My New Favorite City

~ stull61 ~ 2 Comments

Sevilla – what can I say.

We initially thought about taking La Mischief up the 55nm of Ria Guadalquivir to Savilla but the travel time would have been too great so we decided to hire car it instead. That was a petty because we’ve been talking to people since and its a great adventure.

I was totally captivated by Sevilla’s (thats how the locals say and write it) sights and its people. Stan and Judy dropped me off on Saturday morning after a quick 110km drive up from Mazagon. They left me just outside the bull ring and so the museum became my first stop.

I wanted to learn about bull fighting. Without having ever experienced it, my surface reaction was abhorance to the animal cruelty; but along side that was a curiousity about it, stemming back to childhood when we didn’t realise what happened to the bulls and instead had a nieve romantic notion of the bullfighter wnd his cape.

It is so engrained in spanish culture that it beckons to be understood – and so as to better understand the Spanish – especially the drama and bravado of Spanish masculinity – i decided to attend a fight despite the grotesque nature of the so called contest. I started with the museum tour, a one on one tour given by a demure Spanish lady, to give me some initial context for what was to come the next day.

After the museum and a coffee, I wandered the streets towards the main square with its imposing Gothic Cathedral and the Alcazar. The Alcázar of Seville started life as a Moorish fort, and is now the oldest royal palace still in use in Europe – the upper levels of the Alcázar are used by the royal family as their official Seville residence. Both the Alcazar and the Cathedral are UNESCO World Heritage Sites, along General Archive of the Indies. The Cathedral is the largest gothic cathedral in the world, and the 3rd biggest cathedral behind St Peters and St Pauls.

But enough about the history of the place – sevilla is just a great place to wander around. After a while carrying my backpack I thought id better find a hotel and stumbled across Hotel Maestranza, a gem of a place, clean with great staff, cheap and 200m from the Cathedral. But best of all it was surrounded by great Tapas bars.

After trying a few, I wandered back to the hotel where the girl behind the counter knew her tapas bars and pointed me at the best one. Had a great time there socialising with the locals. One girl was off to brisbane to work as a pharmacist and her doctor boyfriend was going out for a holiday. Suggested they go to the whitsundays. When they went, I talked to another doctor who had just graduated along with her very charismatic lawyer boyfriend. Asked her why she smoked and she said its becoming a big problem for spain. Healthcare is free and hospitals are struggling. She is trying to give up but its hard as everyone smokes.

By 6pm the bar emptied out (only to come alive again after 9 evidently). I had a Flamenco show to go to so that suited me. It was about 40 minutes walk away (which was unusual as everything in Seville is close). I took the opportunity to wander the steeets again and take more photos.

The flamenco show was very touristy but still very enjoyable. Its not a local dance but was brought here by the gypsies. Very spectacular and very skilful. Reminded me of Strictly Ballroom. Ifound out later there was a more aurhentic (free) one but I didnt really care – I really enjoyed the one I went to.

After my walk back, I dropped into another tapas bar, but it didn’t live up to expectations so off I went to bed.

Next morning it was off for my bike tour of Sevilla. We met our guide, Desiree at 10 along with 3 young guys from New York and off we went. We started over at Triana, with it yellow houses, mirroring the colour of the bullring. Here we rode along the river and to the oldest church in sevilla, a converted moorish mosque. It was a real cooks tour, stopping for breakfast, visiting the site of the 1929 world expo, stopping off to see desiree’s friends at a coffee house, seeing the world’s first tobacco factory (where the problems first started) and a hundred and one other places.

The tour went on and on, way past its alotted end time until Desiree’s boss called to say he wanted the bikes back. Then we all had photos with her boss and some other random guys that turned up, before all retiring to a few old authenic tapas bars.

Afterwards I just managed to fit in a visit to the Alcazar, and its garden, as inspiring as Versailles, but so much closer to the centre of the city. The Alcazar was built in the dark ages but you wouldnt know it. It simply stunning – evidently one of the best remaining examples of mudéjar architecture going around.

Then it was time to go to the bull fight. There were three matadores on the schedule and they had two fights each. There was a crowd of about 10, 000 there in an ancient ring. The start of each fight was interesting as the bull had a bit of a chance, but then it went downhill from there.

