Peneda-Gerês National Park

 In an entire day out, many hours of driving and mild hikes to a couple of waterfalls, we only saw a tiny portion of this mountainous park. It will be at the top of my list of places to return to next time I'm in Portugal!

Braga

Ponte de Lima

 A very very lovely town that bills itself as the oldest in Portugal!

Oh, and Aunt J let me taste her vinho verde, the regional specialty. (BTW, there will be a whole post on food soon.)

Douro Valley

 Another day trip from Porto to the Douro Valley, where port wine comes from. The bridges of Régua were stunning.

I loved the scenery, as usual.

And mostly we might have gone to vineyards for tours and port tasting. I learned a LOT about port, and soon forgot most of it, so I'll just share one thing with you that I learned: The vineyards let spiderwebs accumulate on the barrels because the spiders take care of the mosquitoes.

I didn't manage to drink much of these, but they were all tasty.

Oh, and we got to take an hour-long cruise on the river, even!

It's supposedly routinely over 100 degrees F here in the summer, so I'm glad to have visited in the winter and for this spectacular vista.

Pavia Staircase

 A day trip from Porto...almost 600 steps up, even more down, 5 miles, total gorgeousness!

This is also, by the way, the place where you can find the world's longest suspension bridge. Fun times with auntie love.

O Porto, My Porto

Sure did love this beautiful city, with the cool, misty fog of a California morning, the windy fairytale river, and the city center with a dense, European coziness but also wide open plazas for the claustrophobic. Gorgeous, just gorgeous. I would for sure return here. Maybe stay a good while.

It was also quite fun that my Aunt J and her sister, S (who is not technically my aunt, because my Aunt J is an aunt by marriage...but whatever, S is now an honorary aunt; a girl can never have too many aunts) arrived in Porto a day after I did and we will be traveling together for the rest of my time in Portugal. So this feels like a completely different trip than my first three weeks solo, but in a super fun way. We toured Porto in a tuktuk...

...and tram...

...and foot, and my oh my.

These people can tile ANYTHING!

 

Aveiro / Costa Nova

 I said a reluctant goodbye to Nazaré to head further up the coast. Good thing EVERYWHERE I go is amazing and beautiful so I don't have much time to regret leaving the previous place.

Aveiro was no exception. a very lovely town to walk around, with its shimmering canals.

I'd gotten some travel advice to just skip this town because taking the gondola ride was really cheesy and not worth it. I mean, I didn't take a gondola ride for that reason, but it was still fun to take pictures of them and the town itself was completely enjoyable and worth a visit on its own merit!

I do wish I'd been here in the right season to see these salt flats on the edge of town drained for the salt harvest. Instead there were a bunch of lovely birds enjoying their current flooded state. Though you would never know because the moment I got close enough to take a picture the birds would skedaddle.

All in all, so pretty.

AND I got a good tip to take a side trip out to the fishing town of Costa Nova...

...with its famous, characteristic, fishermen's striped houses.

The beach was also gorgeous, duned, with an impressive boardwalk system, as large chunks of the coastline has up here.

Bra-vo.