Ahoy there - OC takes a cruise!!!

[merry]

Bon Voyage OC dear - we'll miss you - come back soon!

His cruise is down the river Douro in Portugal - STPD and I went to Porto a few years ago and it was so beautiful and very interesting.

The ship sounds gorgeous!

Cabins
All the outside facing cabins on the MS Douro Elegance are finished to an exceptionally high standard with superior quality fittings in the most refined taste. Chic styling is evident throughout from the moment you open your beautifully polished hardwood door and step inside your luxury home for the next 7 nights; polished wooden furniture is complemented by fine fabrics, in warm, relaxing colours, uniquely designed and created for the Ms Douro Elegance whilst ‘hotel style’ twin beds with individual bedding which can be moved together or separated accordingly, will ensure a good night’s sleep in the finest crisp linens.

The sparkling marble bathrooms, beautifully designed, all feature shower with fully glazed screen, WC plus fluffy towels and bathroom cosmetics. The living area has two comfortable chairs and a table plus a small desk. All cabins enjoy the benefit of individually controlled air-conditioning, flat screen high-definition satellite TV, hairdryer, safe, telephone, and tea and coffee making facilities.

Best of all the Standard Cabins on the Upper Deck and Main (middle) Deck as well as the Deluxe and Superior Suites on the Upper Deck have full floor to ceiling windows which slide down halfway so you can watch the stunning river scenery drifting past without leaving the comfort of your cabin!

OC has a superior suite and will be very comfortable, I'm sure.

Can't wait to hear all about it when he returns!

This is the Douro, taken from Porto Bridge in 2018 when we were there. Maybe that's OC's boat passing underneath..

He'll definitely be passing under this bridge in the MS Douro Elegance

[OurCreature]

I walked across the top of that metal bridge with the arch, carefully avoiding both the railing and the streetcars. Once I started I did not dawdle, looked at the view every so often but not straight down, and when I arrived at the south bank of the Douro I got the cable car back down to near where the boat was moored.

In Merry's photo over on the top left you can see some boats where our boat was moored. It began service in 2017 so it might have been in the pic. You can see those boats are moored two abreast; the boat furthest out in the water is accessed via the boat by the quayside as the decks are all roughly at the same heights.

Strictly speaking, the south banks of the Douro is in a different municipality to Oporto, called Gaia. Gaia has a bigger population than Oporto (300k v something like 275k IIRC). I shall do a write-up about said cruise, but suffice to say it was very interesting in the Chinese curse sense, and was more like a coach excursion holiday based at a floating hotel. The upshot of it is that we've all been offered either 50% of our money back or the full cost put to another of their cruises in 2024 or 2025. I made some friends on the cruise and they are talking about putting the 100% towards a Rhine cruise, but I need to get details like dates from them before I decide what to do. I would like to do a Douro cruise for solo passengers in 2025 later in the year and use this year's cruise offer to pay for the Rhine one, but it all depends on dates and if the Rhine cruise they choose is for solo passengers. Our boat was just right for that, but I wouldn't have liked to have been on it when it is mainly couples - a bit too crowded for me!

[merry]

I shall do a write-up about said cruise, but suffice to say it was very interesting in the Chinese curse sense, and was more like a coach excursion holiday based at a floating hotel.

The upshot of it is that we've all been offered either 50% of our money back or the full cost put to another of their cruises in 2024 or 2025. I made some friends on the cruise and they are talking about putting the 100% towards a Rhine cruise, but I need to get details like dates from them before I decide what to do.

Wow! the full cost! but would you even trust them again> was it like... Butlins on sea?

I can't wait to hear more!!

(But I'm sorry it wasn't amazing and wonderful. You deserved wonderful )

[OurCreature]

was it like... Butlins on sea?

Rather more upmarket than Butlins on sea! The chief missing element was the fact that the boat wasn't cruising............valiant efforts were made to try to cruise and when that wasn't possible the Cruise Director worked his socks off to adapt the schedule to the new circumstances.

