Lemigo and the Douro River

I absolutely LOVE Portugal! There is SO much to see and do. Although we made the most of our transit day, by crossing the border into Portugal at 10:15 Spain time, 9:15 Portugal time, it still feels like five days in this fabulous country is not nearly enough.

We started our transit day by walking the Portuguese El Camino, alongside the river leading into the town of Ponte de Lima.

I’m so happy the weatherman was wrong about the 100% probability of rain. Might it have been smarter for him to hedge his bets a teeny bit with a 90% probability?

The cloud cover made photos more interesting and more importantly, made our walk very pleasant.

This river’s legend dates back to Roman times.

Roman soldiers on a campaign to conquer the world mistook the Lima River for the River Lethe, the mythological River of forgetfulness. Because there was no bridge, they had to enter the river to get across. Believing that doing so would erase all their memories, they refused. I can’t blame them. Who wants what is known today as a “senior moment” ( except it would be more like a senior decade)?

The general (that’s him on the horse by the river bank) crossed first, then commanded each of his soldiers, by name, to come across, thereby shattering the “memory loss” legend.

After we crossed the bridge, we easily located where we could add stamps to our Pilgrim Passport.

Yes, we have become obsessed with collecting stamps wherever we stop. I’ll talk about that in a future post. But right now it’s time to share photos of Guimarães, a beautiful village that has some historical significance —but what that significance is currently escapes me. Hey, I have the perfect excuse. I crossed over the River of Forgetfulness.

We finished our transit day by walking down the 608 steps (that was MY count; Wikipedia claims there are 686 steps) to dinner at a restaurant in Lamego. And what a beautiful walk it was!

Okay, there are many, many more photos from this fantastic walk, but I will end with the view from the bottom, because we still have some fantastic sights from our Douro River cruise.

We had the boat all to ourselves,

and there weren’t many other vessels on the river. We only saw one river cruise ship.

Just when you thought the day couldn’t possibly get any better, it did.

The Quinta da Portela de Baixo is not just a museum; it is also a vineyard carved into the side of a hill overlooking the Douro River,

where we had lunch and sampled port wine. I had no idea that so many different kinds of port existed! Did you?

Our final stop will be Porto, which Mike and I visited in September of 2003. I wonder if women will still be carrying live chickens on their heads, the way they did back then?