Vila Real and Porto
After Buçaco, we lost interest in Portugal. I hate to say it. The north was beautiful with its terraced vineyards, with homes clinging to the steep hills. Rivers run below the high roads. But Brownie and Buçaco were heavy on my mind.
We stayed one night in Vila Real–at an odd little hotel called Hotel Mira Corgo. The highlight there was the young waiter who proudly told us about the delicious “veggie-tables”. It was one of those priceless sayings that we use to this day. And by the way, the white asparagus and mushrooms were excellent!
In this area, we stopped at Casa de Mateus–to see the cedar tunnel. This was an old house, with fantastic gardens to tour. The cedar tunnel was planted in 1941, and now the aromatic tunnel is 115 feet long, 25 feet high and they’ve built curved ladders to groom the outside of the tunnel. It is so dense that I cannot imagine it rains on the inside. We got to enjoy the swimming pool at Vila Real for a little bit and then headed up to Porto.
Porto was disappointing to me. The Hotel S. Jose front desk lady was rude; she pointed at my Life is Good t-shirt (which had a dog on it), and said “we don’t allow dogs”. Me: “I don’t have a dog with me.” She: “Fine. Ok.” Me: ??? And then there was an odd moment about the parking (She: “we don’t have parking.” Me: “you said you did when we called to make the reservation. Look, here. It’s on the confirmation.” She: “Fine, ok.”) She and the stiff air-conditioned room were shocks to our systems.
We spent a few hours seeing the sites and then back to the hotel to repack. Tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. we were off to the Madeira Islands.