Arrival 2 April

I had a very good flight up in the first row of the plane, having enjoyed a cooked breakfast and a glass of wine in the No 1 lounge at Gatwick South terminal. The flight was to time and no problems there. Merry told me ages ago that Oporto has a lovely little airport and that is true. I had a quick exit and made my way to where I could see cruise guide Marta assembling her charges. One of them, an old lady called Chris, kept on trying to escape but Marta and her colleague Lucillia managed to thwart her every bid for freedom. Fortunately the coach to take us to the boat was close by because it was very windy and bucketing down with rain. We had a quick-ish transfer to the boat and checked in while our luggage was taken to our cabins. Inside my cabin was a welcome bottle of champagne as my de luxe cabin was on the upper deck, the same deck as the bar lounge.

All unsuspecting we unpacked etc and half an hour before dinner I wandered off to the bar lounge for the first of my free drinks and to start chatting with the other guests who came into the lounge in dribs and drabs. It soon became obvious that a fair number of the guests were in fact pairs of friends, but there were plenty of proper solos like me. After drinks we went down to dinner and I found myself sitting at table with a lady who had recently moved to Winchester, would-be escapee Chris and another lady.

And then the first bit of fun began. Chef kicked off the proceedings with something of a duff dinner for some. The choice was limited ie this or this and one of our ladies thought there should be more choices. Thinking about it while I type I'm not sure that was financially feasible for the cruise operator because it was a solo travellers package so the boat was only half full and fewer passengers makes it more expensive to offer a wider choice. Most nights two choices were enough for me. That apart, the dinner was undistinguished; the parsley in the carrot and parsley soup was invisible and the soup was rather bland in flavour. I had breaded cuttlefish for my main and that was ok, but those who had the pork tenderloin were in for a nasty shock because it was a big piece of meat that hadn't been cooked anything like properly and was raw in the middle instead of pink. Chris had the tenderloin, so I know that's true. In vain was it sent back to be heated up properly, because it kept on coming back not much hotter than it had been. So for anyone who had the pork that first dinner was something of a disaster. I was a bit tired after dinner (I'd been up since 05:00) so I went to my cabin, found the bed had been turned down nicely and a small chocolate left there, and tumbled into bed.

Here's a pic of the boat moored opposite Oporto. Technically the south bank of the Douro at Oporto is in another municipality called Gaia which in fact has a bigger population than Oporto. By population Lisbon and then Cintra are the biggest cities. But I digress; my cabin was below the top sun deck at the back of the boat on the other side of the boat. The upper deck also has a small sun deck outside the bar lounge, as you can see in the pic.

And here is a pic of a cabin like mine. It was very small compared with a hotel room, but nice. The bathroom and loo were a little cramped for a fat man like me, though Twiggy in her younger days might have been able to cope with it more easily. Here's a pic; it's the same layout but the bed is a big bed instead of twin beds put together, and I didn't have a leather armchair. What looks like a balcony isn't; it's by a big window which you could open or close as you wished.

And so ended my Arrival Day..........little did we know what was in store for us..............

[Furby]

Are there pictures of the tiny bathrooms.
I think a horrible holiday will make a more interesting story than a nice holiday.

Single tourists in general aren't economic are they. Sneaky of people to use a single holiday to go on holiday in pairs so as not to have to share rooms. Way back tiny little box rooms used to be available for unlucky single travellers but most hotels are re designed for large luxury en suite rooms only now. Which has turned out bad now they need millions of single rooms for asylum seekers and all is available is the larger luxury rooms.

[OurCreature]

Per Furby's request - here is a pic of my bathroom; I say 'my' but I don't know which cabin that actually is amongst the Superior Suites as I have stolen the cabin pics from the Riviera Travel website. When closing the shower door I had to stand as tight as I could in that corner by the shower head or the door wouldn't have closed past me. The toilet was to the right of the wash basin and a similarly tight squeeze.

