Time for a few more details about the next trip. The agenda is shaping up like this:
May 31st we fly out of Vancouver to Porto. We will have a stopover of several hours in Calgary where we expect to taken out for lunch by my brother and sister in law...you are listening aren't you?
Another short stop in Frankfurt and then we arrive in Porto on June 1st.
In Porto we have an apartment for 3 days in the Ribeira district, and on the 4th day will hop on a train out the Douro valley to the wine region. Or maybe we take a boat, or the old steam train along the river, to Pinhão for a night at a pension/winery. They will pick us up at the train station and hopefully drop us off there the next day.
We will take a train back to Porto (not a lot of choice unless you have a car) and then grab another one to Coimbra. The next day, June 6th, we pick up a rental car which we will have for 6 days. We don't have a room booked for several nights in this middle period of the trip, but there are a lot of small towns with incredible historical content and sites in this region, and while they are not far apart the buses and trains might be tricky and time consuming. We don't want or need a car in Porto or Lisbon but other than that it will be handy.
We have booked 2 nights in Tomar which was once the home of the Knights Templar, and 2 at a hostel in Sintra which is just a short hop out of Lisbon. We will go there after dropping the car off in Lisbon, and will return to Lisbon by train for 3 days from the 14th to the 17th when we will fly to Paris for another week at the same condo we rented 2 years ago.
May 31st we fly out of Vancouver to Porto. We will have a stopover of several hours in Calgary where we expect to taken out for lunch by my brother and sister in law...you are listening aren't you?
Another short stop in Frankfurt and then we arrive in Porto on June 1st.
(pictures not mine, for now. Mine will come later)
In Porto we have an apartment for 3 days in the Ribeira district, and on the 4th day will hop on a train out the Douro valley to the wine region. Or maybe we take a boat, or the old steam train along the river, to Pinhão for a night at a pension/winery. They will pick us up at the train station and hopefully drop us off there the next day.
We will take a train back to Porto (not a lot of choice unless you have a car) and then grab another one to Coimbra. The next day, June 6th, we pick up a rental car which we will have for 6 days. We don't have a room booked for several nights in this middle period of the trip, but there are a lot of small towns with incredible historical content and sites in this region, and while they are not far apart the buses and trains might be tricky and time consuming. We don't want or need a car in Porto or Lisbon but other than that it will be handy.
We have booked 2 nights in Tomar which was once the home of the Knights Templar, and 2 at a hostel in Sintra which is just a short hop out of Lisbon. We will go there after dropping the car off in Lisbon, and will return to Lisbon by train for 3 days from the 14th to the 17th when we will fly to Paris for another week at the same condo we rented 2 years ago.
