Late afternoon again, but no sangria this time, beer and nuts instead. We are sitting in the foyer area of our hotel looking out the open glass doors watching the world go by and deciding where to go for dinner.
On arrival yesterday we walked the local area to get ourselves oriented, sat with a drink in the shade in front of our hotel, consulted trip advisor to find the best and nearest restaurant, soaked in the tub and later enjoyed grilled fish for dinner.
Today has seen us put our pride aside and do the tourist thing, hop on hop off bus tour, taking in some of the sights. We stopped off to walk through some local shopping strips, and stop for morning tea.(Portuguese tart included of course) We also stopped off in an area where many port makers cellar their produce. We visited the oldest port maker in the area, toured their cellars and sampled their wares, very enjoyable, and purchased a bottle of our favorite to bring home.
Now we are a bit weary and happy to rest for a bit. Colin has a sore foot so he has been hobbling today. We found the place we want to eat dinner tonight, but it is a bit of a hike, so we are yet to figure out the best way to get there. May have to taxi it, can't risk Colin further injuring himself!
(col)
Maria has just gone up to our room to retrieve the cord so we can upload a sample of today's photos ... So will do that in a sec. Before then however a sight we had forgotten to write about.
A couple of days ago was a public holiday, the same day we trained it from one end of the country to the other. As we passed through Lisbon, we noticed what we initially thought was a rodeo scene close to the train line. However as went further we saw that men sat on fences along the side of dirt streets as if waiting for some kind of parade, when it dawned on us that we were seeing the preparation for a 'running of the bulls' where a herd of bulls chase people through the streets, or more accurately, fool hardy people try to out run the bulls. Sure enough a couple of kilometers along we saw a pen with a bunch of bulls in it.