Today we are going for a river cruise up the Rio Douro, well to be more accurate we are going to cruise down after catching a train up to Regua. The train left the central station at 9:15am and we were in Regua by 11:05am. But before going into that, the train station is worth visiting. The foyer is lined with big ceramic tile paintings that are characteristic of this area. They depict various historical events and are very cool. Everywhere around this city and this area, buildings both old and new will have their frontages covered in ceramic tiles and patterns. Even the most run down, decrepit building, will have the most amazing ceramic tiles covering its front.
Anyway, back to the train, once again we were entertained by the people that take public transport. It was a pretty dumpy old train compared to the nice modern ones that we had seen at the station, and it seemed to be filled with lots of large and loud Portugese women, that my father would refer to as ‘Fishwives’. And now I understand completely what he was referring too. These women spend their entire time berating their husbands at every turn, in a volume that involves the whole carriage. And the way that they work together you would think that they were the originators of the solidarity movement.
We moved from the train to the bus glad that we had survived unscathed. This was all going swimmingly, but it was when lunch was served that we observed that we seemed to be the youngest ones on the boat, and it seemed to be the ‘Probus big day out’. Our first observation was that once the food came out they pulled the curtains. We wondered if the view was distracting them from their food. Lunch turned into trough night with one guy eating so vigorously that he splashed himself in the eye with overspray. We had to take our hat off to him though, he managed to sustain his pace of consumption, rubbing his eye with one hand and still transferring food with the other. It really was a laugh a minute.
It was about this time that the boat slowed down, at first we thought that it had to change down a gear to cope with the extra loading, but it was the first of the locks going down stream. It dropped us down 34 meters in 10 minutes. We were surprised with just how quickly it emptied out.
We finished the cruise back in the city at about 5:00pm. The journey down was quite a mixed bag through areas that seemed quite remote, some quite large villages, vineyards, narrow sections with great rocks on either side. We had heard rave reviews about these cruise, which is why we decided to do it. We wouldn’t rave about it, but it was certainly interesting, it was certainly entertaining, and it was a great way to see a part of this area that you wouldn’t see otherwise.
We finished the day by getting our Port tasting. This is the city of Port, with all the big names on bold display on the river bank. But all it really comes down to is, “how much do you want to spend?” One little wine shop we went into had a bottle of port that had been bottled in 1879 and for 1250 euro you can take it home. Evidently it was s very unique wine, from a very small boutique vineyard, that the owner of the shop had only read about until he came across that bottle. And there is was on the shelf with all the others. We didn’t get to taste that one though. A shame.
Anyway, back to the train, once again we were entertained by the people that take public transport. It was a pretty dumpy old train compared to the nice modern ones that we had seen at the station, and it seemed to be filled with lots of large and loud Portugese women, that my father would refer to as ‘Fishwives’. And now I understand completely what he was referring too. These women spend their entire time berating their husbands at every turn, in a volume that involves the whole carriage. And the way that they work together you would think that they were the originators of the solidarity movement.
We moved from the train to the bus glad that we had survived unscathed. This was all going swimmingly, but it was when lunch was served that we observed that we seemed to be the youngest ones on the boat, and it seemed to be the ‘Probus big day out’. Our first observation was that once the food came out they pulled the curtains. We wondered if the view was distracting them from their food. Lunch turned into trough night with one guy eating so vigorously that he splashed himself in the eye with overspray. We had to take our hat off to him though, he managed to sustain his pace of consumption, rubbing his eye with one hand and still transferring food with the other. It really was a laugh a minute.
It was about this time that the boat slowed down, at first we thought that it had to change down a gear to cope with the extra loading, but it was the first of the locks going down stream. It dropped us down 34 meters in 10 minutes. We were surprised with just how quickly it emptied out.
We finished the cruise back in the city at about 5:00pm. The journey down was quite a mixed bag through areas that seemed quite remote, some quite large villages, vineyards, narrow sections with great rocks on either side. We had heard rave reviews about these cruise, which is why we decided to do it. We wouldn’t rave about it, but it was certainly interesting, it was certainly entertaining, and it was a great way to see a part of this area that you wouldn’t see otherwise.
We finished the day by getting our Port tasting. This is the city of Port, with all the big names on bold display on the river bank. But all it really comes down to is, “how much do you want to spend?” One little wine shop we went into had a bottle of port that had been bottled in 1879 and for 1250 euro you can take it home. Evidently it was s very unique wine, from a very small boutique vineyard, that the owner of the shop had only read about until he came across that bottle. And there is was on the shelf with all the others. We didn’t get to taste that one though. A shame.
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