Oi Portugal! Tchau Portugal!

26th Nov – 16th Dec 2023

This is possibly a record for me. A post spanning nearly three weeks that contains our travels through an entire country. I am now resigned to the fact that I will never be ‘caught up’ with my writing, but that it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. I shall endeavour to stop worrying about it.

So Portugal. Another place which neither of us had ever been to before and another language of which we knew nothing. One could assume that as Portugal shares its entire mainland border with Spain that the languages would be very similar, but it transpires that Portuguese is based on Russian. Or at least that is what it sounds like. Duolingo helped us with a few basics, although even after three weeks of learning and being here, deciphering spoken Portuguese is still a complete enigma. My favourite word learned thusfar is “Oi”, which means “Hi”. How jolly, whilst sounding rude if you shout it loudly in an East End of London accent, and “Tchau” is “Bye”. Pronounced exactly like the Italian “Ciao”, but meaning entirely the opposite. I will never be a polyglot. It’s too confusing.

We left Seville, and Spain, and headed west into southern Portugal’s Algarve region. The border was a complete non-event, as is the norm in the Schengen Area and the Spanish motorway joined seemlessly with the Portuguese system delivering us to our first problem. An electronic toll system. This is camera controlled, number plate recognition cameras identify the vehicles and the tolls are debited from credit cards which are linked to the vehicles. If you had any idea prior to hitting the toll that this needed doing. Which we did not. There was helpfully a pull off for ‘foreign registered vehicles’, but none of our cards worked in the machines (because we hadn’t pre-registered online) and there were no humans to ask. The little ‘help’ button was entirely unsuccessful in summoning assistance on the intercom and there was a queue building up behind us. What to do? Well there was also a lack of a barrier so we just drove onto the motorway and onto our first stop, Tavira. I figured that we could sort this out later*.

* Later: It has taken over three weeks, several emails, and a couple of online registrations but I have finally paid our €11.57 toll debt. The Portuguese motorway toll system is bonkers. There are about four different companies that manage roads in the different areas. Some are electronic tolls, some are pull-a-ticket as you join the road and pay at the end of your journey, some are a set price at the entry to the road. I finally found out which company managed our road and it took three weeks for the debt to appear online, but was then easily paid off without penalty. There are another couple of e-tolls pending, but now I have a handle on the system and have stopped stressing about being fined.

Anyway, back to Tavira. This is, at this time of year, a sleepy fishing town located in the eastern Algarve. In the summer I imagine a mecca for sunseekers not seeking high rises. It sits behind a long barrier island,’Ilha de Tavira’, giving it an inland waterway and there is an expanse of wetlands between it and a huge length of Atlantic beach on the island which is a only short ferry hop from town. We pulled up at our park in Tavira and quickly found Dave and Sarah, who appeared in the Jerez and Seville post, sitting outside their van in the sun. There was a space next to them, but we didn’t want to (literally) cast any shade on their day so we parked up nearby, within shouting distance if we had been vulgar enough. The whole park was situated right next to a train track and trains passed by about once an hour at great speed. Our spot was so close to the tracks that Davide even did a little shimmy in the turbulant pressure wave of air. The trains didn’t run between 11pm and 6am, but it did mean a slightly earlier wake up time that we are used to. “If the vans’s a’rockin’, then it must be the 06:03 from Seville to Faro….”

We did six things of note in Tavira.

1). We took the ferry out to the island. There were numerous bars and restaurants, bungalows and beach clubs but all but one bar and one restaurant were closed on this winter Monday. We could imagine just how manic this place must be in high season. Today it was very chilled out. We wandered up the beach, picnic packed and almost had the place to ourselves. It was lovely and sunny and reports of tolerated nudism were confirmed as we spied a couple up ahead, playing ‘catch’ in the buff. Why do nudists alway have to be doing something contrived whilst nude? It’s never enough just to be sitting or sunbathing. And when was the last time you saw a clothed late middle aged couple throwing a ball back and forth? That is the sole domain of the young or sports teams in training. They were obviously not fully committed to their nakedness as our approach prompted them to retreat and cover up. We walked, we ate our picnic lunch (always a ham and cheese sandwich with mayo and mustard, some crisps and an apple) and then headed back to civilisation where we killed time until the return ferry with a very welcome beer at the beach bar. Bliss.

