leixeos (pronounced Lay – Shoinsh), we went to a restaurant just outside the marina that had been recommended by a friend.  The place was buzzing and the food was inexpensive and delicious, washed down with their house wine.  A very pleasant end to the day.

Distance covered today		0 nautical miles
Trip distance covered	902.7	nautical miles
Distance covered 2018	1623	nautical miles

Steve (and Tricia, and Chris)