Porto

We took the train from Lisboa to Porto, a 3 hour train ride.  A European lady older than us sat next to us and chatted the whole time.  She was born and raised in Mozambique, went to college in Portugal and stayed.  Mozambique wa a colony of Portugal.  Her parents were from Madeira originally, it is above the Canary Islands off the coast of Morocco.  She had packed some pancakes she made earlier and shared it with us.  It was very good.

We had plenty of luggage, our backpacks, hand carry and Dick was pulling a regular luggage.  Our original plan was to take the bus from Lisbon to Fatima then take the bus to Porto but I didn't know then we would have this much stuff to carry around.  So we changed plans, took the train to Porto and spent the night.  

                                       

With all that luggage we had, my plan was to take a taxi to our bnb.  But the taxis were on a strike protesting uber.  We had to walk to the metro, after a lot of confusion as whether to take the bus or metro and finally made it to our Airbnb.

We also had to find the post office to mail Marylou's stuff to Santiago and we were in a rush again to get there before it closed.  On the way, we saw taxi cars parked empty and the drivers milling around the square while the police were also around keeping an eye on the protest.

                                         

   

After a very tiring day we were rewarded by finding a nice cozy restaurant and the food was delicious. Dick and I tried the world famous Porto, it was great.  It was very smooth and just perfect to the palate, not very sweet.  Port wine started when the English mixed brandy with the port wine, according to last nights restaurant owner and waiter!

Our Porto Airbnb is also very beautiful.  Some young kids in their twenty' or 30's run it together, must be six of them.  They have converted an old building and modernized it but the original very old walls were kept.  It is beautiful and the view from our apartment was the decorated wall across the street!

 

Porto is a very beautiful city.  We took a boat ride on the river and with the boat ride were included three visits to the winery.  I really love the port wine.  It was Mother's  Day in Europe and the restaurants were crowded.  It was also an amazing warm sunny day,

Portugal is know for its blue mosaic tiles and we visited the tile museum as well as the train station where they have beautiful walls in mosaic tiles.  We also visited many churches where the gold is so disgustingly over done and you get angry that all these gold came from their colonies.