I was realizing last night at 3 am that I still wasn’t 100% converted to Portugal time and was probably mid-Atlantic ocean somewhere in my struggle to be fully converted to the Europe timezone. Cindy and I are able to be here sans Hayden & Gavin and boy is it a change. I also realized that when we started this blog we were in South America, the boys were eight years younger (as were we) – now they are both in college and Hayden just had his 21st birthday. How time flies…

Day 1 (getting here) – our flight was great, arrived around 10 am and then took a taxi to our hotel where the rooms weren’t ready until 3 pm. We walked around a bit, then found our way back to the hotel where Cindy found a chair to nap in until 3 pm – yes there might have been a snore or two. Took a nap, got up found dinner and found our way back to sleep.

Ok Day 2 was nice – probably a high of 75F, started off cloudy which was great. We walked from our hotel across the “big bridge” to Porto – we are staying in Gaia the other side of the river. Then we proceeded to walk, and walk, and walk some more. Watching my new Garmin watch click off the steps was we strolled. We found ourselves inside a couple of churches – constructed in the 1700’s – and then coffee shops and finally a book store where supposedly the Harry Potter series was inspired. For the most part we walked around, then took a great 3 hour walking tour around all of the other spots that they take you on – most were interesting – lots of history – there are no signs to tell you what something is, so walking tour is a must.

Today (Day 3) we sort of took it easy – walked around a bunch, took a river boat cruise (45 mins) and then found a nice spot to have some water and an iced tea. Getting around here is super simple and English is easily understood and communicated. My Portuguese is terrible beyond a couple of base words. Now conveniently finding ourselves by the pool since it’s 85F outside. Tonight is a Fado – Portuguese guitar show and dinner. Tomorrow we take a 2 hour car ride to Spain to Baionia. On Friday we start our hike off with a 16 mile jaunt up the coast – either gonna be fine or super sore. I really think we’ll be ok as with all the walking yesterday we were great today. If you like walking up/down hills this certainly is the place for it – or Port wine…

Lots of tourists here, most are only here for 2-3 days, so we fit in perfectly with our 4. This is Cindy looking across at where we are staying (other side of the river) – so we hiked down, then across the bridge (lower walk way), dinner and back.

That’s it!