The Charming Minho Province

Due to the clock situation, we woke up an hour early for our excursion. This meant, of course, that we could have a more leisurely breakfast in our room than we had planned. Another advantage was that we could see the night sky with its crescent moon, a planet glowing near it - Jupitor? Saturn? Venus? Mars?, even the Big Dipper.
We set off on schedule for our first stop, the town of Guimaraes, a 45-minute drive from Oporto, Portugal. But not before we walked through arguably the most magnificent port terminal in the world. It was designed with sweeping curves and covered with white tiles placed on different angles to catch the light. It reminded us of the scales of a fish. It was stunning.
Guimaraes is a lovely medieval hillside town with charming architecture and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We visited the Ducal Palace built in the 10th century which is now owned by the State. It has a small Romanesque chapel. It was the 15th century home of the Dukes of Braganza and is noted for its unusual chimneys - most of which were for decoration. There is some "fine" furniture which looked and smelled pretty mildewy to me. From there we went on a walking tour of the town with our most excellent guide - good English skills, a fantastic sense of humour, and appeared to love her job. She was terrific. We never felt rushed yet she moved along in keeping with the timetable.
From here we travelled to the town of Braga, whose claim to fame is a shrine at the top of the mountain, Bom Jesus. This was on the route pilgrims took and they had to crawl up the 100 or more steps on their knees to reach the gaudy shrine at the top. The views from the top were fantastic but I doubt that the pilgrims enjoyed them. We then had another walking tour of the old town which was filled with Danes there for a football game between them and Braga. They filled the bars wearing gaudy Viking hats, team colours, and calling out cheers every chance they got. The game was at 8 p.m. I am not sure how many would even remember that it was on by then. We visited the oldest church in Portugal, with the most magnificent pipe organ and gold decoration in the baroque style. Once the Portuguese discovered the gold mines in Brazil, they decorated all their carved wood in gold gilt.
Once back at the ship, I tried to sort out my computer problems at the computer lab and managed to get some blog entries out. By then it was 4:30 so I decided to go to trivia. (Norma was sleeping.) Met Garry and Owen, the Scots, the chap we met the day before and he brought in two others to our team and we won! Now I have another 3 points.
Back to the room for a well-deserved nap before our dinner at Prime 7.