A lot of people dont realise but the fight only ends when the bull is killed. If the bull isnt killed then the matadore goes to jail. I won’t say much more, but it was definitely a one off experience for me. I’d been to an abbortoir as a kid and seen animals put down humanely, but there was nothing humane about this. I found the idea of a crowd watching a killing to be very bizarre and more than a little bit disturbing; and it occurred to me that there is a fine line when it comes to humanity. The celebration of Spanish masulinity as represented by the bullfight is highly engrained in the culture and will be hard to vanquish – but it certainly needs to be in my opinion after witnessing the cruelty first hand.

After the fight, I hung around for my new found friends from NY to turn up to no avail, before I decided to return to my favourite bar . This time I found some english speakers, a banker from inner london and his teacher wife (who had also been to the fight and had come away with the same opinion). As they went to leave, a couple of girls came up after hearing my aussie accent. They were aussies working in london. I was interested to find myself really enjoying socialising with australians after not seeing any for a while. They had their boyfriends with them so the 5 of us tried to find an open bar at 1am on sunday morning.

We managed to find somewhere and then managed to thoroughly upset an english couple sitting behind us with our loud australianess. They left after a while saying they never did like australians. Hope we get the same result in the cricket.

Next morning I just had time to check out the cathedral before stan and judy swung past to pick me up.

And so ended a brilliant weekend in my new favorite European city.

For photos see https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.4666965365028.1073741849.1620379103&type=1&l=fbbab04cb9

Water, Water Everywhere

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We left our anchorage in Cabo De Santa Maria early and got out of the entrance at slack tide, which made it a lot easier than coming in.

We pointed east and as we were motoring we decided to make some water. Stan pulled up the floorboards to check on which tank the water was being drawn from and found a bilge full of water. Something was filling it up and the automatic bilge pump (and alarm!) had failed to kick in. Luckily the Lagoon comes with three sets of bilge pumps so we quickly turned on the manual electric one and pumped out the water.

We then went on a witch hunt to find out where the water was coming from. Eventually after some searching, we found the culprit – one of the 230V salt water pumps for the airconditioning units had blown a seal. We shut off the sea cock and pulled out the faulty bilge pump. Luckily it was a nice calm day and Judy stood watch, while Stan and I had our heads down in the bilge. We worked out that the culprit was the sensor and I few emails later we had Oceancat in Mazagon on standby to have a look at the problem.

We made it into Mazagon just after 3 and quickly found Monica from Oceancat. Monica turned out to be another gem, couldn’t be more helpful. In no time at all she had the parts ordered from Lagoon in France. I also got her to have a look at another leak, that Jorge had diagnosed as coming from the shower sump. It ended up to be a good move because they worked out it was coming through a join in the fibreglass where there os a separate section of fibreglass, for the fishfinder transducer, the holding tank outlet and toilet inlet, just behind the owners bathroom door.

So with a wait for parts and a lift in Peurto Sherry (outside of Cadiz) organised for a weeks time, we booked La Mischief into the marina for a week and set off in a hire car to explore Seville and its surrounds.

See photo at https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=4666968565108&set=a.4666965365028.1073741849.1620379103&type=3&theater

Desperately Seeking Crew

~ stull61 ~ 1 Comment

I have a gap that desperately needs filling.

Stan and Judy leave me in gibraltar on the 10th and cas joins me in valencia on the 25th june.

I have a spare cabin from now until 25th June that needs filling.

I will be in morocco at marina smir (10nm from gibraltar) until the 9th june and then in gibraltar from 9th to 19th june getting out of EU for a while.

Then on the 20th june I set sail for valencia.

So if you are anywhere in the vicinity and want to come sailing on a beautiful lagoon 421 catamaran and explore gibraltar and the costa sol along the way then let us know.

Racing into Harbour

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We needed to drop by another Lagoon dealer called Oceancat in a place called Mazagon, so that we could pick up a plug for our emergency swim ladder that had been recalled. It was a bit far for a day sail so we settled on Cabo De Santa Maria, near Fago, about 40nm along the coast from Lagos.

The day started off well and we soon had our newly repaired geneker up, going along at 6 to 7 knots.With a few hours to go, the waves started to build so we made the decision to drop it. We were still going along at a good clip with the geneker out, but the wind instructs were starting to act strange. The True wind was only showing 7 kts and the apparant wind was down to 0. We were travelling along at 7 kts so that was pretty good. Only problem was there were white caps starting to appear and we eventually worked out that the wind instruments weren’t working.

