After a lovely evening sail out of Lisbon yesterday, we woke up to enjoy a relaxing but educational morning at sea. One of our cultural specialists, Miguel, gave a presentation on the Portuguese Age of Discovery and our photo instructor, Jennifer, gave us with tips and guidelines to improve our photography skills.
After lunch we split into different types of vehicles to explore the charismatic city and World Heritage site of Oporto. We travelled around in open air buses, tuk tuks (motorized rickshaws), old-time streetcars and vintage cars, catching the eyes of most other visitors as we rolled down the streets like a blast from the past. As I took in the exquisite architectural sights of Oporto, I felt as glamorous as Doris Day while sitting in my 1953 Volkswagen Beetle. With wind from the open skylight blowing through my hair I was on top of the world. Driving around we saw examples of Romanesque, Gothic, Baroque, Neo-classical art and Portuguese iron architecture side-by-side with buildings that have been refurbished, yet kept their traditional character. With all the little crooked, colorful, and funky streets it was certainly easy to understand how J.K. Rowling found some inspiration to write the first Harry Potter book from her time spent in Oporto.
Of course we could not leave Oporto without visiting a local port house. We therefore assembled at the Ferreira port house which was founded by a family of winemakers from the Douro valley in 1751. We were treated to an informative tour around their wine cellars and tasted their famous port wine, which they have been preparing with the same traditional methods for 250 years. As we drove back to the National Geographic Orion, slightly tipsy, we had lovely views over the Douro River and the Rabelo boats that used to bring the wine from the Alto Douro wine region to Porto in the 17th Century.
