Porto

Tuesday
From Foz do Arelho, we pumped it up the steep hill and rode up the coast. Our first coffee stop was in Sao Martinho do Porto, about 15km away. A beautiful seaside resort that was quite empty as it was off-season. After our coffee break we headed up another steep hill to Nazare, on a nice quiet road which hugged the steep coast. A fun coast down the hill lead us into Nazare where we had lunch on the beach.

From Nazare was another steep climb up to the top of the seaside hills, and we followed a pretty sweet red bike-path all the way to our camp at Praia Velha. It was a beautiful area with a cool lighthouse and sea cliffs; road riders galore pumping out flat fast kms along the coastline. Bloody awesome.

Praia Velha, the red bike path, and the lighthouse.

Wednesday
From Praia Velha we kept on going north, following the pretty flat bike lane to the seaside village of Vieira. We made good time with Jen drafting me while I was in the zone at 23-25km/h (flying compared to our slow 15-18km/h average over the last few days).

As we got into Praia Vieira, would you believe my other pannier-rack braze-on snapped off too? Yeah, well it did. So I dumped my luggage at the coffee shop on the beach, and then had to ride 3km without gear to Vieira town to find the bike mechanic there. This dude was cool... he was maybe 70 years old or older, and was mostly blind in one eye. He asked me if I could weld, as his eyesight was poor (all indicated by gestures), and as I couldn't, he had a crack anyway.

My mate Igor has a crack at mending the Surly.

His shop reminded me of something you see in the movies. Very very old school; it sold low-quality bikes and small scooters and motorbikes. I'm sure all the tools were from communist Russia and the guy's real name was Igor. Anway he welded me back together and the Karate Monkey was back in action again.

We kept riding and made it to Gala beach, just outside of the town called Figueira Da Foz.

Thursday
From Gala we headed up over a big bridge and some noisy highway to a place called Quiaios, a little farming village. We managed to take several wrong turns and ended back up on the highway, which was what we were trying to avoid. But after a few blind turns onto some very bumpy roads, we managed to find our way onto some quieter roads. We had lunch at Praia de Mira and then bumped our way up to a cool place called Barra, near the town of Aveiro.

We ended up having Chinese for dinner, as we were craving a good vegetable stir-fry. I'm glad I can speak mandarin, as it made ordering a whole heap of vegies a lot easier!

Friday
We made our earliest start on today, a 9:15am which was far earlier than our previous 10:30-11am efforts! We had to go over a large bridge which was having roadworks done on it. The roadworker saw us approaching and waved us down. He was from Pakistan, and we talked a bit about cricket. Anyway, he told us to wait, so we did, though we weren't exactly sure why. After about 10 minutes, this big van came and the guy told us to chuck our bikes in (and they fit straight in without any dismantling required!) and he have us a lift over the bridge. Sweet.

Then we had to work out how to catch a ferry across to Sao Jacinto, which was only a couple of hundred metres across the inlet but would save us a few hours of travel around the lagoon through highways and the city. We managed to catch a lancha, a small ferry, very easily and for only about €3 for both of us plus the bikes! We were stoked.

Cruising up from Sao Jacinto was just awesome. It was totally flat on smooth road so we were cruising at 23km/h for an hour or so into the stiff headwind. Actually, the whole bloody way from Lisbon to Porto was into a stiff headwind. Had a quick snack of some cool Brazillian Guarana drink and fruit at a roadside stall, then legged it to Espinho where we had lunch.

From there on, it was suburbia all the way to Porto.

A great view of Porto from the Ponte du Luis.

Getting into Porto was a bit of a nightmare, but we managed it and stumbled into the hotel we booked the night before. Fortunately our room had been upgraded from a shared bathroom to a private bathroom, and what a room it was! We were stoked.

Still craving vegies, we went to an Indian restaurant for dinner and tried to remember some Hindi. All we could think of was "Namaste", and, um, not much else.

Saturday
We spent our rest day walking around Porto. I had a bit of a wog, so slept in till around 11am. Jen went for a walk in the morning and then she came back and picked me up and we spent the day cruising around Porto getting lost and discovering beautiful old alleyways and buildings.

We did an awesome port tasting and tried 4 different types of port. Yum.

Porto in Porto. Jen gets into it.

Dinner was at a very cool vegetarian restaurant where we could get our vegie fix.