Here's the bed(s). Two twin beds joined together. There's not much room either side of them, but a bit of space at the foot of the beds to accommodate 2 armchairs and a small round table, with 2 more chairs and another round table by the balcony/window. The entrance to the cabin is in fact the easiest place to move about - quite wide with shelf space on the right as you come in. It's a bit like a very short hall that opens out into the cabin itself.

If I had brains I would have realised that I could have used these pics first time round - I forgot I could reverse the horizontal on the pics as published to get the Riviera pics the right way round.

[merry]

I'm really enjoying this, OC!!

I think a horrible holiday will make a more interesting story than a nice holiday.

....Which has turned out bad now they need millions of single rooms for asylum seekers and all is available is the larger luxury rooms.

Furby

[Furby]

Was there a vegetarian option? Isn't it the law there has to be maybe Portugal has different rules. If oc had cuttle fish whatever that is and other diners had cold pork doesn't sound there was. Might be like in the old days when vegetarians were told to just eat the potatoes and veg then.

It's clever how they take the pictures because bathroom doesn't look very small.

[OurCreature]

Furby asked

Was there a vegetarian option?

There were vegetarian options and even vegan options IIRC; I wasn't really tempted especially by them. If there was something there that I fancied I chose it and didn't bother about whether it was vegan, veggie etc.

[OurCreature]

Day 2 - Wednesday April 3

06:00 - ALL ABOARD We would be at that time of morning as we were promised that the boat would begin our cruise at 06:30. It was still dark, so I got myself all ready at 06:30 to watch the lights on Oporto slowly move as the boat got under way and sat in my little false balcony and waited................and waited............and waited.........and at 07:00 finished waiting and resumed getting myself ready for breakfast at 07:30.

I was one of the first for breakfast, and that day had the cold buffet. Yoghurt with banana slices and other fruit. A glass of fruit juice. Coffee brought to my table with regular refills from the highly attentive waiters. After finishing my yoghurt I got myself the rest of the cold buffet - cold meats, cheeses, bread etc; it was OK. Then I noticed the metal containers containing the hot buffet stuff. It always had a lidded hot tray with scrambled eggs and bacon, while the other one contained two of hot baked beans, hash browns, sausages cut up into bite-sized small pieces depending on the day and what chef felt like dishing up. You could ask for an omelette but I never did - they were nice but not all that big. The next day and thereafter I stuck to the yoghurt and fruit and then the hot stuff, with a few cups of coffee. Breakfast was good - not much could go wrong with it.

Then the programme moved on to the mandatory safety and welcome briefing and after Diogo the Cruise Director had gone through that he told us why the boat was still moored at Gaia and the alternative excursion he had planned. There was too much water in the Douro; in the Spanish part of the river the authorities had to release water otherwise there would have been too much pressure on the dams, and this had a knock-on effect all the way down the river. It was dangerous to sail, so we stayed where we were. We were supposed to tour Oporto with some free time on the last proper day, but Diogo brought that forward to our non-sailing day with the tour taking place after lunch. Then we were let out to wander around the esplanade so I did and in fact had quite a long walk. There were loads of restaurants, cafes etc and I made sure I knew where the gondola station was in case I decided to use it. Diogo couldn't rearrange the Port House visit that was scheduled for the following Monday so we lost that; never mind. Here's a pic I stole of the gondolas heading in the direction of the ground station. Our boat would have been a little further along if it had been there.

After a decent lunch we set off. There were 2 coaches for trips and you picked a plastic card with either 1 or 2 on it and I picked 2. That meant I went on coach 2 for all the cruise, and when we got out for walkies I was to follow the guide holding up a disc on a stick with 2 on the disc, unless we were all together. We had a guide called David who was a youngish chap a little shorter than I am but as wide as he was short; and as it clearly wasn't fat he was clearly the sort of chap you would like to have on your side in a fight. He spoke excellent English and his commentary on the coach ride to Oporto Cathedral was very interesting. That was when I learned about the most populous cities in Portugal, and how crazy the prices of 2 bedroom apartments could be, depending on which part of Oporto you lived in compared with his bargain price apartment in Gaia. I wished occasionally that he had an 'OFF' button you could press to keep him quiet for a few minutes . But he was a good chap and I liked him.

