July 16, 2019 – We were up, had breakfast and were checked out by 9:30 and were off to our next destination…Portugal!!! We will be in one apartment for 12 DAYS and we are so excited to settle in a bit somewhere. It is very cool to be able to see all of the sights in the amazing locations we have visited, but we have been going pretty much non-stop since June 17th. It is time for a rest.
It was a nice drive along the way. There were many rivers and wetlands. As we entered Portugal, the landscape became coastal looking and in Pontevedra, Portugal we got our first glimpses of the Atlantic Ocean at the Lerez River.
We stopped further along the way in Viana de Castelo, which is on the ocean at the mouth of the Lima River. We wanted to get to a certain high point to see the view so we hopped on the Funicular de St. Luzia and rode to the top where there is a mountain top park and a church the Santuário de Santa Luzia. I had a lunch packed for us so we found a place to sit in the shade and had a picnic in the park. It had been warm and there was a nice breeze to cool us off.
After lunch we took a stroll over to the church. It is a beautiful site where you can see a unique view of the region, which combines the sea, the Lima River with its valley, and all the surrounding mountains. According to National Geographic, it is considered the 3rd best panorama in the world. We captured some photos and then went to check out the church.
Construction on the Santuário de Santa Luzia began in 1904 and granite was used for the majority of the stonework. The stained glass rose windows are the largest in the Iberian Peninsula. There are frescoes that represent the Passion and Ascension of Christ in the dome and two marble cherubs on the main altar. The three altars are of magnificent carved granite, as well as the two pulpits. In the main façade of the temple stands a statue of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in bronze, dating from 1898, which is prior to the building itself. There are 26 bells in the bell tower. We did not have time to go up into the towers as we had to meet our next host at our apartment in Porto.
After lunch we headed on down the road and arrived in Porto, or more accurately Vila Nova de Gaia, which is the village on the south side of the Douro River directly across from Porto to the North. Vila Nova de Gaia is where all the Port Houses have had their cellars for hundreds of years and it is steeped in port wine tradition. More on that in a later post on what we learned about port wine.
As we dove down into the old neighborhood it was a hectic drive through ancient buildings on one-way streets that were not always marked as to which way they go. We finally found our apartment but parking was another story. The parking laws are a complete mystery even to the local Portuguese apparently. There was supposed to be free street parking, but when Wayne finally found a spot and wedged our little car in to what looked like an unmarked parking zone with cars lining the street, he noticed several of the other cars parked there had parking tickets. WTH? Wayne walked up to a local contractor working on a building and asked him if this was a free parking zone and he confidently said “Yes.” Wayne pointed out the many cars with tickets on the windshields and the guy just shrugged his shoulders and said, “Ya, sometimes they ticket the cars but most of the time they don’t. No one really knows.” Got it, thanks…..not needing 12 days of tickets, we decided to park in the paid garage down the street, which was expensive but convenient.
We let our host know that we arrived and his mother came out of the bar next door and to meet us. She spoke no English, zero, and Portuguese is pretty difficult to understand. There are enough differences and subtleties to make Portuguese and Spanish two different languages. The pronunciation is one of them. Portuguese has a lot of slurred sounds, it is a very fluid language, as opposed to Spanish, where words are more deliberate. I was able to decipher some of the things she was saying though and she showed us the apartment and all the basics and left us to settle in.
The apartment is really cute. It is two bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchenette, a dining table (which Wayne quickly took over as his desk) and a living room. It is small but will be very comfortable. The living room/dining room combo and one of the bedrooms face the street, so we took the back bedroom. I took over the other bedroom for all of the bags and such. It was a workday, so Wayne got to work (the WiFi sucks by the way) and I went out in search of groceries to fill our fridge. It will be nice to have some home cooked meals.