As our 2pm rule had passed, we decided to err on the side of caution and put a couple of reefs in. As we went outside a large fish farm, we noticed we had company – another 40 cat had crept up behind us. As we got closer to shore where we had to head in through a breakwater and into a large estuary behind, we dropped our sails and turned on our motors. Our new found friend kept on sailing. It was a nasty entrance, with the tide rushing out of the estuary, against what was now a reasonably strong wind. With our two 75hp earning their keep, we were being tossed all around the place in the whirlpools that were forming near the entrance as it went from shallow water to a deep hole back to shallow. We were doing 7kts of speed but only 3kts over ground. Meanwhile our new found friend had his whole sail up and was flying in first behind then beside us through the narrow entrance. I was not all that impressed as I struggled to keep La Mischief going straight. As he sped past, I realised he only had small outboards and his only way in was to get enough speed up and sail in. I think he must have gone through here before.

Safely in the channel, we motored around to the anchorage, where we joined about 20 other yachts at anchor for the night. As we anchored, we noticed that our wind instruments had come back to life and were showing 40kts of wind – perhaps a voltage drop problem. Something else to add to the list.

See photo at: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=4666965845040&set=a.4666965365028.1073741849.1620379103&type=3&src=https%3A%2F%2Ffbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net%2Fhphotos-ak-frc3%2F468772_4666965845040_15290026_o.jpg&smallsrc=https%3A%2F%2Ffbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net%2Fhphotos-ak-prn2%2F983598_4666965845040_15290026_n.jpg&size=2048%2C1360

Round the Cape to the Bottom of Portugal

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We left Sines at the crack of dawn, which was quite a sight with the red light on the colourful fishing fleet. We had another big day ahead, wanting to get round Cabo De Sao Vincente and into the Algarve, on the south coast of Portugal.

It was another lovely sail down the coast with the winds and waves behind us. As we got near the cape the winds started to build. We had the geneker down by that stage and through in a couple of reefs.

It was an amazing transformation from the Alantic swells to the flat water of the Algarve. The wind picked up to 30kts and was were speeding along on a nice reach, a much better angle now we had turned the corner.

We decided we would strikeout for Lago, making it a long 75nm day, but we had had great winds all day and had made excellent progress.

As we neared Lagos, we could see a thunder storm developing in the distance. Stan suggested we drop some speed so we could time our arrival into Lagos after the storm had passed southwards.

As we got closer we dropped the main as the winds freshened. Remarkably the seas remained completely flat, but the wind kept climbing as we neared the storm. It peeked with a short gust at 77kts (a new record) but it felt like about 30.

That was its last hoorah as we passed safely to the north of it, missing all those nasty looking lightening bolts. We found out later one of the yachts in the marina was hit by lightening. Youch!

It was a nice motor into Lagos,past a spectacular coastline, soft sandstone chisled by the weather into grottos, honeycomb columns sticking out of the water, interspersed by nice looking beaches. Much of Lagos tourist trade involves boats taking hoards of people out swimming, kayaking and sightseeing amongst these formations.

We found the anchorage just off the beach and dropped the pick in 4m of water. What a lovely spot to anchor – the view once again spectacular.

We’d booked in with the sailmaker at Lagos (Fofo’s), recommended by Jorge, to tidy up our geneker that had taken a bit of a battering coming bck from Sesimbra. The geneker now gets put away religiously after each use. We packed up the geneker into its sail bag and popped it in the dingy, for the ride into town.

We tied up at the collector jetty and asked at the marina if we needed to check in with the authorities, which according to the cruising guide is a particular requirement for Portugal if you are a non-EU boat. But the guy at the marina office said it was not necessary. So there you go once again.

After dropping off the sail at the sailmaker, Stan andJudy took off for a mammoth 4 hour walk along the cliff tops, which they highly recommended. I stayed around town to do some chores. Everyone I ran into seemed to be from England. There were english living here, both in the marina and in town and plenty of english tourists. The pubs all sold Guiness and everyone at the phone shops and chanderlies spoke good english to cater for their clientele.
After lunch, we had a wander around town, picked up the sail and headed back to La Mischief.

Net morning, we headed out early in the dingy to do our own spot of Grotto touring. With cameras clicking, we leisuring weaved our way around, between and sometimes through the rocky formations.

Dingy tour over, it was time to up anchor and head East.

For photos see https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.4625286363079.1073741846.1620379103&type=1&l=f0aca0b395

Heading South Again

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With mast fixed and working beautifully, and the weather fining up, off we headed to Sines, some 50nm away.

