Porto & Home

Today is our final day to tour, as tomorrow we head home by way of Madrid – more on that later.

First thing, we board the coach for a trip to central Porto and a pre-arranged electric Tuk Tuk tour of old Porto. As expected center city Porto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Porto is a maze of small streets and small buildings. From the street, homes looked quite narrow as owners were taxed on the width of the street-facing façade (second on left). Early churches and the central train station were decorated in tile picturing events in the city’s and country’s history.

The Carmo Church – third tile, middle and right – appears to be one structure but, in fact is three: two churches, one for nuns, the other for monks of the Carmelite order, “joined” by a one meter building between to ward off communication of the worldly sort between the two communities. This URL is pure “advert” but has some interesting pictures or the sanctuary. https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g189180-d6987980-Reviews-Igreja_dos_Carmelitas-Porto_Porto_District_Northern_Portugal.html

The “middle” tile shows the blue tiled front of the Cathedral dedicated to St. Anthony https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g189180-d6620615-Reviews-Igreja_de_Santo_Antonio_dos_Congregados-Porto_Porto_District_Northern_Portugal.html. Again, an “advert”, but there are pictures and history not available on our Tuk Tuk tour.

I’ve included two pictures of the Sao Bento train station in Porto. Reconstructed on the site of the Convent of Sao Bento de Ave Maria that was destroyed in 1896, the present structure features over 2000 Azulejo tiles https://mymodernmet.com/azulejos-portuguese-tiles/ depicting the history of Porto. To the left of the picture of the Dom Luis bridge http://Porto (Campo Alegre) and Vila Nova de Gaia (Candel — check out the article – spanning the Duoro River from Porto (Campo Alegre) to Vila Nova de Gaia (Candel) is a picture of Porto Cathedral, Porto’s oldest and largest church https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porto_Cathedral .

Finally, we took the rail car from the street level of Porto to that of Vila Nova where we visited a market before returning to the ship.

This our last night on ship before our departure before dawn for the trip to Madrid and home. Our group at supper didn’t look especially anxious to be leaving the ship. Paul and Antje, however, look forward to catching up with their children’s sports schedule upon return to Wyomissing, PA. Peter and Helga, sequestered for seven days of our trip due to a positive PCR test, spent three nights at the Intercontinental, a five star hotel, and joined us on our flight home.

Post script:

I wish to end with a short story regarding our flight home. Despite arriving at the Francisco Sá Carneiro Airport two hours before scheduled departure, we boarded and waited on the tarmac for 45 minutes for “the weather to clear”, making our arrival in Madrid later than planned. Not since landing in Doha at night, or Heathrow during daylight have we experienced such an anxiety producing transit from landing to boarding gate, involving this time a train transfer to another terminal, several elevators, yards of moving walkways and annoying notifications for time needed to reach the gate – starting at 23 minutes – while we were already 20 minutes past the boarding start time. Always nagging at me during our rush to the gate was the knowledge that Amy can have significant ambulatory impairment. Luckily she was able to “soldier on”.

I truly thought the door would have closed and we had missed the departure!

By some stroke of luck, pausing for a much needed bathroom break, we rounded the corner to find the American check-in desk – several smiling attendants who assured us that they had our bags – within view of the passport and boarding pass control.

Settling into our seats, we learned that despite our late boarding and a 20 minute queue for takeoff, we’d arrive on time after a seven hour, twenty minute flight. I’d timed it, correct to the minute, take off to touch down.

Despite the trials due to COVID and anxiety around meeting deadlines, we all have fond memories of our sixth family river cruise.