Porto
We were so pleased to leave Foz so with an early start and 62 miles to go we headed to Porto. We were very excited to go there as we missed it out in the way down, the WCC were unable to secure enough berths for the rally to go there so this was a treat.
We arrived at around 4pm with the ebb still running we took the precaution of anchoring to wait for slack water. As it happened we were given an outside berth so it was not really necessary but after about half an hour the waters were quite different and we proceeded in.
We were soon tied up and off we went to the marina office to book in. We were served by the most joyous 60 year old woman (she just blurted out her age like a badge of honour). She was a delight, she insisted that we ate that night in a local restaurant and not to go into Porto and we were also handed free tickets for port tasting and a tour of the Churchill "Port House". We returned to the boat as we had one thing to do…our radar transponder had come adrift at the top of the mast. Ian was keen to be the one to volunteer to be the be to go up the mast; who was I to stop him? We put the cockpit cushions over the windows incase anything was dropped as the windows are very vulnerable. Sadly there was no way to fix it, it turned out that the base had snapped and a new method of securing it would be required(I have purchased a bracket). Ian strapped the SeaMe to the bracket with gaffa tape as a temporary. That evening we went into the local village and found a restaurant where everyone was dining in the road outside, it looked completely mad. We were eating next to a transit van. As it turned out I had the best fish I had on the entire trip I was delighted.
Today we walked to Porto town centre, it is not as far as everyone says and it is a lovely walk along the banks of the river. We walked past the port houses and had lunch in a "pod restaurant" right on the bank of the river, it was lovely. The whole restaurant was pre-fabricated elsewhere and brought to the location, it was very smart but the service was really slow. This meant we had limited time to be tourists but sometimes it is hard to get moving in the morning after a long sail. We walked over the bridge at both levels, had an ice cream and then made our way to Churchill's. Churchills is named after Caroline Churchill as her husband whose family was one of the original port houses families until they sold it so he cannot use his family name "Graham"… we now have a few "boutique" ports on board.
We arrived at around 4pm with the ebb still running we took the precaution of anchoring to wait for slack water. As it happened we were given an outside berth so it was not really necessary but after about half an hour the waters were quite different and we proceeded in.
We were soon tied up and off we went to the marina office to book in. We were served by the most joyous 60 year old woman (she just blurted out her age like a badge of honour). She was a delight, she insisted that we ate that night in a local restaurant and not to go into Porto and we were also handed free tickets for port tasting and a tour of the Churchill "Port House". We returned to the boat as we had one thing to do…our radar transponder had come adrift at the top of the mast. Ian was keen to be the one to volunteer to be the be to go up the mast; who was I to stop him? We put the cockpit cushions over the windows incase anything was dropped as the windows are very vulnerable. Sadly there was no way to fix it, it turned out that the base had snapped and a new method of securing it would be required(I have purchased a bracket). Ian strapped the SeaMe to the bracket with gaffa tape as a temporary. That evening we went into the local village and found a restaurant where everyone was dining in the road outside, it looked completely mad. We were eating next to a transit van. As it turned out I had the best fish I had on the entire trip I was delighted.
Today we walked to Porto town centre, it is not as far as everyone says and it is a lovely walk along the banks of the river. We walked past the port houses and had lunch in a "pod restaurant" right on the bank of the river, it was lovely. The whole restaurant was pre-fabricated elsewhere and brought to the location, it was very smart but the service was really slow. This meant we had limited time to be tourists but sometimes it is hard to get moving in the morning after a long sail. We walked over the bridge at both levels, had an ice cream and then made our way to Churchill's. Churchills is named after Caroline Churchill as her husband whose family was one of the original port houses families until they sold it so he cannot use his family name "Graham"… we now have a few "boutique" ports on board.
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Dinner in the street -
Docked in Porto -
Ian investigating our transponder -
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Sandeman -
The bridge -
Porto from the hill -
Quality controlling port