Stan and Judy were especially keen to get going, as they’d been on board for a while now,and they were looking forward to a bit of adventure on the high seas. Stan had also eaten Lisbon and Cascais out of food and was keen to try and eat his way through some more fishing towns further south. I’ve never seen someone eat so much (ok – I have but they were teenagers and don’t count). But he’s pretty active – a cycling nut – we now have two fold up bikes on board that Stand and Judy brought with them. And they hike whereever they can, so he does chew up a lot of calories. But still its good fun, ribbing him about it.

Our days on the ocean are pretty set with the weather now settled. We start off motoring, then we fly the geneker for a while, then the wind picks up in the afternoon, so down comes the geneker and out going the genoa. Then the wind picks up some more so we reef. Then we get there. Its all downwind sailing so pretty nice in a cat, even when its blowing hard.

Sines was a nice spot. We got a good anchorage off the beach inside the breakwater. The cruising guide said we needed to pay the marina 35% of the berthing fees to anchor, so we trotted off to the marina, only to get a strange look and told anchoring was free and no need to check in.

So off we went to explore the town. First stop was dinner (of course) and Stan had taken quite a liking to Sea Snails. I wasn’t so sure I wanted to sit at a table with Stan watching him eat sea snails but I endured. They must have been good because the restuarant did a roaring trade in take away sea snails (BYO tupperware container). Afterwards we had a wander around and visited the fort (that was closed) and the statue of Vasco De Gama, who was born here and left to discover the sailing route to India from Sines.

Not a bad spot to spend an afternoon.

For photos see https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.4625295803315.1073741847.1620379103&type=1&l=1fc657df84
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About Time that Slacker Did Another Blog!

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Time for some more blog entries … well overdue…. got to stop being so busy exploring to actually sit down and write about it….

Cascais looked like a great place to send some time and we were a little disappointed to leave the next day on the incoming tide to head down the river towards Lisbon, where we would catch up with Seaway, the Lagoon agents and finally get our mast fixed.

The motor down the river is quite spectacular. It was a Sunday so half of Lisbon was out racing their yachts. Reminded me a bit of Sydney Harbour. We sailed past the Monument to the Discoveries and under the 25th April Bridge, which was designed by the same bridge guy that did San Francisco’s Golden Gate bridge and it shows. Another first for me – sailing into a nation’s capital city.

We pulled into the Doca de Alcantara, and were immediately unimpressed. The marina sits  behind a commercial dockyard; and between that and the noise from the April 25th bridge, it was noisy, dusty and very unappealing. Add to that the marina staff who really couldn’t be bothered and we felt like getting out of there quickly.

We wandered around Lisbon for the afternoon and then caught up with the Seaway guys the net morning, only to be told that Lagoon had only just shipped the parts and they would be there in two days time. Despite being the bearer of bad news, the Seaway guys were very good and very professional and I would recommend them to anyone with a Lagoon that wants anything done. I think they are fairly used to doing a lot of warranty work there as a lot of Lagoons travel past.

And they did have some good news in that Jorge, the shipwright lives in Cascais, so we were able to leave our horrible surroundings and go back to Cascais, where we anchored in the beautiful bay just around from the marina.

This is one of the best anchorages we’ve encountered, great protection from the north and right opposite some lovely swimming beaches. Lots of colour and movement to watch on a nice sunny day. On the days that it was not sunny (and very windy) it was also a great anchorage.

Wednesday came and so did the parts, but by this stage Jorge was busy on another boat and we had to wait to Saturday morning for Jorge to turn up, only to be told that the wrong mast track had been ordered for the top of the mast. It’s evidently different from the one lower down. Jorge also found a problem for the way Lagoon have attached the square top rig – the way they attached the line was highly suspect and Jorge went away to make us one that would last more than a couple of months. Something for all you square top rig owners to check. Jorge turned out to be a real find. He’d spent 14 years working for Beneteau and one of his jobs was setting up the mast and sails, so of all the places we could have picked to get this problem fixed, this turned out to be the best. And he lives in Cascais, which is a much better place to park a yacht than Lisbon itself (and with the train there is no need to sail down to Lisbon).

So with promises of parts being here early next week, we decided we would go off and check out Portinho de Arrabidda, which our sailing guide described as one of the most scenic anchorages in the whole of Portugal. We motored across the bay in little wind and managed to put up our geneker for some of the way before the wind changed on us.

Arrabidda is a national park and the way in is across some shallow sandbars. But its worth it as you come to this beautiful bay off a pretty amazing beach. The town isn’t much, just a couple of restaurants over the water, which made for a pleasant setting.

