June 28.2012

We left Boston at 0445 in the rain and met up with S&A at the Spirit.
We were at Stanstead by 7.30 and the sun came out.
The flight was the usual,bog standard no frills but perfectly adequate and a learning experience.

Landed at Porto at twelve and were on the road by one in a black VW Polo. Thomasina Tom Tom let me down so Sue stepped in with hers so we made to Ponte de Lima by two. The parking here is a little unusual, the world and his wife seem to park on the sand bank by the river.
Lunch was a pizza preceded by a piece of warm bread accompanied by the most fabulous goats cheese. It was a good job we shared the pizza, very nice indeed. The waitress was very helpful, though not able to tell us how to find Rua Agostinho Jose Traviera, as she wasn't local! She did however point us in the right direction for a supermarket, in the loosest sense of the word.
Bottles of Port and Vino Verde prime candidates for the shopping bag followed by milk and tea we trotted off to find our flat.

Well what a stunning surprise, three beds and two baths, balcony overlooking the Rio Lima. Rosa has done us proud.
We spent most of the afternoon trying to avoid a certain person,who shall remain nameless, spotting stray dogs. However by the evening it became a futile exercise, to the point where we were all slipping unwanted elements of our traditional Portuguese dish into serviettes for the doggie bag. We did wonder if we were going to get anything to eat. The town seemed totally devoid of life even at eight in the evening. We found a little place tucked away behind the old prison and we shared a local speciality and a bottle of Vino Verde. We were treated like royalty but ended up eating far too much far too late but hey ho, first days are learning curves after all.

Each time we went out today we were overwhelmed by the tranquility of Ponte as well as the high standard of civic pride and maintainence and the town is even more picturesque at night.

Friday 28th June.

A reasonable night spent by all, traffic noise a little worrisome but only because I'm not used to it.
It was raining first thing and big black clouds over in the hills. We spent while fighting with the boiler again,I had a cold shower yesterday because we hadn't got to grips with this combi boiler and oh boy was it cold!! After that we wandered into town to find breakfast and were surprised to find all the little shops we has missed yesterday, including the bakers. By that time it was knocking on lunchtime so we just had some coffee and did some people watching and decided to brunch back at the flat on bread, cheese and fruit, and courtesy of Annie,
cakes!
Still showery and getting over the trip over decided to have a lazy afternoon.