Eventually we reached the cathedral and had a little talk about that. You can see it from near where the boat was and it is the building up top left with two towers.

Then he showed us the way to the big metal bridge that you can see over the river if we wanted to walk back to the boat that way, and continued with us to the main terminus train station. This was worth seeing because in the main hall there are tiled pictures all over the place showing the early history of Portugal, including the arrival of Philippa of Lancaster in the late 1380s for her marriage to the King of Portugal and the origins of the Oldest Alliance. Philippa is riding a horse next to the King with a bishop walking in between them; all the court ladies are walking behind them.

After being told about all this we were allowed free time so I walked back over the Ponte Luis 1.

As you can see it is a big bridge, designed by Théophile Seyrig who was a German engineer and business partner of Gustave Eiffel of the Tower. On top of the bridge are 2 tracks for the streetcars which trundle over the bridge every so often, and two walkways - one either side of the tracks - for pedestrians. It is a very long way across for folk like me who do not have a good head for heights. I didn't rush but I didn't dawdle either and it took me something like 10 minutes to walk the crossing. Every so often I stopped to take in the view, but not right by the railings - nor did I look over the railings and down onto the river. Every so often a streetcar trundled past; they weren't very loud so you had to keep an eye open for them when dodging into the track space to avoid groups of people who had decided to stop and block the walkway while they chatted, took photos etc.

When I got to the other side of the bridge I found the gondola station and paid my 7€ to ride down to near where the boat was moored.

Dinner that evening was good. I didn't keep the menus and I can't remember what we had unless it was exceptional, so you won't get a blow-by-blow account of what we had every mealtime. Good, they all thought except Merry who likes to know about such things.

After eating a bit too much and drinking a bit too much alcohol I meandered to my cabin. Since coming home I have discovered it is far too easy to eat too much on these jaunts - I've put on nearly 1 stone in 7 days and it will take me a lot longer than 7 days to lose it! I can still easily get into the trousers I took with me - I have put the weight on over all of me instead of in one or two specific places so I don't look any heavier even though I am.

And so ended Day 2.

[Furby]

Too much rain in the river for boats to sail it that's a new weather excuse to join autumn leaves on the line and other tales.

The bridge looks scary well done not falling off it. I have a bridge over a motorway near me and that's scary. Because too many people did fall off it it has been caged in now to stop them. The Portugal bridge doesn't seem to have much caging are people just more sensible there.

[merry]

These are great write-ups, OC! Though I'm going to have to insist you take a food diary along next time

I wonder if the sausages being cut into pieces means overall people eat more, or less sausage?

Funny to think of not being able to travel because of 'too much water' in the Douro!

I would certainly put on loads (more) weight if I were on a cruise, especially one of those where you can guzzle from numerous food stations 24 hours a day. It's not the quantity that would do for me, it's that I want to taste EVERYthing on offer, especially if it's good, or free....

[OurCreature]

Day 3 - Thursday April 4

On this day we should have been cruising up the river during breakfast and, after lunch, heading by coach up to a fortified village. That never happened, and we didn't do it later in the cruise.

Plan B was to sail up the Douro taking in the two locks, have lunch, go to the Mateus Palace gardens (which we should have done the day before) and in the evening have the already postponed Welcome Dinner at the Quinta da Pacheca. That didn't happen either.

Plan C was to depart to Casa da Quinta, have lunch, depart to a town called Amarante and have a look round, and return to Porto where, before dinner, we would be treated to a Sunset Cocktail Cruise, of which more later.

So off we went to Casa da Quinta, setting off at 10:30. The family which owned it lost it in the 1912 Portugal revolution, and a female descendant of the family set her heart on getting it all back. She turned out to be a damn good entrepreneur and made enough money to buy back not only this Casa but another of the confiscated family properties as well.