2). We got haircuts. A randomly selected hairdresser called Nella did a very fine job of making us look presentable again. She was an ebullient, sixty year old, biker chick whose english was excellent after living in the USA for many years. We saw many photos of her motorbike and swapped stories about America. She was appreciative of our efforts to say our ‘please and thank yous’ in Portuguese, taught us a few new words and gave us advice on other places to visit. What a gem.

3). We cycled up to the neighbouring village called Santa Luiza, the (possibly self-proclaimed) world capital of octopus fishing. It was pretty quiet but we did find a restaurant open to serve us a couple of incarnations of octupus based meals. I had a very respectable octopus risotto and Nick had Octopus ‘peasant style’, which was that sightly offputting offering of whole grilled tentacles. Delicious nonetheless.

4). 5). and 6). We finally sat down with Dave and Sarah with some pre-dinner drinks and snacks each of the three evenings that we were here. We spent hours sitting at a picnic table close to their van, chatting, creating a reasonable amount of bottle recycling and doing damage to many types of salty snack and processed carbohydrate. The conversation was diverse and constant and we sat out until the time for ‘dinner’ had, in truth, passed, but borderline hypothermia, and a realisation that everyone else on the park was inside and probably starting to get annoyed with our noise levels, put a halt to the party each evening. They were/are very good company.

Our onward journey from here took us west through the Algarve. We bypassed the conurbations of Faro, Albuferia and Lagos and headed to the small town of Sagres which sits at the most southwestern tip of Portugal, and indeed mainland Europe. Our campsite, another massive, wooded and sandy, but out of season, sleepy place was on the outskirts of town, an easy bike ride away. We were now in surfing territory and most of the other campers were in small vans adorned with surfboards and drying wetsuits. A huge section of the campsite was obviously given over to housing a surf camp in season and the toilet/shower blocks were enormous. There are downsides to travelling in the winter, but peace and quiet, not battling for camping space and the absence of crowds are not amongst them.

Sagres itself was quite charming, in a Portuguese sort of fashion. In a similar way to Spain, the Portugal that we saw was light on beautifully preserved, picturesque, and historic, architecture and settlements. (Unlike France.) There are definitely handsome features and some beautiful aspects of places, but the overall effect is one of utility and functionality. (Unlike France). Sagres had a large marina/fishing port, a beautiful beach, and a few older buildings, and even its own beer, but its strength is its location.

It sits near to the end of a cliff-top penninsula that hosts a lighthouse, a fort and some spectacular sea views. The fort is unusual in that it only required the building of one wall across the narrow end of the pennisula to be defendable. Job done. Not far from Sagres is another penninsula hosting another lighthouse, Cabo de São Vincente, and this provided us with a perfect destination for a cliff-top coastal path walk. The forecast was good, the picnic was packed and we sauntered off on the 15km round trip. It was a beautiful walk only moderately dampened by a sudden but brief downpour. We could see it coming and had donned our waterproof coats just in time, but we had absolutely no hope of seeking shelter. For a few of the heaviest minutes of rain we stood with our backs to the weather like a couple of wild moorland ponies. Nick’s sartorial choice of a pair of cotton shorts suddenly seemed like sheer folly as they instantly absorbed their own weight in cold rainwater and stuck to his legs, never destined to dry out for the remainder of the walk. Luckily the rain didn’t last long and spirits quickly improved back to pre-rain levels. We arrived at the lighthouse complex to find it shut, despite there being a fair few people around. There is an inescapable draw to places like this, which for us included the potential for a hot drink and a place to have a pee. But t’was not to be. We found a sheltered spot in the sun to warm up and had our lunch (the usual), before walking home again with a tiny detour behind a discrete rock.

By the time we got back to camp we had been joined by a couple of familiar faces. It was bloody Dave and Sarah again! They had had one night in Lagos on the way, but otherwise this was our fourth consecutive camp-in-common with them. It had been decided that we should all go out for dinner and they had booked a table in a local restaurant earlier in the day. Washed and dressed we walked the 1km into town and found the place, which was otherwise empty all evening apart from us. Booking perhaps not necessary in retrospect. Our host spoke good English and we all decided to get the local delicacy, fish stew, a hearty pot of vegetables, potatoes and hunks of random fish like eel and ray. It was delicious, the wine was ridiculously cheap and we were still sat there nattering three hours later, the staff patiently waiting for us to go home. So we went home. The next morning we said our final goodbyes to our new friends as our paths were to diverge from here. They were heading inland back towards Spain and we were continuing our coast route. We shall meet again somewhere!

