Thursday, January 11, 2023
We chatted up some people at breakfast. They were from Door country, with two kids in college at the U of Mn and one at Eau Claire. Small world. We waited outside our hotel for our tour pick up today. The van was almost 20 minutes late and we were just about to start to worry that we would have to figure out alternative plans for the day when Sergio arrived. Yay. It was three couples again in a van with our guide. That is a pretty sweet way to do a tour. Today’s people were Chelsea and Cameron (Alternatively called Chris) (by me) from Jackson, Florida and Ed (sometimes called Eric) (by me) and Julia (enthusiastically and loudly called Jessica) (by me) from New Jersey. Both couples were about 30, so it was interesting to be the old people. Chelsea and Cameron work for the school district – which has 127,000 students. That just blew my mind. We talked a fair amount about their schools; it was very interesting to me. Keith got to ride up front with Sergio. It was a nice, comfortable ride.
First stop in Braga was a church on a hill. We drove up and up, then stopped for a photo op. Sergio said we could walk up the 200 steps to the top, or ride with him. Keith was the only one to say he wanted to walk! Ed and Julia joined him when they saw that the old guy was going to do it. It was the first inside of a church this trip. The dead guy was interesting, as always, and the strange diorama dealie was very interesting. They had a funicular from the mid 1800s that runs by having two cars cabled together. The top one gets filled with water until it is super heavy, then gravity drops it down and it pulls up the other car. We wanted to ride it, but timing didn’t work. Next time.
The next church was super old, and then had super older bits. The main sanctuary has two organs facing each other. One has 1000+ pipes, and the other has double that. One gets played every Sunday, the other only occassionally. Doesn’t seem very fair. Sergio said usually there is someone there to give us a tour of the other parts, but today, no. The lady at the desk just gave him a ring of giant 6″ skeleton type keys and off we went. There was a very fancy room of a tomb of an old archbishop, then on to an even older room of another archbishop, then a super older room (the king’s room) where the remains of the parents of the first king were relocated, along with an old archbishop. They broke the cover of the archbishop’s tomb about a hundred years ago (or 10 or some amount of years. It is blended in my head) and he was looking pretty good and mummified, so they got him some new clothes and put plexiglass over him. As you do.
We walked around town. We encountered some small kids. They were verrrrry happy to be wearing crowns. I was very happy they were wearing crowns. When we saw school groups in France, all the kids wore matching hats. I thought that this was a slant on that, but then the capes sorta blew that idea. I think it was probably St. Somebody day and they were celebrating. OR, they just regularly wear crowns. I just have no problem with that.
On the way to lunch, Sergio showed us a restaurant that had found some Roman ruins under their restaurant. They just covered them up with a see through floor.
On to the next town of Guimarães. We went to the castle and the palace (do you know the difference? I do. Castles have jails). The castle was from LONG ago – pre-1000, but I forget what 100 it is from. 700? 800? Does it matter? I say no. Old. I love the crenelations. The palace was huge and lovely. HUGE. We set the alarms off by leaning over to look at swords – WHOOP WHOOP WHOOP!
We had town time and I was obsessed with cork purses. I am a purse addict. I can’t allow any more purse purchases, because I do not even carry a purse. The cork purses were so cute. Do they grow cork here? I guess so. I kept thinking that was in southeast Asia, but then I realized I was thinking of rubber trees. Anyway, then I was shopping for a cork purse or tiny backpack for my sister, but they didn’t have any with blue straps (she is a blue girl). Keith shopped for tarts and gelato. He was more successful than I was.
We walked on part of the Camino de Santiago. The trail is marked with a shell emblem. Cameron’s mom has hiked the whole thing, and most of the Appalachian Trail. Chelsea noted again that she does not hike, and room service is very important to her.
Tonight was another gorgeous night back in Porto and we walked and window shopped and ate at Wok to Walk, the place we liked so much in Amsterdam. We watched The Out-laws and I was amused. This is a great, relaxing vacation.