Finally, a night in to catch up on blogging. Unfortunately, we’re afforded the time because Porto apparently closes down at 9:00 pm.

We’re on day three of our trip and have already done most of what there is to do in both Lisbon and Porto, Portugal’s two largest cities. They’re quite different. Lisbon reminded us a lot of other European cities we like as it has some medieval ruins (although much of the city has fallen over after serious earthquakes in the last thousand years), lots of pretty public squares, and narrow winding alleys. It has cable cars a la San Francisco to help haul you up the extremely steep streets and the three old neighborhoods (Baixa, Barrio Alto, and Chiado) have a lot of charm. Still, we managed to crank out some miles and do most of what Lisbon had to offer over a day and a half then jumped a train to Porto after both giving Lisbon a strong “A” grade.

Porto is much more blue collar than Lisbon and has less to do. The neighborhoods are fairly dilapitated and the whole city just seems exhausted. Most of the downtown area is under construction as they build a new subway system which doesn’t help matters. The main attraction is the number of port wine distilleries on the river. We toured two (Taylor and Sandeman) and found them to be much like Napa or Sonoma wine tasting tours, although Amy doesn’t like port very much. We had dinner and strolled around as we watched store after store close, leaving us dessert-less until we stumbled onto a place that served up two tiny scoops of gelato for a whopping 8 euros, which is almost twelve bucks. Sheesh.

We leave Porto tomorrow to head into the hinterlands of the Douro river valley. It may be a couple days before I post again. Nice to see your comments! We’re having a blast!