A Little Drive Around

 Yesterday was a beautiful day, and after morning chores we decided to take our first little road trip, along the Duoro River and then down the Atlantic coast a little.  

We put our International Driving Permits in the glove box and got underway.  We got our first taste of European village driving getting to the Douro River, and saw a couple of puzzling European road signs along the way which reminded us we need to brush up on them.  Google Maps guided us along picturesque, narrow, cobblestone streets.  We saw a tantalizing bit of Porto [edit: actually Vila Nova de Gaia, on our side of the Douro), including a museum and a riverside market we'll explore someday.

Once at the river, there is a nice road running alongside it to the coast.  We saw some classic Portuguese fishing boats and many people fishing in the river too.  You can find better Douro photos all over the internet, but we were actually here!  It's just as gorgeous as the internet says.  

We followed a local road along the coast and had a picnic lunch overlooking the wide Atlantic, then took the highways home. We haven't encountered any of the infamous aggressive Portuguese drivers yet (but we have heard some angry horns), in fact we saw many examples of courteous driving. We hope this is more the norm.

On the way home we stopped at another large grocery store, Mercadona, which is about the same distance from our apartment as El Corte Inglés but in the opposite direction.  Both are just a few blocks away, and both are excellent.  We stopped with the intent of "just looking around a little" and ended up with two bags full of groceries: fresh produce, spices, pork for stew, and so on.  We also got a 5 liter box of wine for a little over €5, which works out to less than a dollar per standard 750 ml bottle.  And it's good!

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click in the black outside a photo when you're done.)

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