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July 5th
We start out the day by walking over to the Yellow Kiosk we were told to go to start our day trip to the Douro Valley. We walked around the Plaza for about 15 minutes because we could not find the yellow kiosk, we asked several times including in stores and people walking the streets, but no one could tell us the place, we finally see an orange looking old time news kiosk and walk over to it, there are a couple of women sitting by them, we asked them if they were waiting for the Douro Valley Tour, they said no, so we decided that this had to be the spot. Later on we realized that they maybe said no because maybe we were bad and would somehow exploit them.
The driver/tour guide Paolo finally showed up, there were a total of 5 of us going on the tour. Paolo drove at least 80 mph on the freeways and it looked like he felt very comfortable at that speed. He is very friendly but I think not a very experience tour guide. He could speak English pretty good but not French which left our 2 French women a litle upset because they could not understand him. Our first stop was at a small town founded by a priest where the French were held back in times of wars, we are given very little time to walk the town. The town was founded by a traveling priest. Carmen bought a table cloth at the open market for a couple of euros. After we walked the market we went into the museum. We then traveled to a smaller village that looked practically empty of people. The French women had their first drink. From there we went to the Sandeman Port house. We had a tour of the winery and the distillery machines. Then we were led to a beautiful glassed in room where we sampled the Port looking out to the grape vines. From there we head over to the boat tour "talk about the boats". We were able to stop and take pictures on the side of the mountains. Before the boat tour we had lunch at one of the three restaurants in town. Carmen and I chose to be up in the balcony, on this windy day. Our lunch was a slow and laid back service, with a large family sitting next to us. The others had to wait for us. Once we arrived to the boat Carmen and I boarded a boat with other tourists. The river tour was peaceful and very surprising. The boat captain shared history of the boats and the early days of exporting the wine thru the use of the river boats. This area is UNESCO world heritage site. To think that this is the earliest known area for growing of wine, since the Roman times. The Duro valley uses the traditional methods for growing the wine. There was no machinery, nor modern methods in the fields. We did see many workers out tending the grapes. After the tour the driver took us back to Porto at 80 miles an hour! We did not even get to take a nap. Once back in Porto we immediately jumped on the yellow city tour bus to see the town. It was a slow hour tour of both towns. Once again to have the bus driver share with us history and the romantic story of love between the king's wife and her captor of the neighboring city. After a great day - we headed back to our hotel for a night's rest. |
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