Boulder to London

Last weekend, Melisse and I enjoyed a fabulous 4 day weekend in Portugal.  We spend Friday in Porto before hiring (renting) a car and driving to Peso Da Regua located on the Douro River for the Douro Valley Half Marathon.  We spent Saturday and Sunday in and around Peso Da Regua before driving back along the river to Porto for a late night flight back to London.  This should really be several full blog postings, but since I’m getting ready to leave town for the next 4 weeks, I’ll give you the highlights.  Maybe if the plane has WIFI tomorrow, I’ll write some more from 30,000 ft.

Starting with general impressions of Portugal, the place is beautiful.  The people are incredibly nice and the places we visited  operated at a much slower pace.  The food was incredible everywhere and there was a nice mix of modern and historic architecture.  Porto was a town that seemed to have lost its overall significance in the global scheme of things, but no one seemed to care.  The Douro River and all of the small towns that fall along its banks were both historic and modern and in most cases, agriculture seemed to be the way of life.

There are a couple true highlights from our time in Porto.  First, was our trip to a little fishing village not far from Porto.  On the advice of a local, we walked up to the town.  He was sure it was only 2 miles, but after walking for over an hour, I’m pretty sure it was a little further.  When we got there, we were hungry and thirsty and ended up sitting down at this little table outside of a cafe.  Melisse went in and came out with two beers, some grilled octopus and something that was similar to an empanada, but slightly different.  As we sat out in the sunshine we watched the people, enjoyed the great food and ordered another round of brews.  When we finally got up to settle the tab, it was 9 euros!

We left the cafe to head back to town and were very lucky to find a little bus that we could hop on.   We proved to be stupid tourists in this instant as we hopped on the bus and sat down.  The bus driver pulled away and then pulled over and stopped the bus and started talking to us.  People all around snickered as we looked at him confused.  He had the door open as if we should get of the bus (which I did) while Melisse tried to use some Spanish to figure out what was going on.  It turned out that we needed to pay (duh) and we gave him a few euros and got back in our seats.

The second great moment came that evening when we found a really incredible restaurant.  Melisse had located the place earlier in the day as it was tucked away in a little alley.  We timed it perfectly as we were the first ones there, but the place filled up quickly.  The wife was the chef and the husband served all of the food and ran the bar.  I think it had 4 tables inside and another 2 or 3 outside.  Once we sat down, he quickly brought out some complimentary tapas and recommended a bottle of wine.   We ordered a massive feast of fish that was prepared perfectly and followed it up with pudding and coffee.  He also provided us with an endless complimentary supply of his homemade after-dinner liquor.  Needless to say, we stumbled home and slept well that evening.

OK…so this hasn’t turned out to be the highlights version…I’ll do some follow up posts tomorrow to talk about Peso Da Regua, the race and Quinta da Barroca!