We had a pre-lunch snack on the lawn - a very nice Portuguese loaf (several of them) all with different fillings and cut up into neat pieces a bit like puffy sandwiches. Ham, cheese, chorizo and other things. This was accompanied by a glass of white wine in my case. Having been an auditor in part of my work life, I felt obliged to test them all, and they were very good. Then we had a tour of the house which is vast and more like an NT property. We were sat down to lunch in a big hall. Soup etc and then the main meat course - pork noisettes wrapped with bacon around the edges of them; the waiters and waitresses kept on offering me another one and I could not resist. Loads of veg to go with them. They were delicious. Pud was creme brulee which they made beautifully and tasted great. Then coffee to finish. And as much wine to drink as you wanted.

Then it was off to Amarante where we were walked along the river to the church and given a short talk. Diogo had us all wired up with our earpieces so you heard everything. I didn't go into the church but decided to stay outside and have a little look round. I saw a phone box that looked almost exactly like the old red ones in the UK except that it didn't have a door. Here's the church, and you can see what a narrow stone bridge it is. Pedestrians only? Forget it! Traffic came up behind you, and poor Diogo was forever shouting at us to make way for the traffic.

Here's the phone box - it's been painted red since that pic was taken for Google Streetview.

Opposite the phone box by the church there was a lady selling pastries displayed on her stall. Diogo was over there so I went to ask him whether that phone box and others in Portugal were based on those in the UK. They were; many of them no longer have phones and have been repurposed as little libraries or bookshops like the one in Interlaken. While Diogo was informing me of this, the stall owner approached us to offer me a confection - a pastry. Having had that big lunch I didn't want anything to eat, so I politely declined. She laughed and brought me a bigger one, hoping to embarrass me because it was in the shape of a penis. She failed. But I didn't buy one because I wasn't hungry. Diogo did, and made a joke about it on the coach going back to the boat, which was still in Oporto. Some of us laughed uproariously, while others contented themselves with quiet titters of embarrassed amusement. It turned out there were female ones as well, but Diogo hadn't bought one of those.

And so back to the boat. We duly had our Sunset Cocktail Cruise while the boat sailed upriver under the five bridges which were upstream of us, and back downstream under the final bridge, and back to our mooring. Then we went down to dinner, which probably was very good but I can't remember anything about it except that there always seemed to be a full glass of wine near my plate.

And so to bed.

[Furby]

Its seems a very full busy busy holiday to be getting your money back. Why could the boat cruise a bit under bridges but not its full cruise its still on the river too full of water.

Were they getting the tourists drunk so they didnt notice as much about the horrible non cruising cruise or is it normal to have lots of wine in those parts. Is it in bottles like mateus rose or boring modern bottles.

[merry]

Having been an auditor in part of my work life, I felt obliged to test them all

In chat last night, I guessed that the Naughty Pastry was... a TART. The reality was much better Had I been there with my girls we would undoubtedly have bought one - and then taken lots of sniggering selfies with the object.

This is a great holiday write-up, OC!! I'm really enjoying it

[OurCreature]

Furby asked

Why could the boat cruise a bit under bridges but not its full cruise

The Douro has several dams along its course, and our boat had to get up and down at least three of them, beginning with a 46 foot lift at Crestuma which was around 90 minutes up the river. Around 2 hours after that we would have had to go up another lock at Carrapatelo and that lift would have been 115 feet. Later on another day there was a third lock to negotiate at Bagaúste and that would have been an 84 foot lift. The excess water in the river meant that these locks couldn't be negotiated safely. At one point there were 17 boats stuck on the river - 13 wanting to go upstream and 4 wanting to come downstream back to Oporto.

Day 4 - Friday April 5

On this day we should have been at our furthest point up the Douro and on a 2 hour coach ride to Salamanca but we were still moored in Oporto. Before breakfast the Captain decided to make a break for it, and I watched us leave Oporto from my cabin as it was before breakfast; I watched for what seemed like a fair distance and then got myself ready for breakfast. Off I went and remarked cheerfully to one of the waiters that I bet he was glad we were on our way. He looked at me with a doleful expression and told me that we had to return to Oporto. So I ate my breakfast, wondering what Diogo was going to come up with today.