From here our trajectory was northwards, up along the Portugal coast. Late November was still delivering us sunshine and warmth, with temperatures in the late teens, but on the whole it was getting gradually cooler and darker. Most travellers head south and stay south at this time of year. We felt like we were going a bit against the flow. Our next journey took us along some smaller, undulating roads that wound through small coastal and slightly inland towns and villages and we pulled in at a randomly selected town called Vila Nova De Mifontes. This was another lovely small town that was blessed withan amazing location. It is situated at the end of an estuary and had a couple of lovely yellow sandy beaches along the sheltered tidal inlet, a low headland overlooking the bar, a sandy beach on the ocean side with lots of interesting rocky areas and a coastal path. It was delightful. We had planned two nights here, but a good campsite, a nice town, places to walk and some intermittant rainy weather led us to extend our stay to four nights. Easy come, easy go.

Finally we extracted ourselves from the peace and quiet of Vila Nova and continued north to Lisbon. This involved more toll roads, but the simpler, non e-toll version. The final toll was for the bridge to get to the city. This looked like a mini Golden Gate Bridge, and coupled with Lisbon’s hills and waterfront made it feel like a small version of San Fransisco. There were no obvious formal campsites close to Lisbon with good transport links to the city, so we decided to go for a free park-up option. We use an app called Park4Night which lists pretty much all formal campsites, loads of free-camp sites and lots of services like water/waste sites and laundry. Staying outside a formal campsite gives us a lot more to consider when picking a spot. Is it safe for the van when we are away from it? Is it safe for us overnight? Is it going to be noisy? Are we going to get a door knock in the night to move us on? Can we easily access the places we want to go? The app has tons of information, up to date reviews and good maps, so is really useful in helping us make a decision. So we earmarked a recommended car park to the west of Lisbon old town area and headed there for a planned two nights. The water was topped up, the waste tanks empty and the batteries full. The massive car park was free, level, well lit, a five minute walk from a train station, right on the waterfront and already had a few motorhomes in residence. It all looked very promising. We were staying. We had a spot of lunch and headed to the station to catch a train to the city. Procuring a ticket for the 11 minute train ride took a bit of detective work. There were no discernible ticket machines on the platform or in the underpass to the station, only a machine to reload credit onto pre-bought tickets, so having asked at a tabacco kiosk we discovered that the tickets were sold outside the station on the other side to the direction that we had entered. We had to buy the re-useable tickets and guess how many trips we were going to take to get the right amount of credit loaded on. This was a bit faffy. We made it back to the platform just in time for the next train and were soon in the city. It was another lovely sunny day and perfect for another city mooch-athon. Lisbon is suprisingly hilly. All things worth seeing or visiting involve some serious altitude gain, not least the castle atop the highest of the hills. For this purpose Lisbon has a series of elevators, funiculars and rickety hill-climbing trams that take some of the pain out of the ascents. Many of these are tourist destinations in their own rights and we began our tour by setting out to see the prettiest of them all, the Ascensor Da Bica. It was shut for 2 weeks for renovations. Hmmmff. Winter travel woe.

Next we put our heads into the Time Out Market, in the Mercado de Ribeira, a huge food hall. This was buzzing with dozens of restaurants and a few thousand eaters and drinkers. We did a lap and decided to come back for lunch the next day. Our wanderings, up hill and down dale, were pointed in the direction of the Castle from here and at one point we considered catching one of the historic yellow trams up some of the steeper streets. But no. Each one was packed with tourists. We continued on, cardiovascular workout ongoing. Back at low altitude we discovered a pedestrianised shopping street which had Lisbon’s answer to the Arc De Triomphe at one end and a Christmas market at the other. Half way up this road was another of the noteable elevators, Elevador De Santa Justa, a 45 m tall, free standing, neo-gothic tower.

It was packed with folk going back up the hill we had just come down, and we were now headed up a different hill so we admired it from afar. Our ascent up to the castle was assisted by a couple of more mundane and conventional lifts. You know, the kind that you find in an office building or a multi storey car park. Utilitarian and not worthy of a photograph. The castle itself was a sprawling and mostly ruined affair that was suprisingly busy despite the moderately high price tag for a visit. It did, however, have splendid views and as the sun was starting to set it became more and more apparent why so many folk had schlepped up here. It was hard to tear ourselves away.

