The Pantzers parlay Portugal

June 25: Porto and last cruise day

Today we visited some key sites in Porto, a very quaint city, and Portugal’s second largest city after Lisbon. It is situated at the mouth of the Douro river.

A visit to McDonalds is compulsory because it is said to be the nicest and most elegant of this fast food chain (elegant and McDonalds don’t seem to fit in the same sentence until you see Porto’s store)

Porto railway station has a beautiful tiled entrance, in the blue and white colours which you see all over Portugal.

The city has a lovely market, very clean, very modern, with local produce- fruit, cheese, oil, hams, and of course sardines.

It has lots of churches, and quaint narrow streets.

The main shopping area is Santa Catherine St, where thousands of people stroll down the car free mall. On one of its corners, there is a magnificent blue and white mural.

This was our final night on the ship, so we had the usual Captains farewell, and yet another delicious dinner.

After dinner, we were treated to a cruise down the river to see the city lit up.

Porto has about 8 bridges connecting the two sides of the river. In this picture you can see two of them. The one at the back, called the Infant bridge, is the most recent. Built in 2003, its arch is one of the shallowest in the world, just 25 metres above its foundations ( the “engineer” readers of this blog will understand this!!!)