May 27 – Leixões (Porto), Portugal

Weather – 31º

a unique 14,299 liters

Steps – 6,239

Humidity – 41%

Leixões is the port to get to the city of Porto about 14 km away. It is an area  in the city of Matosinhos (pop. 50,000).

Porto (pop. 1.8 mil) is the second largest city in Portugal, 280 km north of Lisbon (€200 Uber ride, if you needed to) and was first settled in the 2^nd C BC. This is where port wine comes from and is named after Porto.

This is our second visit to Porto, the first being in 2006 when we were on a Douro River cruise.

tasting

a few of what Burmester makes

What seems like a massive tour group is split into 2, so that we are 2 groups of 22 – this is a good
number. We travel on a large coach bus. Chris and I, as usual, head straight to the back. In our experience, everyone and I mean EVERYONE wants the front of the bus. Unless you get the first row, each seat provides the exact same view out of the side. A side view is perfectly fine with us.

Being at the back, means we almost always have 2 seats each – we can spread out and yesterday shifted from one side of the bus to the other as the sun moved. There were 2 guys today, one who sprinted to the front of the line, so he and his partner could sit in the front row. He was a big dude, who made himself even bigger buy extending his elbows while his partner caught up to him
so no one could get on the bus before them. I’ve seen some pretty awful behavior on tour busses, but this might take the cake.

cool building over my shoulder

historical port boats

Anyway…after we were seated comfortably at the back of the bus, Ricardo, our guide, explained all things Porto to us. We started with a drive along the coast as me made our way into the historical centre of Porto. We saw folks enjoying the beach on this HOT day, a lighthouse, 2
forts and other random sights – this was all while driving.

Once we arrived in Porto, we visited Burmester port wine cellar for a tour and a tasting. As you would expect, we learned the history of port, how it is made and the different kinds. The most interesting thing I learned was that each barrel has a different capacity because they are hand made. I thought all barrels were hand made and this is the first I’ve heard of them being a different capacity, makes sense I guess, I just never knew this.

very refreshing

church on the hill

We tasted a white, tawny and ruby port. I’m not the biggest fan of port…a bit too sweet for me – my favourite was the white. This was accompanied by a piece of dark and milk chocolate – interesting pairing.

Next was a short walk to board a boat for a scenic 1 hr sail along the Duoro river –
looking at Porto on one side and Vila Nova de Gaia, which is technically the other side of the river from Porto. We are always afraid of the sun on boats that we fear may not have shade…there was shade. 

on either side of the river

We saw many historic buildings, passed under many bridges, had jet skiers zoom past us, all while listening to narration of what we saw.

no idea who this is, but liked it

pretty fancy McDonald's

Ricardo, of course, was keeping track of the 22 us the whole time…that is until he lost 2! He walked all the way back to the Port cellar, but nope…lost. We never did find out what happed. Hopefully a health incident wasn’t the cause, which is the only explanation I can think of for people to get lost!

After our time on the river, we had some free time in Vila Nova de Gaia. We wandered for a very short time but quickly found a spot for a refreshment – sparkling white sangria. We only had 40 minutes, so figured we’d rather relax with a beverage, than rush after wandering more.

one of many bridges

might be the best steak I've ever eaten

May 26 –Lisbon, Portugal

Star Legend

Weather – 31º

Steps – 5,302, sounds about right for a ship day

Humidity – 40%

The jury is out on the matter of jet lag, all I know is that I sleep fine in the night (over 8 hrs last night), but my eyes still want to close many times throughout the day.

We ended up choosing to take an Uber (€7) to the port…I didn’t need to be a

tight, but functional

sweaty mess when I arrived, and I have a bum shoulder that is still angry since all of the hauling I did on our travel day.

home for the next 15 days

It took about 45 minutes to board. Once on, we booked our shore excursions, unpacked and found the nearest bar – I had a Spritz made with non-alcohol sparkling wine, still a bit of booze from the other ingredients, but super low and I wouldn’t know the difference. Nothing is very far on this boat – there are a maximum of 312 passengers, about 1/3 to half the size of Regent.

We are on the Windstar Legend for the next 15 days. This is 2 shorter cruises packaged together. Because we’ve packaged 2 cruises together, we receive the
‘All-In’ package. This might also be because this cruise wasn’t selling well. The All-In package gives us pre-paid tips, WIFI, booze, and $1000 in shipboard credit. This makes things kinda equal to Regent. The $1000 won’t cover an excursion in every port like Regent, but it’ll cover about 2/3. The overall cost is similar to Regent.