Although the cruising guide said anchorage, we found out we couldn’t and had to use one of the pink mooring balls, which are evidently supplied by the National Parks for visitors. They were day use only so we had to go round the corner and anchor up next to the cliffs, which to be honest wasn’t a bad option given their spectacularness.

After a couple of nights there we headed back towards Lisbon some 9nm and anchored off Sesimbra. The holding here wasn’t that good and we took a couple of goes to set the anchor. And even then, we 70m of chain out, it still didn’t set well as we found out when we got back after a day on shore and found we were a couple of hundred metres down wind of where we were when we left.

Sesimbra is a very pleasant holiday and fishing town with a very old castle perched high on a hill behind the town. And whenever there’s a castle high on a hill behind a town, Stan and Judy don their hiking shoes and head towards it. And it turned out to be a very interesting and scenic castle too – well worth the walk.

That night the wind picked up, but our reset anchor held firm. I bought a handheld GPS with an anchor alarm (not that easy to get) so now I don’t have to leave the instruments on draining the boat batteries – I just take my portable unit to bed.

Next morning started to head back to Cascais. We thought by following our 2pm rule, we would be okay, given all the weather forecasts said max of 25kts. It quickly picked up to 55kts and we had made the mistake of leaving the geneker up (furled but not put away in its locker). We had some fun as the top started to unfurl and we needed to get it down on the deck and away in very strong winds. Stan did a great job I have to say.

Not only were the winds strong, but they were coming directly from where we wanted to go. We had one of our 75hp motors going full pelt and a little bit of jib out doing 6kts through up and down seas. Unfortunately the fish traps were still there and the spray was horizontal, so out came the dive mask so I could pick up and dodge the fish nets.

Boy this is a strong boat.

Safely tucked up in Cascais, we worked out we would need to be there until Sunday, two weeks to the day since we hit Lisbon. Never mind, there are worse places to be holed up. Jorge told us the name of an excellent restaurant – Mar de Inferno –  which served the best seafood in Cascais, and a beautiful cliff top location to boot.  We also caught the train into Lisbon a coupe of times. We had a great night at a jazz bar followed by a restaurant with Fado singers and portuguese guitar, getting the second last train back to Cascais and falling into bed at 2am.

We also visited the Maritime Museum and saw some great street performers on a busy Sunday afternoon. To top off all the beautiful architecture, there are these cute little trams that zip up and down the narrow, hilly streets of Lisbon. Lisbon turned out to be a great city to hang out in.

Finally, with our mast fixed (thanks to Jorge), and the weather fining up, we pointed La Mischief south and set sail.

I’ve had some troubles synching Facbook with wordpress so I’ve decided on a new strategy. I will just put the one set of pictures on Facebook and provide a link (see below) for all you non-Facebook users to see the photos (even though they are stored in Facebook you can still follow the link and view them).

For Lisbon photos see https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.4563768425169.1073741842.1620379103&type=1&l=b546638ec0

For Arrabidda photos see https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.4612461722471.1073741843.1620379103&type=1&l=61de40b020

For Cascais photos see https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.4563758024909.1073741841.1620379103&type=1&l=fa75d1958a

A Night of Bad Singing … and Al Gets Right into FaceTube

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There’s something about that Ooroo mob – they tend to be dangerous to hang around.

We arrived at Cascais and promptly got a berth in the very expensive but very nice and well run marina right next to them.

This time they were equipped with a guitar and some more guests in Alison, Casey and Owen, meaning Al and I were completely outnumbered – what hope had we got.  We hadn’t seen Ooroo since A Coruna so there was a bit of mischief to catch up on.

Su turned out to be a pretty good guitarist and I turned out pretty much the same as I’ve always been at singing – four letters starting with C – you know the rest. But still it didn’t stop me trying – and with the help of lots of marina supplied red wine (They give you a bottle of very passable red when you check in), I convinced myself that I was up there with Frank.

With one iPad displaying the chords for Su and another one with the lyrics on for the rest of us, we ploughed thru some of our favorite songs, even managing to successfully avoid “Big Red Tractor”.

It was a great night of Mischief and Ooroo-ness;  but please note that we’ve had to apply the 7pm rule and posted no photos what so ever, despite Al (the social media Luddite) threatening to publish his very embarrassing videos on FACETUBE!!!!

All that did was make us laugh even harder.

