The Other Side of the River

Today's explorations took us across the Dom Luiz I Bridge and to the other side of the Douro River. We wandered through the fascinating streets of Porto and eventually found ourselves at Livraria Lello and Irmão, an amazing bookstore celebrating its 110th birthday this week. We had to purchase tickets (at a minimum cost) to enter, but the price of our tickets could be used as credit for purchases. It was absolutely beautiful, and my pictures don't really do it justice. (You can check out the link to see more pictures.) From there, we wandered down to the Crystal Palace Gardens, where we spent some time playing on the playground, marveling at all the peacocks, and taking in many beauties of nature. Finally, we headed back toward the river, where we explored the shops and cafes along the water's edge and eventually settled on one of the sidewalk cafes for dinner. Later, Jeff and I snuck out for a little date, which mainly consisted of trying several different port wines, at several different neat places along the river. It was a really wonderful day! Porto has turned out to be one of our very favorite stops we've had on our RTW trip, so far.

Clay woke up this morning intent on getting fresh strawberries,
(which he insisted on referring to as "fresh strawberries"),
so Mimi and Grandpa took him down to the fruit market,
while the rest of us did some school work this morning. 

Ready to cross the Don Luiz I Bridge

Looking back to "our" side of the river.
Our house is the red one about half-way up the hill
on the right side of the picture.

Livraria Lello and Irmão

Crystal Palace Gardens

Date Night:
The last picture is a pub a the base of the Don Luiz Bridge.
That concrete structure, which was used as a base for a suspension bridge in the 1800s,
sits right in the river and is the patio for the pub. It was a very cool place for a date!
The bottles of port are from a cellar across the street from the bridge pub.
We did the tasting with some of their oldest ports, including one that was harvested
the year Jeff was born. We loved all of them!