Our cabin is very comfortable and I'm really hoping nobody notices the hole I put in the wardrobe door when I hefted our metal suitcase.
After breakfast we were treated to a bus tour of Porto. So we traipsed across the pier into the set of big buses - most people on this tour are pretty old and slow. From the accents so far I think they're largely English. Probably because it's a slow moving crowd we were just dropped at the cathedral and then the group walked the short distance to the train station and back. Well, most people did, Lynn and I wandered off because we've seen most of that.
The standard system for tour now is that you have a little radio receiver with an earpiece charging in your cabin and when you're on an excursion you wear it round your neck, while your guide has a transmitter. Lynn refuses to ever use one. It's pretty crackly and when the guide got further away I found I was listening to some other tour group entirely. Anyway, it was all fairly painless and we were back on board before the ship unmoored at midday.
Because we were moored right at the mouth of the river we had to pass through the town, which was pleasant.
In the afternoon the scenery was all steep valley walls and wild forest. After afternoon tea we passed through Carrapatelo Lock, which seems to legitimately be the tallest lock in Europe with a rise of about 35 metres. It looks like there will be a few more big locks to come. At the top there was very little room below the bridge that tops the lock. The bridge cabin at the bow, and a lounge at the back, both collapsed down to half height like a poptop caravan.
It was only late in the day that vines started to replace the forest. In the evening we stopped and were bussed to a winery, Quinta da Pacheco, for dinner. For the (unlikely) alert reader, this is indeed the quinta where we had lunch four days ago. The conversation and tendency to sing along to the music confirmed the passengers are mostly English.
A quirk of the Douro is that ships aren't allowed to travel at night, so we remain moored at Peso da Regua. This is why we get some time underway during the day and why during some excursions the ship will continue on while we're ashore.
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