Port, Chocolate and Rose Wine

 Porto, like most other cities, has several museums. There were a few that caught my eye, actually there were a few that I felt that there was no way I was going to miss them. To get to them, I had to cross the Douro River on the double-decker Dom Luis I Bridge. This bridge is 600 feet high and one of the premier tourist attractions in Porto.

A New Country For Me

 Food Tour is over – Farewells have been said. 

 A friend had said to me – you are only a couple of hours away from Portugal – go!  So I went. I got up before the crack of dawn to catch a bus to Porto, the 2^nd largest city in Portugal. My hotel, the Porto A.S. 1829 is located right in the center of the historical district. I got a corner room, overlooking a square and right above where the street musicians would play. They played from about ten in the morning until about ten at night and they all had amplifiers. I think they were an organized group, each would play about an hour, leave and then the next musician would set up. Some of the musicians were fabulous, some were ok. Nobody was horrible. So, it was a treat.

The Epitome of Fine Dining

 

Today is a special day. It is our last day on our Galician food tour and we are going to commemorate it by dining at a Michelin two star restaurant. The restaurant has also been awarded a green star for sustainability. This is going to be a treat. 

Just A Really Nice Day!

 We loaded up into our trusty bus which took us to a rocky area of coastline. We were going barnacle hunting. We were rather late getting there so the tide was starting to come in which made it a little more dangerous. Most of the professional barnacle hunters had already quit for the day, but we soldiered on. Some of us ventured down onto the rocks to collect the barnacles, while the rest of us perched up on the rocks watching. When we wandered back toward the bus, we found that they had laid out a picnic cloth. We sat down for some vermouth and another sea food pie. The highlight,though, was that the barnacle hunter guide cooked up, in a steamer in the back of his car, all of the barnacles that were harvested.

Conger Eels

 

Today was going to be a big activity day. We were off to the “Coast of Death” where stone crosses on the shore mark lost ships. First though, we visited an establishment in Muxo that was the last traditional Conger Eel dryer in the world. The European Union had decided, in their infinite wisdom, that the many centuries' way of drying eels was not healthy. 

Food And More Food

 

The Camino de Santiago is is a network of pilgrimages leading to the shrine of the apostle James in the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. The scallop shell is a symbol of the Camino, it's lines representing the different routes that pilgrims travel from all over the world.  By the 1980's there were only about a couple of hundred registered pilgrims a year. Currently that number has swelled to about 200,000 pilgrims a year. The different routes are mostly through Spain, France and Portugal, all with varying distances. I think the longest distance is about 500 miles. I am rather excited because I am going to walk the Camino but alas, I shall only be a segment hiker. I think the segment that I will be walking will be about five blocks. 

Clams and Wine

 Today we walked from the hotel over to the other side of the harbor where we met with a local woman who was going to teach us the art of clam digging. I can't remember her name but she was the head of an all-woman cooperative. Well, they billed themselves all all-women but there are currently 240 women and 18 men in this cooperative. We went to her house where she had us put plastic bags over our socks and then put us in big rubber boots. Each of us received a rake and we were off to the harbor to search for clams.