From Iberia with Love 2019

Day 2 in Porto was reserved for making our way of to the other side of the river where all the port distilleries were located for a port tasting. We decided to go straight to the source and check out the oldest port company, Taylor's, instead of doing a tasting tour of any kind. Probably not all that surprising to most, however for some reason it blew my mind, most of the port companies in portugal were actually founded/owned by the English hence all the standard names such as Taylor's, Sandman, Offley, Graham, etc.  It was a bit of a...

One thing to note about Porto is it's not a big city if you're looking at the main attractions. It's really about a few old churches, but mostly about the riverwalk, food, and even more so about... well... port.  Chubz could not have been getting any more vocal. Everywhere we went, if she was awake, she was fully narrating our trip to the amusement of onlookers. She had recently found her voice (not the crying kind), and felt she had to "ahhhhhhhhhhhhh" with every bounce from every step I took. It was unbelievably adorable and funny.  Porto is a stunning...

The title for this post is quite butchered, but on the way from the park to our next destination, Porto, we had to stop in Guimaraes (pronounced G-we-ma-re-ash), which is close enough if you try to add in "Amelia".Whatever, made sense at the time.  Guimaraes is the oldest city in Portugal and is considered its birthplace. Their king was born here, and there is so much history in this old city! First thing's first. By the time we checked out (took our time) and drove through the mountains, it was lunch time. So we bee lined for the old town square,...

The area in which we were currently staying is Lindoso. I couldn't come up how to incorporate Amelia into Geres, so I had to generalize :P The airbnb left us an ideal "day trip" itinerary with full directions and stops worth making within a 2 hour vicinity. We really debated just staying put and taking it easy, recouping in the mountain air before we head to the big cities again, but figured we were all the way up here, might as well at least check a few out. We started off with the castle of Lindoso which was just a...

We spent the weekend in the most northern part of Portugal in Lindoso, and even crossed the border into Spain at one point. What an incredible weekend it was! It started off with finishing up in Coimbra by checking out one of the oldest science museums in the world at the university, stopping by for some super delicious pastries, because when in Portugal, that's practically 90% of your fuel. Once we hit the road and were driving North, we obviously HAD to stop in Braga. It's practically one of the oldest and most religious places and home to the archbishop. We made...