2013 Euro Vacation: Portugal - Porto and Pinhao

Porto, Pinhao and (briefly) Sintra

After blitzing the tourist sights of Lisbon, we hired a car and headed for Porto via Sintra. It was a pity that we didn't allow more time for Sintra - it's a very attractive place with a lot to see. We made a brief stop there before heading back onto the motorway to Porto. We took one of the lesser motorways (rather than the busier A1) and it was surprising how little traffic there was until we were almost in Porto itself. We stayed in an old hotel right in the old town (attended by the usual stressful drive into the busy centre down narrow streets). The hotel luxuriates in the name Grande Hotel do Porto, and it certainly had an air of (somewhat faded) grandeur about it. The dining room and downstairs bars were very elaborately decorated and furnished - the rooms were not quite as flash, but fine for a few nights.
We found Porto to be a really attractive place, with enough to keep us old tourists occupied, and with some great places to eat. We had an excellent dinner at a place called La Ricotta - we stumbled on it while looking for somewhere else - it featured local meats, cheeses and wines and was a great find.
Porto is the home of port of course, created by English wine merchants, with British names and ownership still of many of the prominent wine companies.
We did a boat trip along the river, featuring the six main bridges (including one iron bridge designed by Monsieur Eiffel himself) before catching a restored funicular railway up the the top of the hill so we could walk across the top level of the very high Ponte de Luis. From the other side of the river we caught a cable car down, with the intention of doing a port tasting at one of the many wine houses that line that side of the river. Despite having been recommended to do the Sandeman house visit and tasting (which would have involved a walk of about 100 meters), we somehow managed to drift off the track, and walked about 2 Km up steep hills and narrow (although picturesque) paths before finding a completely different place. By then we needed port to help recover, so sipped our way through a fine selection of Cockburn's ports (company owned by a Scottish family, who also own Graham's). Duly recharged, we made our way back down to the river and ended up at our erstwhile destination Sandeman's, where we had some lunch and another drink involving port.

Henry the Navigator monument (yes, he's everywhere)

Old iron bridge designed by Eiffel

Grande Hotel do Porto

Ponte de Luis from river boat

Porto railway station interior

Porto tram - just like the Lisbon trams

Porto old town from the river

Porto from the Cathedral hill

This is how they used to ship the port down the Douro
(now they use bulk tanker trucks)

View from top of Ponte de Luis

And another view from Ponte de Luis

Roof framework in winery - try getting that
approved

by your local council building department

Tower that dominates the skyline

When in Porto ...

Pinhao

Rather than drive directly back to Lisbon to catch our plane to Bordeaux, we drove instead along a very picturesque (i.e. narrow winding and stress inducing) road (N222) from Porto along the Douro river, to a small town called Pinhao, where we stayed at an excellent place called Quinta de la Rosa - a vineyard and winery also owned by English people. We had found it on the internet and were very pleasantly surprised by the place. Just out of Pinhao, it is situated on the steep northern slope of the Douro. The accommodation was excellent - a near new two storey room, with a supply of estate wine and port available at very reasonable prices. They also served dinner, so we opted to eat there - as it turned out we were the only people booked in for dinner and the girl serving us left us with bottles of white, red and port and asked us to help ourselves. This was too much temptation for your correspondent, who is currently still suffering from the hangover resulting from a lack of self control. Very nice wines though, and it seemed like a great idea at the time.