20261031 Saturday, October 31, 2026 Lamego and Return to Porto

20261031 Saturday, October 31, 2026 Lamego and Return to Porto

The ship left its mooring at Lamego after we had breakfast and had loaded up onto the buses for another day tour.  Today’s destination was Lamego, a small city 10 miles south of Régua and the Douro River.  Lamego was home to Alfonso Henriques, who was declared the first king of Portugal in 1139.  It was on one of the most important trade routes in western Iberia and a preferred route on the Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage.  During the Salazar dictatorship, trade with the outside world was severely restricted.  During this time, Lamego became the main supplier of sparkling wines to Portugal.  

Our tour started at the Santuário de Nossa Senhora dos Remédios (Sanctuary of Our Lady of Remedies) at the top of the hill overlooking the city.  This Baroque Catholic shrine to the Virgin Mary was started in 1750 and completed in 1905.  There is a 686-step staircase leading from the Sanctuary to the central town square below.  The interior is notable for the sky-blue Baroque-styled ceiling and main altar housing a statue of Mary with baby Jesus.  

On the facade is another statue of Mary and baby Jesus, which originally depicted Mary breastfeeding baby Jesus with an exposed breast.  This sculpture was later revised, replacing the supine baby Jesus with one sitting upright and visually obscuring the breast.  

Insider local knowledge reveals the presence of a statue of an adolescent Jesus in a room dedicated to patrons of the church.  This statue is clothed in real religious garments of cloth, but under the hem, Jesus is wearing socks.  Apparently, over the years, people touching his carved feet under the hem of the garments caused damage to the feet, so now he wears socks. 

 

We descended the 686 steps, which were broken up into multiple platforms faced with white and blue porcelain tiles depicting various stages of Mary’s life and ascension.  Unfortunately, many of the tiles show significant damage, and one had all the tiles removed and was covered entirely with white plaster.  Hopefully, it is undergoing restoration somewhere and will be reinstalled at some point.  

We learned that the Portuguese custard tarts got their origins from convents where surplus egg yolks were combined with sugar and flour to make a variety of treats that were sold by the nuns to finance the convents. 

 

There are an abundance of pastry shops around the square selling many varieties of egg custard pastries.

  
Along the avenue down the center of the square are statues depicting the four seasons and a WWI memorial.  

The cathedral in the center of the town was founded around 570AD.  The Gothic cathedral has an attached bell tower of much older fortress-like construction.  The artwork and sculptures in the side chapels had indexes which helped identify which saints and other religious personages were being depicted.  It was nice to have a program to identify all the players.  

After wandering through Lamego, we reboarded the buses and headed back to the ship, passing under the Serra de Marão  granite and schist mountains that create the rain shadow responsible for the ideal grape-growing conditions of the Alto Douro Wine Region.  We passed under by going through the Túnel do Marão, which is 5.8km long.  There were prominent high pine forests evident when we emerged from the tunnel on our way back to Porto.  

While we were in Lamego, the ship passed through Lock Carrapatelo and met us at Entre-os-Rios, where we reboarded the ship and had lunch.  There was a good Cuban sandwich with fries for lunch and a dessert called Floating Island, which was a meringue floating on vanilla cream and crushed pistachio that was memorable.  

Training wheel on side of ship to roll along lock walls.

The ship passed through Lock of Crestuma at 3 p.m. and continued on its way back to Porto.  

We had a briefing in the afternoon for post-cruise extension passengers.  We will leave the ship Monday morning and take a bus to Santiago de Compostela to the north.  We will disembark at 8:45 a.m. and will need to have our luggage out at 8 a.m.  

There was an afternoon tea after the ship sailed through the last lock.  The river banks became much more urban than what we had been seeing further up river.  We even passed by a large trailer park on the river banks. 

The ship tied up with our stateroom adjacent to the dockside, which faced a restaurant and beyond that up the hillside are port wine cellars in Vila Nova de Gaia.  

There was a demonstration of opening a vintage port wine using Port Tongs, fire, and ice.  When a vintage port is many years old, the cork can deteriorate and potentially contaminate the port wine, so the Portuguese take an iron ring and heat it over open flames to get it red-hot.  

It is then clamped around the neck of the port bottle below the cork to heat it.  Ice water is then poured over the heated part of the neck, which causes it to fracture cleanly (ideally).  The wine is then strained and decanted to serve.  The bottle they opened was more than 20 years old, but the cork was probably just fine.  When the neck was popped off, part of the cork was protruding from the exposed neck, so the audience laughed when the bar staff who had opened the bottle with this technique declared “Congratulations, it’s a boy” as he held the bottle neck and protruding cork aloft.  

We got to sample the 20+ year-old port wine.  Friends had also brought down an open bottle of Ruby port from Madrid, which we helped finish off during the daily briefing outlining our Porto excursion for tomorrow.  This will involve taking a bus to the historical old town center on top of the hill, and then walking back down and across the Eiffel-designed iconic Dom Luís I Bridge back to the ship.  In the afternoon, there is also a shuttle between the ship and Porto for further exploration after lunch.

Dinner featured Portuguese Gambas a Ajillo, which were prawns in garlic oil, white wine, and tomato puree.   The regional menu featured seared sea bass, but we opted for Roast Chateaubriand Béarnaise with gratin potato and glazed broccoli and carrots that were much better than what we had for lunch yesterday.  Dessert featured a lava cake.  

After dinner, a troupe of university students came aboard and performed a “Tuna,” which is a traditional university student musical group playing a variety of instruments, singing, and dancing in traditional academic attire including black capes and suits.  This group was an all-male group of Economics undergraduate students playing guitars, Portuguese guitars, tambourines, drums, and a string bass.  Two of the most energetic men did high kicks and jumping splits, as well as recruiting women from the audience to dance with them.  It was a lively and raucous performance.  We did get cornered by one of the performers who really seemed intent on getting us to purchase a souvenir mini-tambourine with their group’s logo on it, or a DVD.  Sofia had cautioned us that in past years, similar groups had tried to sell naked calendars made by the students.  Who knows what may have been embedded in the DVDs?  

Our luggage tags and disembarkation paperwork greeted us on our bed as we returned to the room.  We will have to pack up tomorrow and prepare to leave the ship early Monday morning.