Tag: porto

Sevilla to Porto – Thursday September 26

We were up and going this morning. A quick breakfast at perhaps the most elaborate buffet we have ever experienced. I haven’t talked about our fabulous Hotel Alfonso XIII. One has to experience an environment like this to both feel and see the grand luxury of a bygone era.

And just across the street, bringing me back to today, I filled my thermos at Starbucks. Our transportation today is a Mercedes Benz minivan with two bench seats facing one another – so sensible for conversation. Our mature driver was born and raised in the UK of Spanish parents before moving back to the Continent. We have a seven hour journey ahead – then he has to return – a fourteen hour day for him. 

Our first stop was by the side of the road because “he couldn’t wait any longer” to relieve himself. The Spanish countryside started with rolling hills of large, almost barren fields, punctuated with a few trees. Then came the groves of olive trees, followed by grape vines. The landscape began to green. The entrance into Portugal was just a sign along the road – much like we see at home when we pass from state to state – the European Common Market makes so much sense.

We picked a roadside restaurant because the lot was full of automobiles. The soup and a rice pudding washed down with a local wine hit the spot.

The hills turned into small mountains covered with green trees – quite beautiful. We had heard of a recent fire between Porto and Lisbon and sure enough we drove right through the path of the fires – burned trees on both sides of the highway. Terrible. The roads were excellent for the entire journey. Because our driver chose the shortest route we went from city streets to freeways to two lane highways to country roads then back to a beautiful toll road.

We all decided, despite enjoying each other and experiencing the changing landscape, a seven hour automobile ride was too much. In the future we will limit such rides to 3 or 4 hours, taking the airlines instead.

Although “Siri” says Porto is smaller than Lincoln the traffic says otherwise. We expect the “metropolitan area” is much larger. Follow-up – the population of the old city is less than 300,000 – the metro area is 1.9 million!

Our hotel Le Monument Palace is another “grand hotel”. In fact our room is the very best of the journey. And of course the staff is excellent. They made a fine DuncanTini at the American Bar followed by the most extraordinary dinner of this adventure.

We began our evening experience at the restaurant in the hotel my the same name with a “special” visit/ introduction to the chef in his kitchen. It was sparkling clean and obviously well organized. Our own appetizer- delicious. Into the sumptuous dining room we quickly discovered we were in for another pix fix dining extravaganza! Three of us took the “small” six course offering and Chris the ten course. Mostly seafood based everything was beautiful and mostly tasted great.  I was the only one who ate the uncooked pigeon. This was certainly the finest meal of the journey. We finally finished just before midnight. We were all exhausted.