May 2019                                              itinerary link                                      continue from Day 1

We started our second full day in Porto at the temporary Bolhao Market and got out breakfast of strong coffee, fresh juice, and some breakfast pastries. Then we walked to our favorite train station, Sao Bento, purchased 23 euro round trip tickets to Pinhao, and took in the tile works around the station.

People hear about port wine, but most don’t know where the name came from. What exactly is port wine? According to Wikipedia: Port wine is a Portuguese fortified wine produced with distilled grape spirits exclusively in the Douro Valley in northern Portugal. It is typically a sweet, red wine, often served as a dessert wine, though it also comes in dry, semi-dry, and white varieties. The wine received its name, “port”, in the later half of the 17th century from the seaport city of Porto at the mouth of the Douro River, where much of the product was brought to market or for export to other countries in Europe.

So we decided to take the train along Douro River to the Douro Valley wine region. Pinhao is one of the centers of Port wine production, and we chose Quinta da Roeda vineyard in Pinhao for our picnic lunch/winery tour. I was there a year ago & was impressed enough to return with more friends.

We noticed people running to the front of the train as we got on the train at Sao Bento. We were just busy finding 8 seats together for our group. The 2.5 hour journey began by going through the urban area which spread out more than we imagined. Almost an hour later, we started seeing the river on our right hand side. It would be wise to take seats on this side for the better view.

Once we got out of the greater Porto region, we did not see many populated areas. The train passed by an empty little station after another. Douro was a wide river surrounded by fertile green hills, and most of us never got tired of looking at the view. Finally a sizable town appeared, and it was Regua where the train stopped for 5-10 minutes. The conductor appeared and told us to get off the train. Puzzled, we stepped off the train and were led to the cars in front half of the train. They were consolidating the passengers and reduced the number of cars. Aha! This was why people were running to the front at Sao Bento.

Almost a half an hour later, we arrived at Pinhao Station. We checked the time table for the return trip, then found a van taxi that was willing to take us to our winery for 7 euros. We thought we misheard. Is it per person? NO, the whole gang of 8 in one car. It was about a 10 minute trip.

Quinta da Roeda is the vineyard owned by Croft Winery, one of the major port wine producers in the world. We felt so welcomed there, and the 30 euro picnic was quite a spread. So much so that we did not care whether we got the winery tour or not. (We did, and their presentation was interesting enough.) It was very relaxing just sitting around the picnic table gazing at the green scenery all around. I can do this again, I thought.

The trains ran about an hour apart during the day, and it was not difficult to find a seat even though seats were not assigned. There were quite a few people waiting for the return train at Pinhao Station by mid-afternoon, but everyone got a seat.

Dinner was at Cafe Guarany where free Fado performance was happening 2-3 nights per week. It was a nice cafe with artsy decorations and relatively reasonably priced food that was quite good. It’s been part of the Porto arts scene since 1933.

Day 1: Porto

Day 2: Douro Valley

Day 3: Aveiro

Day 4: Guimaraes

Day 5: Porto

 

May 2019                                                                                                                   Itinerary link

Porto(population: 214,000) is one of my favorite cities in Europe: it is big enough to have a lot going on to stimulate my curiosity, yet, the city core is small enough to cover on foot. We were here about a year ago with two friends – an artist and a writer couple – and fell in love with the wonderful vibe of the city that resulted from the mixture of artsy environment, natural beauty, and kind people.I enticed 7 friends to experience Porto with me this time. Things are quite reasonably priced in the whole country of Portugal, and people are quite nice. One can get by with just speaking in English because somebody always comes to rescue you if you are stuck with a language barrier.

I flew into Madrid from London to meet up with my friends at the airport terminal where Ryan Air was flying in and out of. By the time we arrived at our Airbnb apartment in Porto, it was close to 10 PM. Our host directed us to a restaurant close by, and it was packed with locals. The smell of grilled fish excited all of us fish lovers, but, alas! They ran out of most of fish. We asked them to bring us whatever fish they could, and, they did. Delicious! So fresh! And only 70 euros for the whole table. A great, but, short, introduction to Porto.

So I count the next morning as the beginning of our 5 full days in Porto. We ventured out to other close-by towns 3 out of 5 days, thus, we actually had 2 full days in Porto itself. Our place was a very spacious 4 bedroom(3 bathroom) apartment literally right across from Bolhao Market. Unfortunately, the Market was going through a major renovation. Fortunately, the merchants were moved to a temporary location just a couple of blocks away.

Some of the early risers marched out of the apartment, walked around the neighborhood, then went to the temporary Bolhao Market to have some juices made with fresh off the tree fruits. It seemed some of the bakeries were popular spots, thus, we went to one and got some pastries. Yummy!We were to fill the first day with our own version of a walking tour of this UNESCO World Heritage site. The first stop was the City Hall just a few blocks west from our apartment. The City Hall anchors the main commercial street of Porto, Avenida dos Aliados. At the southeast corner of this street stands – some people claim – the world’s most beautiful McDonald’s. 