Back down at more normal street level we accidentally happened upon one of Lisbon’s most treasured food secrets, As Bifanas Del Alfonso. This is a unprepossessing food kiosk situated on a small square that, despite displaying a menu with a range of several different items serves mostly only two things: bifanas and beer. The beloved bifana is simple and delicious. A modest sized bun stuffed with juicy grilled or pulled pork. That’s it. Can be accompanied with a squirt of mustard or chilli oil to taste. The beer is cold and nameless and served in plastic. All is eaten out of paper whilst standing on the street corner, or seated at one of the coveted benches in the square, or using a nearby post box as a leaner table. There is always a queue and its sales transcend conventional meal times. It was about 5pm when we collided with this sight for sore eyes and decided that we needed a bifana appetiser and beer apperitif. We were not wrong! Whilst standing and (lightly) filling our faces (with half a bifana each- this was only a snack after all) we got chatting to a couple of young American lads who were both living and working in Lisbon. They gave us a ‘local’ recommendation for a restaurant for dinner and despite it being a half an hour walk away, we booked it there and then for later on that evening. We filled the interim few hours with a wander through the streets lit with some amazing festive lights, a walk through the aforementioned Christmas market accompanied by the obligatory cup of ‘hot wine’, and half an hour in a very bizzare ‘speakeasy’ style cocktail bar. The restaurant was an excellent recommendation and we sampled a selection of dishes, the most noteable of which was hunks of slow cooked piglet. Just divine. Our trip home via feet and train was unremarkable and we had a quiet night’s sleep.

The next day rain was forecast so we headed out mid-morning to try and get ahead of it. We donned coats and our most water resistant shoes and set off on foot, heading along the waterfront to see some sights before jumping on the train at the next station down the line. There was the Tower of Belem, an ornate limestone tower completed in 1520 as part of the fortification of Lisbon harbour. It survived the great earthquake of 1755, has been restored many times, and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

There was a monument called Padrão dos Descobrimentos, dedicated to the 15th and 16th C Age of Discovery when the Portuguese were having their hay day as a nation and pretty busy setting sail and exploring the New World.

There was the Jerónimos Monastery, an impressive late-Gothic behemouth which was completed in 1601 and has been the burial place of many royals and famed as the place Vasco da Gama spent the night before setting off on his expedition to the Orient, thus making it a fancy sort of airport Travel Lodge. By the time we got here the rain had caught up with us and it was tipping down. This really has been the first time that we have been truely rained upon on this whole trip. Not bad for ten weeks of Autumn.

There was an enormously long, wet and miserable looking queue of people waiting to get into the Monastery, so we kept a’walkin’ to our next destination, the Pastéis de Belém. At this bakery they apparently make the finest iteration of Portugal’s most beloved pastry, the pastel de nata, a small filo pastry filled egg and custard tart. Legend has it that these were first baked by the monks at the nearby monastery, but when it was closed in 1834 a baker monk set up business on the outside and a cultural icon was launched. We found the shop, which had another four zillion soggy tourists waiting to purchase tarts and so walked on past that long, rain soaked queue too. There would be other pastel de nata. Soon we reached our train station and were quickly whisked back into the city on the next train, by which time thankfully, the rain was abating.

By now it was midday and we were down a snack. Through the gloom of the grey skies and wet pavements shone a beacon of hospitality, Casa Portuguesa do Pastel de Bacalhau. Maybe it was the warm orange lighting. Maybe it was the blown up photos of their only foodstuff for sale- a lozenge shaped, melted cheese filled, cod fishcake. Maybe it was the display cabinets full of glasses of beer. Whatever it was, we were in there faster than scalded cats and spent a very satisfactory hour with a beer and fishcake each whilst drying out. First lunch.

From here we explored back streets and dodged showers whilst taking in more recommended sights. There was Livraria Betrand, ‘the world’s oldest bookshop still in operation’, opened in 1732. (Unremarkable). There was Conserveira de Lisboa, apparently the best place in the world to buy tinned fish. This started as a small grocery store in the 1930s and is now a multigenerational family business run from the same shop. Portugal and especially Lisbon has a love affair with tinned fish, and this place is a great example of the many shops that sell it. The cans from here had some great retro styling and the four tins that we bought were loving wrapped up in paper and string. The owner gave us a suggestion for the can of pickled sardines we bought: in a brown bread sandwich with gorgonzola and endive. (Remarkable) We nipped into a shopping centre just as the heavens opened again and killed some time waiting for the rain to pass. Considering it was only two weeks until Christmas in the heart of a capital city it was remarkably relaxed and completely missing the urgency and frenetic spending of this time of year in the UK.

