Portugal-Spain-France-Italy 2007

Our Travels

September 2007

London - Gatwick to meet Janet off the Seattle flight then train to Waterloo.

Waterloo to Paris on Eurostar. Try to buy tickets to Irun on the Spanish border and Lisbon.

No luck so buy tickets to Barcelona instead.

Two images on the banks of the Seine at twilight.

Get off the "Train Hotel" in Barcelona to find we have been riding in Cinderella's Castle all night......

Barcelona

We buy tickets for Lisbon then straight to the beach for a couple of hours for Janet to start work on her "all over" tan......

Wandering the back streets of the city

A small workshop that was unattended. It looked like it could tell a lot of stories

Some superb old architecture and some sensitive uses today.

A quick rest under a knurly old tree

Barcelona train station

Watching the resident turtles doing backstroke in the pond which is part of the atrium built into the old railway terminus in Madrid

Lisbon

Our hostel in Lisbon

Before the crowds

The view down to the main square from the Poets Hostel

The view of the Lisbon city skyline from the ferry crossing the Tagus River

A Tagus ferry heading for the south bank

Lunch in on the south bank of the Tagus River in Seixa

Janet before our ride on Lisbon tram E28 round the Baiiro Alto which can only be described as awesome.

"Mr Toads wild ride"

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Here the tram lines appear to head into the Dumo

Towards the end of the tram ride this car was blocking the track, broken down. I and two other passengers jumped down to push it out of the way. The tram driver who had seen it all before a hundred times, just sat in his seat and voiced his critique of the process....

Passing over the Douro River approaching Porto Railway Station

Interesting architecture everywhere.

In Porto we changed trains and headed for Regua in the Douro Valley

A Cruise boat on the Douro River

Expressways crossing the valley and power generation on the hill tops, the Douro Valley in 2007

In Regua though the "Don" still keeps watch on the south bank

Today though it is fishermen on the river bank not washer women.

Our travels in and a look at the railways of the Douro Valley are better documented here

Vila Real

The Dumo in Vila Real

I could not resist taking this image of the "politically correct" Nissan dealership in Vila Real

Several images of the house and gardens "Casa Mateus" outside Vila Real

Janet posing for the bottle cover

I'm not clear now why we did not participate....

Waiting for the bus back into town. All the fencing was for a car race later in the month. Vila Real has a history of auto and motorcycle racing dating back at least to the 50's

This "Bird of Paradise" flower was growing in the median of the road in Regua town

Two views of the Roman bridge in Mirandela

As usual we were hunting for lunch in the back streets

The beach in Espinho on the Atlantic Ocean

Porto

Porto Station

I have a real soft spot for street musicians playing songs from the 70's and 80's.

This guy and his puppets were playing "I have a dream" by Abba

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Walking down to the north bank of the Douro river in Porto

We walked across the lower section then back across the upper. No easy feat by any standard.....

Entering the Taylor's wine cellars on the south bank

Full circle, from the vineyards of the Douro Valley to the wine tasting rooms in Porto

Santiago De Compostela

We left Santiago with the intention of traveling along the north coast of Spain from Ferrol to Bilbao. Unfortunately we failed to reset the time on the alarm clock to Spanish time from Portuguese and missed the first train of the day. The bus from A Corunna to Ferrol was then 20 minutes late and we missed the daily FEVE train by five minutes....

So rather than wait a day in Ferrol in the rain we back tracked via Madrid

The southbound train stopped to allow the northbound to pass on the single line from A Coruna to Madrid. most of those passengers on the platform have bailed off for a smoke!

Bilbao