A week in Porto

The harbour in Porto is located in Duero River less then 1 km from the Atlantic sea. This effected us very much during high and low water including the swells. It felt like we been out sailing and not laying calm in a harbour. Worst was on Monday to Tuesday when it was very windy and raining. All boats was bumping around. During the night we lost one fender and one was in the water that we saved. Sadly the boat got some scratches that Edgar have filled in as good as he could. It is not easy when it is bumping. The positivt about the harbour is the view, the location as in close to the Sea , the city and have a cute little village next to us with restaurants, food stores, cafe, bakery and a Portuguese traditional washing place

So what do you do when you are not sailing. Relaxing, like reading a book, looking at a film or sleeping…. Nope! sleep in sometimes yes ( if you ask our daughters they who’d say we are teenagers) and have longer breakfast. Otherwise it is like having a home that needs your attention like cleaning, washing, repairing, food shopping and also filling oil, or change it after a certain time,checking filters, fill up water, organising. And since I love to take lots of pictures there is some extra work sorting them out and then use some in the blog and when that is done time to write the text to the blog. This is not always easy doing it in an other language then your mother tongue and sewing of course etc. We still organise on things around to get them there best place. Wherever that is? At the moment the beds in the cabins are full and that is not good when we get guests onboard soon.

Staying 1-4 nights then you quite busy so having seven nights is very long for us but it didn’t felt that long since we got to spend time with Sofia and Fredrik from Zelda. One day we walked in to Porto took the gondola up to the bridge and walked over to old town and walked back home to our boats. Totally 12km or 20 000 steps.

Together with Life@Sea, Currier Sur,Zelda, Balder, Esther of Sweden and Windysailing we walked to Churchill, witch is a port winery . There we a had a privet guiding and tasting.

I realised that we have missed the most beautiful Mc Donald’s ever so we had to go to Porto again. Edgar was quick to say yes when I told him that I wanted to go to Mc Donald’s. ( not my favourite place to eat at) And luckily just around the corner is Sao Bento train station that used to be a convent for nuns. The entrance is decorated with hand painted tiles. It is sad that there are some mistakes putting them up and that makes it even more charming. So glad we got to see it. Specially since we actually passed by it two days before and totally missed it.

In between we have had sundowners, lunch, small chats on the pier etc with other boat-friends Friday morning 16 sep we leave Porto and also say fare winds to Zelda that will sail to Madeira . We will meet them agin in LasPalmas

All in all Porto is a lovely place but the harbour needs to work on getting better wavebreaker.

Hugs Eva Ps I love to get comments from you