We continued our amblings through the old streets and up and down hills until we decided that it was time for second lunch, and we returned to the big Time Out food court. Our quest to find a restaurant that served food that we wanted was easy. The quest to find a couple of free chairs at a table at which to eat it, impossible. The place was heaving!! The people of Lisbon are not wasting their free time Christmas shopping. They are out eating and drinking. Even at 3pm on a Thursday. We finally found a spot to eat at the bar of a seafood restaurant and had a lunch that could be generously described as satisfactory. It is disappointing to not experience great food when it is all around. Some you win, some you lose. We consoled ourselves with the purchase of a six-pack of pastel de nata from a bakery here. Can confirm: delicious.

That night in the carpark was not so quiet and restful. Early evening was punctuated with multiple cars pulling in, being met by the same black Mercedes saloon car which parked right next to them and exchanges through open windows. Hmmm. In the middle of the night we were woken by loud voices coming from two cars parked up not far from us. There were doors opening and closing, girls and boys getting in and out of the back seats and clouds of smoke coming out of the windows. Hmmmm. At least they weren’t playing loud music and they kept to themselves. Still leaves us on edge though even though we are locked and alarmed and this is why we prefer to stay in designated campsites. In the morning, quite amusingly, we were roused by the close parking of a different sort of visitor altogether. Some military police vehicles. Not sure where they were going or what they were off to do, but quite literally, Lisbon had sent the cavalry…..

We bade farewell to Lisbon and travelled an entire 30 minutes to the nearby town on Sintra. This is another UNESCO World Heritage Site town situated in the hills to the northwest of the capital. In the past its cooler summer weather attracted the wealthy who built a series of impressive and scenic palaces on and around the jagged hillsides here and it also boasts the remains of a Moorish castle. These landmarks, and its close proximity to Lisbon makes it a perfect destination for day trippers, thus rendering it unbearably busy for most of the year. Were hoping that not to be the case in early December. There was a complete lack of formal campsites here and so we set off to the park-up spot with the best reviews and the fewest reports of van break-ins, the carpark of the the town’s justice centre and court complex. This was constructed atop a hill about 2km from the town centre and was a monolithic, brutalist concrete structure surrounded by a wall. It was a public holiday Friday, so the place was deserted save for three other campervans and a single car that presumably belonged to the building’s lone, out-of-hours security guard. It felt like a modern type of fortress and had some great views of the town and surrounding countryside. We felt that we would be quite happy and safe here for twenty four hours.

Once settled we had a late breakfast and then headed into town. The closer we got, the busier it became and we were glad to have found our quiet parking spot. The town is arranged on a series of hills and we spent the whole day either walking up or down fairly significant gradients.

There were some palaces and houses to potentially see inside around the town, but we opted instead to loose the crowds and take the walking route up to the summits of two nearby hills to see both the Moorish castle and the whimsical Palácio de Pena (of which we got no good photos) We finally reached the top and popped out of the wooded path, moderately hot and sweaty, looking forward to visiting the Palace. But horror. A queue of about 200 people waiting to get in. The very efficient system of buses and a fleet of tuk-tuks meant that access to the top of the hill is easy, and thus popular. We, as usual when confronted with a large crowd like this, walked away. Our trip down the hill seemed to bypass the route to the Moorish castle, so we missed visiting this too. Oh well. Back in the old town we explored the narrow streets a bit more before heading back to Davide. By now we had the place to ourselves. Our own private Idaho. On the way home I had come across a perfect little van-sized festive, tree-substitute decoration. A cactus in a hat with googly eyes and a beard. Christmas personified. He was promptly named ‘Sintra Claus’ and continues to accompany us on our Iberian travels.

