When public projects go wrong in the UK we moan like mad of course but don't celebrate the successes. Today we needed to use the Porto metro to get to the airport in order to pick up our hire car "I don't believe it" was uttered under my breath several times as we tried to buy tickets. In London we used to have Oyster cards which were easy to top up or you bought tickets from one of many machines. Now of course you just tap your credit card in and out - brilliant.
The Porto metro is new with smart trains running all over the city. The epicenter is Trinidade station, the "head of the octopus" as a taxi driver described it. It only has three ticket machines so there were long queues at each and they looked complicated so we went to the ticket office where you get a numbered ticket and when your number is called you can go to the desk, the current victim was number 90, we had drawn 144 so it was going to be a long time before we would be served so we abandoned that idea.
Back to one of the three machines, it took 13 minutes to get to the front of the queue, no one ahead of us seemed confident, I managed to spend €4 on what I think was two tickets to the airport, I also ended up with the previous customers "Oyster card", he was so confused by the transaction he did not collect it. What a shambles, London transport is amazing by comparison. Our tickets were not checked so I still don't know if I bought the right ones, it was a half hour journey so €2 a head seems wrong.
We got to the airport, collected our hire car and set off north via Braga and a religious site called Bom Jesus de Monte which is a very picturesque Italianate staircase up to a shrine, at least it would have been picturesque if the sun was shining.
We felt very sorry for a wedding couple who were getting married in the church today, the cloud was low, the views non existent and it was raining, not what was in the plan.
Our hotel in Porto was called Sweet Porto but I misread the name when I booked so it has been Sweet Potato ever since. It was very good and the staff helpful but it is brand new so whilst well appointed and comfortable it lacked charm. We have now left the big city and have driven 100 miles north, just over the border into Spain where we are staying in a nice hotel which was once a 16th century palace, the residence of the counts of Maceda. They built it on the site of a Roman Villa so you can say it has a bit of history. It is a “Parador”, part of a Spanish hotel chain which was set up to make use of old and important buildings in order to preserve them, it is a bit like staying in a National Trust House. We stayed in one in La Gomera for Christmas in 2020 and have been looking out for the opportunity to visit another.
The picture shows the main staircase, quite grand I am sure you will agree but despite our grand surroundings we were concerned about eating tonight. It is a Monday when many places closed and it is a Bank Holiday in Spain so another excuse to close so just in case we went out into the town early at 7pm to find everywhere was shut! Oh dear, we were going to starve.
Oh no we weren't - restaurants don't open in Spain that early, after walking round for a while everything opened up and we had a very nice meal, mind you were were wearing our fleeces, al fresco dining in the cold!
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