The answer was - a damn good day! We headed to a town called Lamego and this was very good. The town is dominated by a church on a hill overlooking the main thoroughfare of the town.

The town square (really a massive rectangle) has four fountains leading up to the stairway to the church, each fountain representing a season of the year. Then, if you are starting at the bottom, you climb the 686 steps of the Stairway to Heaven and presumably feel that you have served a very arduous penance when you get to the church. We didn't have to serve a penance because the coach went all the way to the church. There are public conveniences nearby so we all used those, and an advantage of being a man on the cruise quickly emerged; we were outnumbered 10 to 1 by the ladies so we didn't have to queue for our conveniences! Diogo or one of his guides told us that the church was called Our Lady Of The Remedies, the remedy being mother's milk for the Infant Jesus. The Virgin Mary at this church was depicted breast feeding the baby Jesus and they had to get a special dispensation from the Vatican for this portrayal. Here she is!

This pic shows the first terrace near the top of the Stairway to Heaven. It's a double staircase punctuated by terraces so you aren't doing them all in one go. Right at the top on the first terrace but better viewed from the top are pillars on top of which are some of the kings of Portugal. Some of them look as if they are doing a little dance.

Some of our party, including me, went down all the stairs -there was a stone banister you could keep your hand on to make sure you retained your balance. On most of the terraces there was a big picture made of blue and white tiles which were made in a factory in Gaia where our boat was still moored. Some of the tiles are quite badly damaged and could do with restoring but I think the factory where they were made might have gone out of business. Here's a nice pic I stole of the top tiled picture.

So down we trundled, and when we got to the bottom of the Stairway to Heaven I noticed that we were right by the sign for an establishment called Presunteca where we were booked to have a wine tasting. So in I went, collecting a little platter of cheese and cold meats and my small glass of wine. What a delicious snack! I decided the snack needed a decent audit, so had another - nobody else was coming into their wine tasting shop so I wasn't taking anybody else's share. Several small glasses of wine helped it all go down very nicely.

Then it was time to wend our way to the meeting point for the coaches. The old lady Chris resumed her escape attempts, this time heading straight for the coach park where she had seen other people, not in our party, heading for. I saw tour guide Lucillia hurrying in the same direction and I wondered why she was in such haste, and shortly afterwards discovered it was to prevent Chris from getting into the wrong coach. Great hilarity for all, and Chris wasn't really embarrassed - she joined in all the chuckles.

Then we headed to Quinta da Pacheca where we should have had our Welcome Dinner on our second night; we were going to have lunch there today. Diogo was able to do all this rearranging because North Portugal has got a very good motorway and highways network with tunnels (some of them very long) and very long bridges over the valleys and most of it has been paid for by the EU. Here's a pic of the Quinta; sadly, our boat wasn't one of those moored on the river!

We had a good lunch there after a little talk about their port etc. I recall I decided the desserts required further audit - a cheescake and another confection, I forget what. I can't even remember what the main course was, but it was all good.

Then back to Gaia and the boat. We had a very good dinner and I think this might have been shredded duck in a filo pastry cylinder with nearly black rice arranged in a solid disc with other nice things packed into it. The rice was quite solid so you could eat the disc almost like a vegetable - bits of it on your fork with a bit of duck and it all staying on the fork etc. As usual my wine glass miraculously was never empty until I had finished dinner. By then I had fallen in with a group of nice people. A lady from Wigan who lived in Cumbria, so that was a good start; I made friends with them on my first proper day on the boat. She had come with her friend and neighbour, a retired lady from Yorkshire who didn't look old enough to be retired. The other chap in our little group called Mike lived in Warrington, though he had worked abroad and was brought up in Portsmouth. The final lady hailed from up North but lived mainly abroad in Egypt but was a great traveller. She was in the cabin next to me and Mike was up the other end of the corridor on our deck. It turned out I had the cabin above the Yorkshire Lass; she said that she had been kept awake by the person above her using the loo a lot during the night and flushing it, and it was incredibly noisy. I wondered if that had been me, because the flush was like a very noisy vacuum cleaner for a few seconds before it went quiet, so I asked her which cabin was she in. After dinner we checked the boat plan and decided it was me. So I told her one flush after dinner and then it would be quiet until around 06:30 next morning except for dire emergency. She was very grateful and then became highly embarrassed and hoped I wasn't upset or angry or anything. I thought that we were having a hilarious conversation and told her and of course I wasn't offended etc and I just wanted her to have a quiet night.

