Solar Do Espirito Santo Lamego

... jumping in the pool until the ladies returned around 6:30 with dinner. Another pleasant wine filled evening ensued.

                                   

... pleasant town of São João da Pesqueira. St John the fisherman. After some looking we found the campground near the firestation. Why were we here?! Because Everett had via Twitter arrange for a port/wine tour at Vinoquel one of 100 port makers in the world. We were the only campers in the place and enjoyed strolling through the sleepy town and an early night.     

... night's stay, we tried another more underhand tactic. Our worst fears were realised when increasingly desperate, we upped our offer to first 2 then 3 nights stay with no offer appearing we resigned ourselves to the fact that we simply weren't the kind of people that they wanted, and headed back to the train station to start plotting an alternative. Nope Regua won't appear on our "ooh we must come back again" list, any time soon ...

... a local bakery. I have not gotten to see much of Coimbra yet, so you will have to wait for my stories about this city. It is known as a college town, with a wonderful old university and many historic sites, so Im sure I will have much to tell. I hope all is well back home, I am looking forward to returning in a few days. Traveling abroad has been great, but it will nice to be back to a familiar territory (and language). See many of you soon!

... took me one and a half day... i partly cycled during the night...really nice no cars! and beautiful views from the hills + sunset!). Also some friends who I met earlier on my biketour visited me here. I camped with Joao nearby a beautiful river and I have spend full moon with Lucia and Alegria. Lucia and me slept outside and we watched the moon all night!

Next day we grabbed our car, surprising cheap, €24,50 and headed out the Douro, I programmed the scenic route and although it wasn't far today for kilometres, it was all winding roads, great views, steep cliffs and country Portugal, it was amazing. With oodles of pictures we stopped at a cafe overlooking the Douro and had meat and salad that came with chips, everything comes with chips. Before we were on our way, I was freaking out because the roads were so tiny, the locals we ...

... drinking our own Port. The train is used by tourists, but is still mostly locally used. Once in Villa Real, we found a room on a nice cobble-stoned pedestrian street above a pastry shop. There is no shortage of those and it seems there´s a pastry shop every other block. Villa Real is home to Mateus wine. I hadn´t heard of it, but Deanne´s family used to have it at ...

amazingly beautiful area with a river running thru green hills, dotted with small portugese white washed villages and vineyards which are dug into the siderd of teh hills. the rain didn't stop us from doing a couple of winery tours and climbing up 600 odd steps to see a beautiful church.... although we did find ourselves inside bars and bakeries samling portugals finest ports and pastries .... and the chinese restaurant of course (habits die hard).

... to the obscenely pretty riverside town of Amarante. The buildings flow right down to the river's edge, whitewashed with undulating terracotta roofs, crisp blue window frames and baskets of begonias and geraniums. The restaurants serve vast trenchers of roast kid with mountains of roast potatoes or steaming pots of cockles from scarred wooden benches overlooking the river. From here we set out the next day for Bom Jesus and Citânia de Briteiros - two places not on ...

... we stayed in a cozy Quinta named Levada. We had a lot of wines in this period, two were special, Vertentes 2001 and Tres Bagos Sauv. Blanc 2005. Also good food there, as the other places that we have been in Portugal. I had a very good octopus in restaurant named Barriguinha Cheia, translated to English as Fully Small Belly!!! Another interesting thing was visiting the wine makers. The last ...