Lisbon - Porto

We have had another few busy days in Portugal. We continued on with our pre-cruise excursions by going out to Cascais and Queluz palace. We started with a drive to Cascais which is a town about 30km from Lisbon. It is right on the Atlantic Ocean and it had some pretty amazing beaches. This was close to where we were earlier in the week when we went to Sintra.

After a short stroll through the streets of Cascais, we headed to Queluz palace. Construction began on this palace in 1747, when the future King Pedro III commissioned the expansion of an existing country estate into a royal summer residence. Architect Jean-Baptiste Robillion played a major role in giving it Rococo character. There are also some lovely gardens attached to the palace that reminded me of Versailles.

After our tour ended, we headed down to the waterfront to meet up with the rest of our group. It was another really hot day without any clouds in the sky. There were a lot of cafes along the walk and we stopped in for a drink. The architecture was amazing. Like most European cities, it has some very narrow roads.

To end our day, we had a dinner with our tour group at a local restaurrant.

The next day, we boarded a bus to drive to Porto to meet our ship for the Duoro river cruise. The Duoro river region is where port comes from and we were looking forward to learning about how it is made and of course tasting some! We stopped in the town of Coimbra for lunch where Darren and I had a Portuguese dish called francesinha. It’s a famous Porto specialty: essentially a sandwich piled with beef/steak, ham and sausage, covered with melted cheese and drenched in a rich, slightly spicy beer-and-tomato sauce. It’s often served with fries, and sometimes topped with a fried egg. It was very good, but very filling.

We then made it to the ship and got checked in. Tomorrow is a sailing day. We sail all the way up the river and then eventually we will make our way slowly back to Porto.