May 2024
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Note 39 – Exploring Coimbra, Nazaré, and Óbidos with an Experienced Guide (Porto to Lisbon)
While researching tour guides on Tours By Locals for our days in Lisbon, we found a professionally licensed guide with over 25 years of experience that we thought we’d like, Carla C. She also offered transportation and guide services from Porto to Lisbon, in addition to standard tours in Lisbon. She appeared to be available…
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Note 38 – Douro Valley Visit
Day 3 of our Porto visit was our longest excursion of the trip as we boarded a tour boat for a leisurely cruise up the Douro River through two locks to Régua and the beginning of the Douro Valley wine region, visited a local winery, then returned to Porto via the Miradouro Train. We boarded…
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Note 37 – Portugal’s Roots – Braga & Guimarães
The Portuguese have a saying: “Braga prays, Coimbra studies, Porto works, and Lisbon gets the money and parties”. For our second full day in Porto, we scheduled a private tour north of Porto to the Minho region to find Portugal’s roots in the towns of Braga and Guimarães. We found the tour on Viator, provided…
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Note 36 – Porto Means Port!
Continuing our afternoon, we had a late lunch at the restaurant recommended by José, Adega São Nicolau (meaning Winery on St. Nicholas Road). It’s really small and has some tables outside, but even though they had umbrellas, in the rain it was pretty wet. There was about a 45-minute wait, so we put our name…
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Note 35 – Porto Morning Walking Tour
For our first full day in Porto, our plan was a morning walking tour Paula booked through Tours By Locals, then lunch, then across the bridge to Vila Nova de Gaia (usually just called Gaia) for a port house tour in the afternoon. The original tour we booked was a half-day with a professionally licensed…
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Note 34 – Portugal Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
Unlike our Iceland, Greenland, Canada cruise (Note 5 through Note 25), where I blogged almost every day, I’m writing about our Portugal trip after our return. It will probably be a few days between posts as I process all of our pictures. We substituted this trip for our cancelled trip to Israel and used the…
Notes By Nancy 