Where next? Nazaré. Home of big wave surfing. Here, on Playa del Norte, is one of the biggest surf breaks in the world and the location for 7 of the 10 biggest waves ever surfed. These big waves only occur during the winter storm season and although neither of us are surfers, we felt this place warranted a stop on our coastal tour. Nazaré itself is a small fishing town that has mostly been spared the horrors of mass tourism and the ugly overdevelopment that this brings. It has three areas: the beachside settlement, Praia, the upper clifftop pennisula settlement, Sitio and Pedermeria, which sits on a hillside inland of Praia. Our camp was on the inland side of Pedermeria. The big wave forms due to a deep underwater canyon that runs up to Playa del Norte, on the north side of the Sitio headland. The canyon increases and converges the incoming ocean swell which, in conjunction with the local water current, dramatically enlarges wave heights. The wide sandy beach to the south of the headland is not exposed to this, so is safe and sheltered from the monster surf. We walked from camp, up the hill and through Pedermeria, then down again to Praia. We knew that there was a funnicular railway that then linked the beach with the elevation of Sitio up on the headland. But. It. Was. Shut. For. Winter. Repairs……Story of our lives! So back uphill we went again, trudging up the nearby staircase, with my disgruntled companion grumbling that we could have maintained altitude and avoided all this miserable climbing. Apparently the funnicular being shut was my fault.

As there was not a winter storm currently, or recently in progress, the surf was a mere 5m in height. Compare this to the 25-30m that this break can potentially produce. The world record for the biggest wave ever surfed is held by a German surfer called Sebastian Steudtner who, in October 2020 rode a wave which was measured at 26.2 m. The headland provides an excellent view point to watch the surfers and its photogenic lighthouse has provided the foreground for many an iconic ‘big wave’ photograph. We weren’t alone in our pilgrimage to the point. There were about ten – fifteen surfers out whilst we were watching. Most of them were using jet skis to be towed in, but every now and then a surfer would catch a wave under their own steam, causing a huge cheer from the headland. There can’t be many surf breaks in the world where surfers can get this sort of audible crowd support of their skills. Today Nazaré was benign but still impressive. A brief look at some You Tube clips can show its other side and demonstrate the bravery/craziness of big wave surfers.

Here is a photo from the internet for some idea of how big the waves can be:

We continued our meanderings, heading back down the steps to the beach and hunting out a restaurant for lunch, which was an excellent offering of fish, then yomped back up over the hill to get home. The next day, to break up the hours spent not walking up hills, we walked up another hill. This was a rocky lump close to the campsite which had a fire lookout tower and a chapel at the top. After our short, sharp ascent we arrived at the top, then came down again, thus justifying the ongoing idleness for the rest of the day.

Our next stop was planned to be Porto, but the up coming weather forecast was for 24 hours of rain on and off which had the potential to be heavy. Our soggy day around Lisbon had taught us that exploring a city is much more fun in the sunshine so we decided to delay our arrival there by a day. We headed northwards and stopped at at town called Averio, the ‘Venice of Portugal’, camping in a free designated motorhome area in a carpark near the station and a supermarket. It certainly did rain cats and dogs for several hours, with a respite long enough for a walk into town. There is a small network of canals here, and even on a bleak, damp, winters day one can take a gondala ride. This appeared to be a trifle different from the romantic experience of being gently punted along the canals of actual Venice as we observed several boatloads of tourists clad in disposable ponchos being whisked about in noisy diesel powered gondala-style vessels that were moving so fast that they were nearly up on the plane.

After a suprisingly quiet and undisturbed night’s sleep we continued north to Porto. Here we were staying in a beach-front campsite just south of the city in a residential suburb populated with new looking appartment blocks and plenty of beach cafes. There was a waterfront cycle lane from here all the way to the city, which was about 7km away, a very easy and scenic way to go sightseeing. The old town area of Porto is perhaps the prettiest city on our travels so far. It too is perched on a hillside, tumbling down to the Douro river. It faces south, bathing it in winter sunshine. Across the river gorge is Gaia, another hillside settlement which faces its more well known sibling from the afternoon shade of its north facing cliffs, the two places being linked by a series of impressive bridges. They say that the two best things about Gaia are the view of Porto and its Port Wine, for that is what this place is famous for after all.

Port wine, the fortified sweet wine crafted from Douro wine and brandy, so beloved (and probably invented) by the British all comes from Gaia, not Porto. The big Port houses all located themselves on this side of the river to avoid paying high city taxes and their product is ‘Port Wine’. ‘Oporto’ is the similar product from the city itself. Here one can do Port tastings at any number of Port houses and this is, of course, what we were here for! We chose a house called Kopke, the oldest of them all, and sampled a variety of white, ruby and tawny Ports. They were all delicious, but the most delicious was a tawny that we would have bought a bottle of it it wasn’t €150 per bottle. We bought a €50 bottle of a really interesting white Port instead.

