After visiting Favios for bread and muscatel, we decided that was it for us with excursions. The only one left before our return to Porto was to see another church with a long bus ride involved, so we decided to relax with a day on the river when I could work on photos. Instead of a sea day, call it a river day.
As a side note about river days, Kathleen and I have decided that this river cruise is one we could do again (with the same ship, stateroom, and crew). But the next time, we would just sail up and down the river—no excursions. There is so much to see from the deck of the ship. It would be seven glorious days of rest.
Our day on the river would give me lots of chances for more photography of houses, abandoned villas, other boats passing by, churches and castles at the top of hills and the amazing locks. See what I mean by perusing these photos from that day. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping. And PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…
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- The river and sky were gorgeous all day.
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- The farmers were burning slash in their vineyards.
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- The reflections were wonderful.
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- And I love trains. Especially multi-colored trains.
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- Just a beautiful river.
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- That winds its way through narrows.
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- And gives me views of interesting villas.
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- And bridges.
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- Low bridges.
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- Really low bridges.
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- From both sides.
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- And moving away from one without hitting it. But we did have to duck.
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- I call this my Mr. Bill house. If it could talk it would say, “OH NO!”
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- Lots of churches on the river.
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- Lots of bridges as well.
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- Everywhere you look.
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- And another damn coming up.
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- I liked these trees.
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- Another boat coming out of the lock we were going into.
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- RAMMING SPEED!
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- This is our second trip through the highest lock in Europe.
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- An amazing journey.
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- You can see how far below us the river is on the other side of the damn.
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- I did my best to get you a vertical panorama so you could see what if felt like on the deck.
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- It didn’t work great but you get the idea of how huge this lock is.
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- Looking up just before we got out of the lock.
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- The door is going up to let us out.
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- We can see another Viking boat waiting to get in.
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- Not sure how long she has been waiting but everyone looks relaxed.
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- On board our sister ship.
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- This is the view from our verandah down the side of the ship showing you the six inch distance between the side of the ship and the side of the canal.
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- The last building before Porto.
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- And there it is.
The following two hours or so would be spent sailing up and down on the Douro between Porto and Gaia, where we dock. The problem was that there were five other boats tied up at the wharf, but they needed to be in the right order. For us to be able to raft with them (tie up and have to walk through them to get on and off the ship), every boat needed to be in order, with the boat leaving first on the outside and then each one inside of it leaving later than the one moored to the dock. Since our boat would be there for two nights, we needed to be up against the pier with two boats rafted out from us, one leaving the following day. One would be leaving the morning after, while Torgil (our boat) would not sail again until we were off, and another group of passengers was on board and ready to sail in three days. It’s very complicated. But it meant we had to kill time waiting for the other two boats to get ready to move. In the meantime, we sailed almost out to the Atlantic Ocean and back again. This meant I could get a ton of photos of both cities in a really great light that I could share with you. And here they are…you know the rules.
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- First up is a chance for me to create a black and white I really like.
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- Here comes a harbor tour boat.
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- With load of tourists who don’t look that happy.
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- And a church that has been totally tagged.
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- Trains on the bridge.
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- Abandoned buildings on the shores.
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- Streetcars. We found out later they are used ones from San Francisco.
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- Looking ahead to the concrete bridge.
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- And more unhappy tourists.
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- And more shore side homes.
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- And churches with amazing tile on them.
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- Close up of the tile.
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- One of our favorite wines is made here.
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- The Gaia side.
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- As is this one. On the way out I thought that was a church. Turned out to be part on a military base.
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- I bet we passed 30 harbor tour boats.
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- But it was a beautiful day.
That was it for our river day. We finally got docked, did cocktail hour, listened to the port talk for the next day and had dinner. I will be back tomorrow with our final day in Porto…or maybe this afternoon. We are back in Lisbon today and don’t have much planned until tonight.
You can’t be unhappy in the middle of a big, beautiful river. —Jim Harrison
Thank you Jim for making such an effort to get the most interesting photos from all the places you go. It makes it possible for us to see what a day as your camera is like!
I have never considered the option of staying onboard for a Douro river cruise. I was always aware of the long bus rides for excursions to places that involved things that wouldn’t be of interest for Nicole. You have given me food for thought ?
We have had some great river days on the three we taken so far.