Porto, Portugal

Everywhere I have been, one of the things that I am continually amazed by is how close everything is. The houses are stacked together like Lego bricks, the roads are narrow and used by vehicles of all description and size, and history is everywhere you turn. More than once I’ve shown my North American bias by expecting something historically significant to be more… something. Maybe some chain link fence or an adjacent parking lot or signage. But chain link fencing is more likely to indicate construction or renovation projects; there is no space for adjacent parking lots; and the signage is usually present, just not wildly obvious.

So, Porto was one of the places that I didn’t really have a plan for, but mild internet research had revealed that most of the places tourist-type people wanted to see were a significant distance from the cruise terminal. I booked on the HAL excursion that was basically a coach that picked you up at the ship and dropped you off in the historic district, return pickup at 2:30, no other hints or clues.

So I wandered around loose for a bit…

Hi Mom! (She wanted to see pictures of me everywhere… I take crap selfies, so this one and only is for her.)

Another narrow street that you would avoid with extreme prejudice back home. Here, it’s the way to get around.

What do you see in this picture? Because if it’s not two churches separated by a very narrow house, then you need to look again. Apparently back in the day you were not allowed to build two churches next door to each other, so a house was built in between them. Problem solved.

The problem I was trying to solve? I haven’t managed to make it into a yarn shop since Amsterdam. There were rumors being passed around by the onboard knitting community of TWO shops within blocks of each other in Porto, but I wasn’t sure where they were in relation to the historic district.

There was only one way to find out… hello Google?

Guess they weren’t that far away after all. (Don’t look now Shannon, but that green in the front might work for that thing we were talking about…)

We were already docked in Lisbon this morning before I rolled out of bed. This is another city I didn’t really have a plan for, but we are docked two minutes from a very large public square. There’s probably not any yarn in my future today, but maybe sangria and a patio view?