In the golden light of the fading day Porto really did look beautiful from the vantage point of the rooftop terrace bar where we had a cocktail after our tasting, but once shade fell upon us it got pretty cold pretty fast and we remounted the bikes and beetled home, shivering.

The next day we retraced our steps/tyre tracks and having locked the bikes up on the Gaia side of the bridge, headed over to Porto itself. It was a delightful melange of riverside promenade and market, narrow old streets, interesting shops and businesses, old churches, and historical municipal buildings. Less delightful were the steep streets, but we are now in improved physical condition after a few weeks of Portuguese urban mountaineering. There were a few things that we actively sought out on our day in the city. First of these was the Lello bookshop, a small but magnificent establishment was built in 1906 and is considered one of the most beautiful bookshops in the world. It has many beautiful elements, most notably the huge central, ornately carved staircase that dominates the space.

JK Rowling, who once lived in Porto, is said to have based the bookshop in Harry Potter, Flourish and Blotts, on this place. These factors make it very popular and you have to buy tickets to get in. The cost of these can be used as a credit against any book bought,which we used. Quite a genius way of managing the situation, I think.

We made sure to swing by the main railway station building, the foyer of which is decorated with impressive tiles and frescos and we also popped into the city centre Mcdonalds. This is housed in an Art Deco builing and boasts chandeliers, ornate ceilings and stained glass, not to mention the old Imperial Eagle adorning the front door. Fancy.

For lunch we had to sample the iconic dish of Porto, the Francesinha.

“What is that?” I hear you ask. Well, and I quote directly from Wikipedia here:

A Francesinha meaning little French woman^[1][2]) is a Portuguese sandwich, originally from Porto, made with layers of toasted bread and assorted hot meats such as roast, steak, wet-cured ham, linguiça, or chipolata over which sliced cheese is melted by the ladling of a near-boiling tomato-and-beer sauce called molho de francesinha [pt].^[1] It is typically served with french fries.

Now that you are all fully educated on the nature of a Francesinha and that as most of you know my husband either very well, or fairly well, you will realise that there was no way that we were leaving this town without sampling one. This is literally his spirit sandwich. And he is a sandwich man. He did his research (ie asking the lady that hosted our Port tasting) where was the best place in town to get one and there we went. This place, Brasâo Aliados, even added a fried egg to the top of theirs. He could barely contain himself. When we arrived the place was packed (always a good sign) and there was no plate being served that wasn’t containing a Francesinha. They helpfully served half portions for the less ravenous and we can confirm that they are delicious. It’s not gluttony, it’s a cultural experience. We wandered back to our bikes, only briefly distracted by a sunset drink at a riverside bar on the Porto side, joining the masses that had congregated along the river frontage to see the sun disappear behind the Gaia hill, and then had another chilly trip home. Old Porto was gorgeous and we would definitely return.

So that concludes out Portuguese travels. How do we feel about this country after spending nearly three weeks here?

The language is odd. I have learnt a few words and phrases and probably at this point know as much Portuguese as Spanish, but I think I will concentrate on the Spanish from here, it will be more useful in the long run. Otherwise I will confuse myself! Luckily for us basic English is quite widely spoken here.

The people are low key and seem, in general, to be quite private and introverted, saving their energy for friends and family, rather than striking up conversations with random, blithering, Portuguese language-murdering tourists. As a nation they seem content to have moved on from their world domination and colonisation years and delightfully seem to lack any sort of collective hyper ego of delusions of importance.

What a coastline! We haven’t explored inland Portugal to any degree, but this country was at the front of the line when the beautiful beaches were being distibuted. I don’t envy southern Europe its blisteringly hot summers, but the cool sea breezes apparently make this a rather pleasant place to be when the rest of the region is baking, and Autumn here has been amazing.

These people go out to eat, drink and socialise as much, if not more, than the Spanish. True story.

Shopping does not appear to be a recreational activity here. Even on the run up to Christmas. They also do not have a greeting card culture. We hunted high and low for a card to send a friend but they don’t exist.

With the occasional exception the architecture is also very utilitarian here and nothing to write home about. Even if you could find a blessed notelet on which to do that.

Back to Spain we go.