I digress. After dinner we all went to the bar lounge where Diogo was going to have a short quiz after giving us more information. One lady in particular had a bit of a strop and said it was all very well to visit extra vineyards but what good was that to her as she didn't drink alcohol. Nice lunches in pleasant surroundings dear, thought I, the poor man is doing his best for us etc. We had already been promised compensation for every day we hadn't sailed, but the big offer was yet to come. However, Diogo managed to do the quiz which our group won by a couple of points, and we won a bottle of wine to share. So a very good day had ended nicely; and off I went to bed.

[eccles]

Great travelogue, OC. You're doing a lot of audits.

[Furby]

It looks an old river city so it must have rained before. Are the boats stuck every time it rains a lot. The organisers do seem to have worked hard making best of things and it's not their fault it rained so seems unfair to have strops at them. Why is someone who doesn't drink going on cruises that visit vineyards anyway that's what I would wonder but the staff have to be nice to customers don't they. And anyone who travels anywhere in England even to the local shops and back quickly learns that all travel is disrupted and you just have to be glad to get from A to B and back in one piece.

[OurCreature]

Furby asked

Are the boats stuck every time it rains a lot.

I was aware that there was an outside chance of disruption but - in my innocence - I thought it was more likely to be caused by insufficient water in the river eg Rhine and Danube cruises disrupted for that reason in recent years. I knew that the Douro was controlled by a series of dams and locks and it never occurred to me that excess water in the river might be a problem. In the UK we never hear about trouble on the Douro, it's always these other two big European rivers. I had a brief chat with one of the receptionists and got the impression from her that in the early part of the season there had been some disruption in previous years but that this level of disruption for so many days was unusual. I also heard that the travel company had cancelled at least one cruise after our cruise on account of the excess water.

I don't think boats like ours could cruise the river until the mid 1980s after they built the lock at Crestuma (the first one after Oporto) in the early 1980s. The length and width of the boats is governed by the length and width of the smallest lock on the river, and I can assure you that the side clearance between the lock wall and the boat on either side isn't all that great. They showed us a video of the dam at Crestuma one night; it was made earlier that day and the excess water was pouring over the top of the dam like big waterfalls. That was causing turbulence in the river and making it unsafe to approach the lock with the intention of using it. It was emphasised to us that it would have been far too dangerous and after seeing that video I could well believe it.

The river in the Amarante pic (with the phone box) isn't the Douro. It's a tributary of the Douro called the Tamega, the origin of the name being Celtic. The name 'Thames' has the same origin so in a sense we were by the Thames in Portugal and therefore it was appropriate that it had an English-style phone box overlooking it.

Further to your comment, Furby, I found this in a Tripadvisor review of the same cruise (for couples this time) and the chap commented

There was always some chill out time to relax on the sun deck, although these periods were regularly disturbed by having to go down to a lower deck to avoid low lying bridges and lock gates due to the unprecedented high water levels of the river.

That was in June 2023, so the problem may be getting worse. When you come off the sundeck they lower the roof of the shaded part of the deck so that the boat can pass the lower span of the bridge etc.

