Last night in the Duoro!

What an amazing visit to the Duoro. If you truly love wine and Port (and not necessarily in the order or even one or the other) you must come to the Duoro. Our four days here have flown by. We spent our last day visiting Lamego which had a stunning sanctuario overlooking the city and a castle that has an close to impossible walk up to it (ending with a good view of the area but not one that overcomes the walk up).

We started, of course, with the cathedral in town. What was so interesting g about this day was that it was the celebration of the miracle of Fatima. As we were sitting in the cafe having breakfast and a coffee, the TV was on showing the procession and mass at Fatima. The square that we were just in a week ago was crammed with over 400,000 pilgrims. It was astonishing to see so many faithful followers of Our Lady of Fatima! So we went to the cathedral and there they had removed the statue of Our Lady of Fatima from the chapel she normal is in and placed here near the altar for celebration of Her day.

 

We left the church and knew we would have to walk up but I suggested what looked like a street that would have a more gentle incline - to be kind to Ernie's knees. Well, so much for best laid plans!

 

We actually had to wait for a car coming down this street and through this bridge!

 

This is the view that greeted us at the top!

 

This tree measured 9.06 meters in circumference in 1870 and 10.06 meters in 1967. It was amazing!

This is the view of Lamego below. After climbing to the castle, there was no was I was going to get Ernie to walk up the stairs. I know which battles to fight and this wasn't one of them!

 

The road down from the sanctuario according to our GPS. Actually it was hairier (is there such a word) than it looked!

After all this, we went to Quinta da Pacheco for a great wine tasting and an even more fantastic lunch. I did our last day in the Dulro could get any better but what did I know.

We planned on going into Regua with Antonio and Ana to meet their friends and have dinner. Little did,we know that their friends were the former owners if Quinta da Pacheco. This Quinta had been in the family since the 1700 and had recently been sold. It seems that the Pacheco family decided to expand and built a beautiful hotel and amazing restaurant. Well, they over built and over spent and wound ip having to,sell it the a French company. We met with Jose (the father) and Kiki (the daughter) and Toniño (her husband) that evening for tapas and wine. The wine flowed like I have never seen and the tapas were great! At some point in the evening, a young man named Riccardo (with a guitar) joined us and he played all sorts of music, including several Fado songs, while we all sang along - to the best of ability. What a phenomenal evening!

She we had gone through about a dozen bottles of wine (for 8 of us), we went to Tonińo's wine warehouse. He has his own business making and storing wine. There he introduced us to the six massive barrels,of port that he has stored in Regua saving the best for the last - the barrel of 1880 port. At the end of the introduction, we said that we were going to taste from the last barrel. I couldn't believe my ears! Antonio could believe that he was going to taste the 1880 port. He had never tasted it before. As I said, WHAT A NIGHT!

We finally got home around 2:30 a.m., this no posting that night.

Anyway, I have one more day to catch up with in my postings and that will happen tomorrow while we are flying to Amsterdam. So good night all! Sleep tight!

 

 

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