Trip Day 14 - Pinhāo and Winetasting in Lamego

Sunday July 5

Today we started sailing at 7 am. And it was very pretty again. 

Some modern inventions are a lot of fun. This photo sais that it was taken in Seixo de Ansiāes.

This one in Numāo.

We went through the Valeira Dam. Always fun.

Every dam seems different. This one open going up. It drips heavily from it so you have to be careful when you are sitting unexpexting in the front.

Short after 11 am we arrived in Pinhāo and went on a little hiking tour. A passion flower. 

We have the whispers around our necks and get told that we have to stop at the gas station. That's where this man in the gray shirt can always be found. He sells his moonshine there. It's Sunday but the gas station seems to be the local social area.

If the man above happens not to be there, the man in green can also help you. We all can have a taste of it but James and I are ok without.

The walk continues because our leaders want to show us the train station. 

It is decorated with several tile pictures. They are scenes of live when this station was built about 1880. The tiles were entered about 1937.

We walked further through quaint little streets,.

And finally came to our bus. All three groups went to three different wineries. 

The following photos say "Lamego" where we stopped to visit the Quinta Portela de Baixo.

It is up on top of a hill with a lovely view. The walkway to the estate is lined with all sorts of different little trees bearing fruit. Almonds, dates, apples, olives .....

First we visited the museum. This area with tools and barrels used to be used but of course now modern equipment is used somewhere else on the estate. 

The lecture explained how the wine and porto was used to be made and how its made now.

The white numbers on the barrels mark how much liquid it can hold (probably in liter).

And a cellar with very old bottles, never opened yet.

But we get our first sample.

After the museum we are led around the corner. A cocktail is offered with white port, ginger ale, ice and a mint leaf. Quite nice indeed.

Then, one after the other, we have more tastings of white wine, red wine, rose, and port in white or red too. I think we had a taste of 8 different ones in-between food tastings also made here.

Can't remember when we were back but at 5 pm the ship started to move again. I don't like the word "sailing" since the ship doesn't have a sail.

We could have signed up to visit the bridge but were not that keen and others were. Not taking places away. At 6:45 pm as usual we went to the Port Talk (info about the next day) and at 7 pm dinner started. 

Ha-ha, can you see that we never went hungry?

Some entertainment and off to bed. And always having a nice chat with some very nice people from all over the USA. It is always open seating at the meals and a lot of socializing in the lounge. Well, we are too busy to play cards. But as always it is very nice. We should go to bed a little earlier though.

Trip Day 13 B - 4th of July

Part B

Yes, today is the 250th birthday of the USA. James and I have very fond memories of the 200 years celebration when we lived in Fort Lee NJ and had the whole skyline of Manhattan out of our living room. Oh yes….

It is Saturday which does not really make a difference when you are on vacation and on a ship but the crew was very much into “helping us to celebrate “.

But first, when I looked out of our cabin window, I saw that somebody else already had celebrated … and unfortunately littered. 

The maid had also left an “artwork” on our bed while we were in Salamanca. 

The ship was “sailing” the whole afternoon so we decided to get comfortable, take advantage of the complimentary bottle of bubbly we had found in our room on arrival and I tried to do some catch-up on blogs. It is not easy to stay current. And it gets very difficult when too much time passes. That's why I like writing our blogs: sorting all our wonderful experiences.

The landscape going past was very nice and it looked so peaceful. Sometimes we saw houses and sometimes estates. And sometimes we pointed out “Look, a fixer upper! How about it?” We had fun.

The crew had also decorated the lounge and we were asked to come earlier to the port talk. We were all standing up and singing the national anthem. 

They also had prepared an USA cocktail. 

I must say that they try very hard for the meals to be very special every time. We get a menu the night before. Breakfast and dinner is always buffet. Dinner main course has usually 3 choices and we are asked to choose the evening before. We get a button (red for beef, blue for fish etc etc) to bring to the meal and put in front of us on the table. Quite well organized. 

Sorry, Kim, lost the dinner menu for this day. I can't remember what  mine (above) was but it was very good. Could those green vegetables be edamame?

James had opted for vegetarian pasta this time. He liked it.

We are docked and can go for a walk. 

It is a tiny little village, there is a party going on at the park on the river with some already asleep in the grass, and we walk past a dog sleeping in the middle of the street and some cats. 

We thought we could walk a circle back to the ship but at the main intersection didn't see where to continue so just turned around. In America we would probably call this country living. I think we were told that the village had 28 houses. We were also told that there are quite a large number of houses in the country side which get abandoned because younger people want to move to the big cities, even though in cities like Porto and Lisbon the rent is astronomical.

Entertainment tonight was Bingo Portuguese style. Just learned the rules at our church's bingo evening recentlyand now learned new. 

Hope you all had a fun 4th of July day too. Night, night!

(PS: I think by now you know noticed that there was a time laps blogging. This one and the previous were almost all done. The next days have not been started. I will try my best soon. For James and me and all who enjoy them. And soon you will find out what happened too. I am not ready to put that "on paper".)