From there, it was easy to spot Clerigos Tower that dominates the skyline of Porto & could supposedly be seen from anywhere in the city. Up the road from there is the most famous book store in the world, Livraria Lello, where J.K. Rowling was inspired to write  Harry Potter books. It is wise to get the tickets online to shorten the wait time to get into the store. Too many people come to see this store that they have to charge 5 euros per person admission to control the crowd. You get 5 euro discount when you buy a book. Is it worth the wait and 5 euros? Well, there is no other place quite like this any where around the globe. Yes, you can FEEL Harry Potter here. I am not really a fan of Harry Potter, but the word enchanting comes to mind when I think about the place. They do an excellent job of choosing what kind of books to stock, and there are so many beautiful books that you are tempted to buy unless you hate standing in line to pay.

The book store does its best to entertain people while they are lined up, but, it can be a good time to visit Igreja do Carmo church that one can see up the road. Since I had already been to that church, I held our place in line and sent others to this ornate Baroque church.

By this time, all my friends were already deeply in love with Porto. We slowly walked down the alley ways lining the hills toward the river in an euphoria. Wait. Oh, my god! A million euro view! Miradouro da Vitoria doesn’t seem much at first glance & one can pass by without a thought. But if you choose to walk in and discover the view from there, you will be a happier person for the rest of the day.

Walking down a bit more, we came to the area where Bolsa Palace, St. Francisco Church, and a smaller Sao Nicolau Church were located. We bought the tickets($10 euros each) for the 1 PM tour of Bolsa Palace & went first into Sao Nicolau, then into St. Francisco. It looks like an ordinary big church from outside, but, once you step inside this church, the amount of gold poured into this place of worship will shock you.

Bolsa Palace is the old stock exchange building famous for the ornate interior decorations. Individual tour is not allowed, and one has to join the official tour to see the place. Impressive.

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We finally reached the riverside area called Ribeira. Very lively with street musicians and people dancing, this area is filled with colorful buildings, cafes and restaurants, and street merchants. We were happy just being part of the scene here till we realized we had to eat lunch, finally. I looked for an old sailors’ restaurant/bar that we liked last time we were there, but it was gone. Sad.

Fish Fish. We ended up having sea food at this well known upscale restaurant close to Ponte Luis bridge. It was a bit late for lunch even for Portuguese standard, thus, they did not seem to mind when we occupied the best seats upstairs with the view of the river and ordered just a couple of mains along with a bunch of appetizers. We had to have some wine, of course. The final bill was about 15 euros per head. Not bad for the kind of excellent food and the spot on service we had.

We took time walking back up the hills just looking at artsy displays mixed in with usual souvenir shops. After a stop at a cafe for the strong coffee and cookies, we went home. But, of course, we had to make one more stop: Sao Bento train station. Wow! We would be coming here daily to get on the train? Really? This is not a museum?

The dinner was a birthday celebration for 2 of the friends, and it was time to splurge. I made a reservation at 17 Degree Restaurant at Dom Henrique Hotel, a 5 minute walk from our apartment. The whole city was under our feet in this 17th floor restaurant. We each ordered a full meal, and two bottles of wine were ordered for the table. The restaurant brought out candled cakes for the birthday girls. Our “splurge” set us back 25 euros per head.

Day 1: Porto

Day 2: Douro Valley

Day 3: Aveiro

Day 4: Guimaraes

Day 5: Porto

April 2019

We docked at the cruise terminal in Charlotte Amalie(population: 10,354), the capital city of U.S. Virgin Islands(population: 107,200) and the island of St. Thomas(population: 51,600), which was named after a Danish queen. There were shared van taxis lined up at the terminal, and it seemed like one could get to a place anywhere on St. Thomas for $10-15 per person. We wanted to go to Red Hook area to see our niece who operates a B&B there, and we were quickly put on one of the vans by the van organizers. After driving up and down the hills for 30 minutes or so, we arrived at the B&B and surprised our niece who had no idea we were coming. When we saw her last time, she was a lawyer working in downtown Los Angeles. She and her husband now operate the B&B full time because business is great, according to her. It was a nice place with the view of a bay and tastefully decorated rooms. I still remember her as a toddler who stuffed crayons in the holes on the back of a television set: adults were wondering why the TV stopped working!

She told us to get on the ferry and go to St. John rather than staying in St. Thomas. “More pleasant there” were her words. She knew we were not planning to go buy jewelry.

Red Hook ferry terminal was just a few minutes drive from our niece’s B&B. It was a simple place with the ticket counter, a waiting area, and bathrooms. The 20 minute ferry($7 each way) runs hourly though out the day. The scenery was quite spectacular on the ferry, and the ride was comfortable. 

Cruz Bay(population: 2,700) is where the ferry docked in St. John(population: 4,170). It’s the shopping/dining in Cruz Bay and/or visiting the National Park that one can do in St. John. We decided to stay in Cruz Bay thinking there was not enough time for an adventure.

It’s a low-key, laid-back beach town with restaurants by the water and condos on the hills. More pleasant than Charlotte Amalie, we could agree. We were hungry by this time, thus, we walked into a restaurant right on the bay. The service was a bit slow but the food was fine. Not very cheap, but you didn’t expect that. 

There were some shops that had interesting artisan creations, but they were not cheap. After a couple of hours, we hopped back on the ferry. At Red Hook terminal, we were able to find a taxi van that took us back to the cruise terminal. We noticed outlet malls and shopping centers that looked like warehouses on the way but were not tempted to stop in. Some people go to St. Thomas just to shop, we were told.