Douro Valley and First Visitors, Wolf Pup Adventures

We go to Porto for day trips quite often. It is super easy to get there by train from Braga. Walk from our apartment to the train station, hop on, read a book for the next hour, hop off in the city center of Porto. The São Bento Train Station itself is a popular tourist attraction because of the mosaic blue tiles all over the walls and ceilings depicting the history of transportation in the area. On this trip, we decided to go to the zoo — Zoo Santo Inácio. We didn’t know what to expect at a Portuguese zoo. We were pleasantly surprised by the large habitats provided to most of the animals. The lion enclosure highlighted the visit, complete with a glass tunnel where the lions would walk or lay overhead.

We returned to Parque das Serras do Porto for our next group hike. We hiked a different trail (PR PRD – Trilho dos Moinhos + Trilho de Alvre) in the park and like our first visit to this area, did not disappoint. The highlight was a gorge with a river at the bottom and sheer granite walls some of which used by rock climbers. The remote cafe was a popular spot with the locals. The weather was great and every table outside was full. They served up a local recipe of white wine, beer, and sugar. Odd combination but it tasted great and was quite refreshing. The menu was very limited. One of the only food items was a red wine-marinated pork sandwich. After marinating in wine, the meat looked grayish/pinkish — not very appetizing to look at, but it was so tender and flavorful. Incredible treat to end the hike on.

It is hard to choose a trail you have never hiked before and without any referral. I rely on WikiLoc which seems to be more popular than AllTrails in Europe. I check the TrailRating and other UserRatings as well as analyze the OpenStreetMaps Outdoor map layer. The OSMOutdoor map layer is great for determining the terrain and types of trails/roads. Some hikes in Portugal are more walkabouts that stick to roads and villages. We prefer actual trails and forests — more similar to what we are accustomed to in State and National Parks in the US.

Before winter arrived, we decided on a road trip to Douro Valley – one of the world-renowned wine regions. The windy, narrow road from the top of the valley down to the Douro River provided some breathtaking views but was also a bit nerve-wracking mainly due to the large tour buses sharing the road. When one of them approached in the opposite direction, you best get out of the way 🙂 Our destination was the small town of Pinhão. Not much to the town except wineries and wine tasting. We hiked from the bottom of the valley back up to the top. Some scattered showers but not enough to get wet and when the sun came out it was magical. A truly beautiful region of Portugal. We ended the day trip with a little wine tasting.

Our apartment has a fireplace. Word-burning stoves are still a fairly common source of heat in Portugal. Our garage is rather spacious — enough room for the car, bikes, and a stack of firewood along one wall. So we decided to have a metric tonne of chopped firewood delivered. We had no idea how much this would be and, when dumped out of the back of a pickup truck, filled almost half of our garage. Uh oh — maybe this was more than we could store. But once we got it all neatly stacked, it fit along the one designated wall and we now had enough wood to last most, perhaps all, of winter.

I enjoy going to SC Braga football (soccer) matches. We had the opportunity to go to a road match in the nearby town of Barcelos. We arrived early and the parking lot was fairly empty so we snagged a great spot in the back. The match was fun but it was raining hard pretty much the entire time. We had covered seats so all good but we wanted to leave early if we noticed a break in the rain and in order to beat the traffic jam getting out of the stadium. When we got back to the parking lot, it was madness. I call it parking tetris — the lot was jam-packed now. A lot probably designed for 300 parking spaces had perhaps 400 cars. It took us a while to figure out a path out of the maze but we managed. It was late at night and driving on really dark backroads in the rain was not pleasant. I think I’ll stick to going to home games where I can walk to and from the stadium 🙂

We received our first visitors from the US. Janet and Fena came to see what living in Portugal is like 🙂 We are super grateful they spent the time and money to come all the way to see us. We showed them around North Portugal including the coast and Peneda-Gerês National Park. Fena wasn’t feeling well and needed to see a doctor. I think they were impressed with how efficient and inexpensive healthcare is here. I hope they enjoyed their trip. It was really nice to see them. Sometimes you don’t realize how much you miss someone until you have a chance to reconnect.