Into The Portuguese Trades…And Without a Mainsail

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Leaving Porto, we were keen to get to Lisbon to get our mainsail fixed. It was frustrating motoring along in the Portuguese trade winds, unable to take advantage of being blown down the coast. Instead, we were a motor boat with a very tall mast.

We headed for Figuerira da Foz, 62nm away, the place where Ooroo first hit Portugal. It was a pretty non-eventful motor, getting there in good time. We arrived on the 1st May, to be told it was high season and the prices had gone up accordingly. It didn’t feel like high season as the whole town was shut for a public holiday. We were glad to get going the next day, bound for Nazare, a short hop of 23nm.

Nazare turned out to be a great little spot. The marina is small and very scenic, with the fishing boats tied up right next door. A couple came in whilst we were tied to the end of a finger jetty and expertly missed our stern by inches as they swung around to berth. At least someone round here can drive a boat, we’ve seen some terrible yachtie and powerboat drivers.

Nazare was definitely in the holiday resort category, with a beautiful beach running along the front, bordered by a majestic cliff face at one end. Alex reminded me that this is where they surf the monster waves coming off the Atlantic. None of those today thank goodness.

After visiting the mandatory boat shop to replace a shackle that had come loose off our topping lift at an incredibly low price (prices in Portugal are interesting – anything made here is incredibly cheap, anything imported is incredibly expensive – courtesy of a 23% VAT), Al and I then ventured into town to check out the “action”. At 5pm the streets were buzzing with lots of pommy and german tourists. By 8pm the place was dead. We sat in an almost empty restaurant – the locals saying its because all the waterfront real estate is now owned by out-of-towners that only come here fro 3-4 weeks a year.

Next stop was Peniche, another great find.  As we only had 25nm to knock off, we decided to check out Sao Martinho do Porto along the way. Here the sea has widened a breach in the hard cliffs and carved out a crescent shaped bay out of the softer rock behind. Quite spectacular, but not a place to linger as any sort of swell will trap you in there for days. Sightseeing over, we headed for Peniche and got there in no time to find another attractive and this time reasonably priced marina. We parked behind an Irish cat that had evidently played lets see how fast we can ram this collector jetty the day before. Lucky we parked behind it as it left before us the next day.

The music festival was still on and the place was full of Uni students and local tourists. Its a petty the place doesn’t get more tourists – it deserves it. About 4pm the music started and we went over and checked it out after dinner. It was loud but I think we were a little early as nobody was there. The music went on to 5am so obviously people came later.

Next morning it was off to Cascais to catch up with the Ooroo crowd. But that’s another story….

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Porto, oPorto

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Porto (or oPorto as the locals call it) was on our must see list. Its one of the oldest cities on the planet, going back to Roman times. The city itself is UNESCO World Heritage listed and full of really old stuff.

But first we had to get there. Porto is on a river which has no marinas, so we found ourselves heading for Leixco, a nice marina on the coast, with a metro station 15 minutes walk away.

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After a 30nm motor into Leixco, we checked in and headed for the metro station. The metro is nice and new, and drops you in the centre of Porto after a 30 minute ride.

Stepping out of the metro station, you are immediately blown away by the majestic old buildings surrounding expansive squares. You are also struck by the number of tourist police everywhere, trying no doubt to stem Porto’s pickpocket reputation.

After wandering around, taking snaps of all the impressive sights, we stopped for a bit to have the obligatory glass of Port and watch the world go by. I think we both decided that one glass was enough; and we would go back to drinking Portugal’s excellent beer and red wine.

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The one thing you really notice about Porto is its steep. It was okay going down all the way to the river; but then we had to get up again. The water front is beautiful with all the old style  boats, complete with wine barrels, lining the waterway. We found a nice terrace bar overlooking the river and had a beer. More crowd watching.

Then we began the climb up again, though wonderfully narrow streets, past museums and churches. Once up the top we wandered over one of the main bridges, high up over the river, where we could look down on where we had just been.

At this stage we were getting rather peckish, so we made our way back into the old town and found somewhere outside to eat. Here we ran into a young German girl and her friend, who had just got back from a working holiday in Perth, Pemberton and Broome. Small world.

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After a big day, we hopped on the metro, looking forward to getting back to the boat and crashing. The trip back on the metro was fine, but we needed to cross a bridge back to the marina – and that bridge was upright, letting two container ships pass under. Bummer – added another half an hour to two tired gents.

And on top of that, we also had an early morning start as we were religiously sticking to our 2pm rule.

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