20261101 Sunday, November 1, 2026; Porto on Foot
The ship spent the night tied up against the concrete pier in Vila Nova de Gaia. Our balcony on deck 3 was just about 18” higher than the sidewalk level, and there were restaurants about 60’ from the edge of the pier, so we could hear some partying in the restaurants until about 11 p.m. We only just discovered that the ship is equipped with thick black-out blinds that drop down from the ceiling inside the normal privacy and regular drapes, which do a decent enough job of blocking out light on their own.
The drop-down black-out blinds are like the ones on the expedition ships where it really is necessary to block out all light when there is no nighttime darkness at extreme latitudes. But we could have used them to reduce noise if necessary. We were considering ourselves fortunate to actually have a view outside our balcony and not the balcony of another ship tied up right next to us, or the concrete wall of the pier if we had been on decks 1 or 2.
After breakfast, we boarded buses and were taken across the Douro from Vila Nova de Gaia to Porto proper. We were dropped off at the center of old town, which is inside ancient Roman city walls.
Our tour started at the Porto Cathedral. This Romanesque cathedral built in the 12th century has simpler lines, looking a bit more like a fortress than the much more ornate later Gothic designs had.
There is an attached Episcopal Palace which serves as a museum, and a stone pillory in the plaza in front of the cathedral. In Portugal, pillories were a symbol of administrative authority, although in ancient times, prisoners were subject to public punishments lashed to or hung from pillories.
This particular pillory was not used for torture or public humiliations, and was erected in 1945 as part of a renovation of the plaza. It was based on designs from the late 16th century with a twisted column topped with a globe symbolic of Portugal’s Age of Discovery. There happen to be tall construction cranes all over Porto, which is in the midst of a building boom.
While the Romanesque stonework is comparatively plain, the amount of gold leaf applied to the altars and decor of the altars is enough to make even Donald Trump drool. In one side chapel, there appears to be a depiction of Mary helping an adolescent Jesus with his studies.
Mary helping Jesus with homework.
There are lots of blue and white porcelain tiles depicting elaborate scenes throughout the cathedral and episcopal palace. The museum in the palace has a collection of ecclesiastical garments and a gallery of gold reliquaries, crowns, and accessories.
Interestingly, there is a distinctly modern large painting in one of the palace galleries that appears to depict Mary, with huge feet, coddling an infant Jesus while surrounded by animals and religious figures cloaked in red while atop a pile of figures in blue.
Next, we walked to the Porto São Bento train station, which is famous for its painted porcelain tile artwork. There are different styles of artwork depicted on different levels of the walls, and scenes depicting historical events such as Henry the Navigator’s conquests in Africa, to panels depicting agricultural and fishing pursuits, and transportation modalities. The pale blue and white tiles dominate the bottom of the walls, while full-color scenes surround the top of the walls with all manner of carriages over the ages, from animal-drawn to steam-powered.
We then walked down the narrow and winding streets towards the riverfront, past the main shopping and tourist areas lined with shops, restaurants, and museums. There was a street musician cranking an accordion while squeezing chickens to make them cluck in time with the music. That was pretty unique. Our guide said this person has been a fixture for years and came from France originally.
Musician playing chickens and hand organ.
Pastel de Nata
There was a very colorful shop filled with canned sardines and every manner of seafood. It was kind of like an M&M’s store, but with canned sardines instead of candies.
Another memorable shop featured artisans coiling gold threads into an art form called filigree. The shop was very attractive and featured decor with an Alice in Wonderland theme. In addition to elaborate gold filigree pieces, the shop also dealt in Arraiolos hand-stitched tapestries.
There was a very realistic life-sized Cristiano Ronaldo in a glass case along the street, and a unique shop called MUD (Manufactured Under Design) featuring very interesting items fashioned from polished wood, leather, and cork. These ranged from purses and bags to lamps and even a whole line of e-Bikes with wood and cork frames.
Our walk continued down to the waterfront, where there are street trolleys that can take you into town or out to the Atlantic, as well as many restaurants and bars. We walked across the lower span of the Dom Luis I Bridge, which is a steel girder bridge built by one of Gustave Eiffel’s disciples. This was very crowded and loud, with a constant stream of very loud and fast motorcycles buzzing about. It was quite chaotic and made it somewhat stressful to cross the bridge on extremely narrow and crowded sidewalks.
It felt warm enough in our stateroom that Ben went up to the pool to try it out. It was only deep enough to sit on the bottom with your shoulders and head out of the water. It was standard swimming pool temperature in the upper 80’s but would have been better if the outside temperature was more like the 90’s than 60’s. It is more of a pool than on the Nile ships, but would have been better as a hot tub.
We attended a port talk on the modern history of Portugal, starting with the Salazar fascist takeover, through the Carnation Revolution, and to current affairs touching on education, welfare, taxation, and political organization.
It was a bit ironic to see how Portugal has so dramatically lifted its population’s status and well-being by transitioning from nativist fascism to a modern progressive society, while our own country has been taking definitive steps to drag itself back into the dark ages by embracing fascism and denial of science and human rights. While Portugal has achieved 80% renewable energy, our current administration seems to want to go back to coal and steam power, and even bring back slavery, if only they could. If only more Americans could travel and see the world and understand human history rather than being trapped in social media echo chambers, our country and the world would be better off.
Following dinner, we took a walk along the river front. Most of the pop up tent vendors had packed up and left for the night, and the merchandise in most of the tourist stores along that part of the river front sold pretty cheap quality items. There was another Canned sardine store, but most of what was still open was restaurants and bars so we headed back to the ship for dinner.
Dinner was a mixed joyous and sad affair as fellow passengers exchanged contact information and talked about future travel plans as everyone prepared to go their separate ways in the morning. Dinner started with a delicious wild mushroom soup. The main Portuguese dish was lamb loins which were tender and delicious.
We have really enjoyed meeting a lot of wonderful people on this cruise in addition to exploring Spain and Portugal while learning a lot about their histories and cultures. Tomorrow, we will be continuing on to Santiago de Compostela with about 10 other fellow passengers from this ship in a post-cruise extension. We hope to stay in touch with at least some of our new friends from this trip in the future.
