As I was planning my trip to Porto I had a list of a few things that I definitely wanted to do.

Got to do the walking tour. Which is actually a great way to start any visit to a new city. Just to get your bearings if nothing else.

I also wanted to do some culinary adventures and a lot of the literature for my research mentioned a trip on the Douro River, which you may remember runs right through the heart of Porto and also runs through the Douro Valley, which again is Portos version of the Napa Valley wine region.

There were tours by van or mini bus where they drove you up to the Douro valley and you got to do wine tastings along with food pairings and that sounded fucking incredible but those trips averaged 10-12 hours in length and that’s a pretty goddamn long day.

Instead I found a site that rented “Private yachts for up to 10 people up the Douro river.”

That, my friends, sounded like the goddamn ticket right there. 

Figured it would be kind of a party boat with groups of 2-3 travelers. 

So I booked.

It turned out to be one of the coolest damn things I’ve ever done in my life.

I took an Uber down to the marina to board the yacht and I’m looking around for the other couples who I expected would be joining me for the ride and, nope. It was grey, overcast and pretty cool this evening and there just weren’t many people near the boats. Eventually one of the boat captains came up and spoke my name and yep this was the place.

You know what?

I was the only passenger on the entire fucking yacht. Just the Captain, his daughter who was in captain training and me.

Are you fucking serious?

Let’s get in the damn boat.

The only real bummer was the weather. You can tell from the photos the conditions.

Later that night the rains came pouring down. I thought there was a damn train outside my room.

Away we go.

So. Many. Bridges. I’ve mentioned the bridges previously so how about we just run a bunch of photos and I’ll shut the fuck up?

Now let’s hit the open water.

There’s some info on this particular excursion right there in the photo if you have an interest. Probably just me but the Portuguese flag is so much damn cooler than the US flag.

Yes, they tag the underpasses and levees here too.

We cruised past the Ribiera District twice on this excursion.

We passed under, like, every single bridge in the country on this trip.

This is as close as I got to the city of Gaia, or Vila Nova de Gaia, which is its own city and sits just to the west of Porto on the Douro River.

Calem is one of the biggest port wine producers world wide. There’s a pretty good chance that if you’ve had port wine it was from this cellar. Gaia is THE hub for everything port wine. The place is stacked with cellars that offer tours and tastings and other sundry type events. That entire row of building you see are pretty much restaurants and cellars.

Another quick look at Porto.

Here’s another look at Gaia and the construction cranes. The owner of my rental unit said this is the “High rent district.” The growth on this side is booming.

Instead of taking the branch of the river that headed up to the vineyards where the grapes are grown for the wine, we branched instead towards the ocean.

We didn’t go wave hopping in the ocean though, turning around not too long after this photo.

Turning around.

The overcast was unfortunate since I specifically booked this boat trip to coincide with sunset. Oh well.Trust me I was still perfectly happy with the trip.

As the sun started to set the cafe crowd gathered and it was fucking party time! Also, I took this trip on a Friday night.

See how the cafes brings their table right next to the water’s edge? Fucking incredible. I’m staying here next time.

We slowly head back to the marina.

I’m guessing that this was a wedding but who the fuck gets married on a Friday night?

Look at the cafes? Fucking nuts!

Time to head back to the yacht club.

For the record the boat ride included basically unlimited wine, port, homemade breads, cheeses, charcuterie just incredible stuff and the captain and his daughter were wonderful, warm people that thoroughly enjoyed conversing in English. The captain let the daughter take the wheel for a good 45 minutes of the trip and he was also encouraging her to use her English language skills for conversation.

They could not have been any nicer or more courteous.

I’m not showing the food photos from the trip because that’s going to be part of the last Porto post I do.

So?

Convinced yet?

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.