No trip to Portugal would be complete without Port wine and the Douro Valley is the source. We experienced good luck on numerous occassions during our visit there.
There are several towns in the Douro but to immerse yourself in Port, stay at a Quinta like we did. The Quinta de Marrocos and their staff were wonderful! The Quinta sits on a hill above the Douro River, across the river from Peso da Regua. Now, I’ll explain our good luck.
We arrived around 3:30 in the afternoon, in time to sign up for the last ‘visit’ of the estate for the day, thus we escaped the worst of the heat (and it was hot!). Our companions were a young couple from Austria, Melanie and Kevin, who were also our dinner partners at the banquet of Portugese specialties (and estate produced wines and Port) just after our tour and tasting. We enjoyed sharing travel stories so much that they finally had to kick the four of us out of the dining room so the staff could clean up and go home.
The Quinta provides breakfast which is served family style so all guests (they only have five rooms) share the table. Morning one we met two couples from Montreal and also shared the table with the young Austrians. Morning two we lingered at the table with a couple about our age from Denmark swapping travel tales and disappointment in the current state of American politics.
Our one full day in the Douro Valley got off to a slow start due to the heat and the former evening’s volume of Port. We finally decided to head to Lamego which was having a festival (what luck!). After a short but challenging drive through the mountains we arrived. Heading to the center of town, we saw a car leaving a prime parking space right next to the festival booths (what luck again!). We paid the meter for four hours giving us until 7:10.
Festivals don’t really get going until very late so not much was going on at 4:00 in the afternoon, and it was HOT. We had some ice cream, bought some cured ham, a melon (they have the best melons in Portugal) and some cake and cookies from some of the booth vendors who were all delightful. Dropping our purchase in the car, we decided to walk around the old part of town and happened upon the tourist information office. Lamego has a church/sanctuary up 696 stairs that is the big attraction in town. We were in no mood to battle the heat and climb 696 stairs. We learned that the town has a little tourist train that goes up there so we headed over to the pick up spot and were lucky to have one come by within just a few minutes. Well worth the €8 for both of us to go round trip. The train takes you up, gives you 15 minutes to get your photos and takes you back down for a short tour of the rest of the old town.
We had about an hour after this excursion to eat and retrieve our car before our time expired. We walked back up to the festival taking some photos along the way. Dave wanted to check on the car and we even thought about feeding the meter so we could stay a little longer. Good thing we did! A policeman and a tow truck were on the verge of taking our car. Apparently on festival days, the parking rules are different. Seriously, the tow truck had lowered his tow hook and was ready to attach it to the car! Another minute later and we would have been in a real mess. As it was, we did not even get a ticket! Now that’s luck.
So, no dinner for us in Lamego. Lucky for us we had the makings of a picnic with our ham, fruit and cake so we went back to the Quinta, where, lucky for us, the tasting room was open so we were able to buy a bottle of Port to go with our other goodies. The staff were so nice that they provided us with plates, forks, knives, and glasses so we could enjoy our dinner on the terrace. Lucky, lucky day!
Hope our luck holds out as we search for the Schist villages.