[OurCreature]

Day 5 - Saturday April 6

On this day we should have begun sailing back down the Douro, pausing to visit a historic Quinta and learning all about wine production. Instead, the boat was still stuck in Gaia opposite Oporto. Diogo had produced a Plan B the previous evening, but that assumed that the boat would have cleared the first lock during the night and so went out the window.

After breakfast we heard the good news - the boat was going to make a dash for the lock. Some of us went up to the sun deck to enjoy the moment; it was windy and I felt cold, so I went to my cabin for my anorak-type jacket and when I came back up the steps to the sun deck I had a minor fall. The top step to the deck was around 2-3 inches higher than the others, and I didn't lift my foot high enough to clear it. Fortunately I fell forwards and twisted as I fell so that I landed on my amply padded posterior. No harm done. The boat trundled on and we arrived at the first lock which has a lift of 46 feet. It was very impressive. The whole process took around 20 minutes and then we were off at the next level of the Douro.

There wasn't much to do on the boat except chill out until lunch and at some point the boat arrived at a small place called Entre os Rios, at the confluence of the Tamega and the Douro. Here's a pic of another boat moored where we were moored.

My cabin, after the boat had been turned round next day, was facing the cafe/bar/restaurant you can see with the folded up umbrellas - these advertise a local brew called Super Bock. I was above the level of the quay, it was like looking down on it a little bit higher than the upstairs of an ordinary house over here.

After lunch we went in the coaches to a town called Guimarães which was the seat of the dukes of Braganza and in its early days the capital of Portugal; the country started in the north and had its own reconquista like Spain, except that Portugal finished hers around 150 years or so before Spain did. By the Braganza palace there is a statue of the first king of Portugal, Afonso Henriques, in a heroic military pose.

Our guide for this tour was David again, and he told us that some people thought that the real Afonso had been a very sickly baby and so was swapped for a healthy baby, David commenting that they thought a man grown from being a sickly baby couldn't be a big strong warrior like the one depicted by the statue. He also told us that the sword held by king was new - the original had been stolen from the statue by some unruly football hooligans and never recovered.

The centre of Guimarães is a UNESCO World Heritage Centre and is full of tiny streets like this one.

David walked us down this street, telling us about the buildings etc. As you can see it isn't very wide and some of the locals going about their daily business looked ever so slightly fed up at having to walk round our group of tourists. I stood in a doorway to try to keep out of their way. One of the shops David pointed out to us was a pastry shop, of which more later. This little street had a turn-off to the top of an elongated open space full of al fresco eateries and shops. Most of the buildings were in good nick and some had recently been restored. David stopped us by a church and let us have around 45 minutes free time, so I went back up to the pastry shop

and bought 2 of 2 kinds which included 2 Portuguese custard tarts. I intended to share them with the group I had made friends with, but they weren't hungry so I ate 2 of them and they were delicious. I ate the others after dinner that night as I didn't think they would keep until next day.

I ate my pastries by the church back in the elongated square

and I noticed that old Chris was sitting in the shade under that stone monument close to the church. I kept an eye on her in case she made another bid for freedom, but she looked quite content sitting there so that was OK. After a little while David called us together and he and the other 2 guides walked us back to our coaches. I was able to have quite a long chat with him and it turned out that he had lived for some years in Switzerland so most of our chat was about Switzerland and the Swiss instead of Portugal and I think he was quite pleased to talk about something different to his usual fare.

Back on the boat, dinner was great. I think this was the night when I had roast leg of lamb and it was delicious. It can't have been a very big lamb because I had the whole upper leg. There was a huge amount of meat on it, and I was determined to finish it because it was so good. As usual i had a miraculous wine glass by my side, this time allowing me to drink as much red wine as I wanted. After that, chat and a couple more drinks up in the bar lounge which was on the same level as my cabin so I didn't have any stairs to negotiate before retiring to my bed. My new friends (except the Yorkshire Lass) were going by coach to Salamanca the next day and staying there overnight, courtesy of Diogo's negotiating skills. I couldn't face a coach ride of at least four hours there that day and four hours back the next day so we both stayed on the boat.

And that was the end of Day 5.