We chatted with the first bartender we found…she is all business – not super friendly, but super efficient. I’d like to get to know a bit

flag raising

about the people we encounter, but I appreciate efficiency. She let us know that basically everything on the bar menu is included in the All-In package. We found a Cognac for $128 that isn’t included – fine with us. Otherwise, all is included.

tasty!

Then it was time for the safety drill which involved checking in with one person, listening to the safety info (barely audible) via the PA system, and watching the safety video in the room. That’s it. Not sure how safe this is, but I’ll take it.

Windstar has a bit of a sail-away production where they unfurl the Windstar flag while dramatic music plays. We found a drink and a spot in the shade (as usual, this is hard to come by) to watch the festivities which lasted a total of 5 minutes.

We hung out for another half an hour, showered and changed for dinner. Before we left we met Ede, our room attendant from Sumatra, Indonesia. 

Then our usual evening routine began…pre-dinner cocktail, dinner, show/post-dinner entertainment. I think our post dinner entertainment will mostly be listening to one of 2 ship musical groups – one duo, one a 4-piece band. They played a variety of music, and we didn’t hear Lady in Red once! It was mostly
70’s/80’s with a solid Disco set – fine with us so far. This small ship doesn’t have entertainment beyond listening to music.

The crowd is still older than we are, but is probably a bit younger than Regent, of course this always depends on the length of cruise, itinerary, and time of year, but in general that’s what it seems like. I’ve seen only one kid, a few multi-generation families – all very much like Regent.

under the Lisbon bridge

my dinner choices

We ate dinner in the main dining room. We are still figuring out this whole Al-In package. We know that any wine by the glass on the menu is fair-game – Irma our waitress suggested we try the night’s feature wine, I asked to make sure it was included – she assured me it was. However, we couldn’t find it on the menu…she again assured us it was indeed included. I guess Hannah (our bartender from earlier) told us not to over think things…we should have listened – there are plenty of wines to choose from, so we hardly want to pay extra if something isn’t included.

Dinner was fine…nothing knocked our socks off.

May 25 –Lisbon, Portugal

random cool building

Lisbon flag

Weather – 31º

Steps – 13,809

Humidity – 37%, I’d guess higher, based on my personal observations, but…science

We may be delusional, but our hope is that our jet lag is over and we’re on a European sleep schedule. Maybe not quite (it’s only been a day, but other than a few winks on the plane, we stayed awake until last night at regular bedtime and were up today at regular time. I expected to be up at 3 or 4 in the morning ready to go, but nope…8AM I was up. Time will tell, if I’m right. I was pretty sleepy all day despite having a good amount of sleep last night, so maybe my body it’s ready for Europe time.

One of the hotel’s sustainability efforts (which makes total sense) is that their included breakfast is al a carte rather than buffet. Al a carte   is much nicer. Grazing has it’s charm also, but sitting at a

Chris buying the ginja

table with fresh fruit, bread, meat, cheese, and pastries waiting for you to sit while the juices cart
wheels over (we both had passion fruit and mango) before your order is taken is significantly more civilized as compared to the usual buffet situation of elbowing and jostling. In addition to what was waiting for us on the table as we sat down, I ordered yogurt with fruit, nuts and chia; Chris had a couple of eggs – both meals were of a very reasonable size. Little went to waste.

salt cod shop

cool square with even cooler tilework

After breakfast we joined the hotel’s free walking tour. We started the tour in the basement of the hotel. The hotel opened in 2017 - during construction, they unearthed 14^th century walls within these walls were also artifacts. Ana, our tour guide talked about the walls, the artifacts and the massive earthquake and following tsunami of 1755.

The theme of today’s tour was the "Shops of Lisbon". This wouldn’t be out first choice of tour, but it was really a general tour of a few areas near our hotel with shops pointed out along the way.

These shops were quaint and charming in old historical buildings. We saw
linens, stationery, food, salt cod, jewelry, booze pastry, shoes, gloves etc.

Along the way we stopped at the ginja

St Domingos (I think)

castle in the distance

seller – the same one we stopped at a last year on our walking tour. Ginja is a Portuguese liqueur made by soaking ginja berries (sour cherries) in alcohol and adding sugar together with other ingredients with cloves and cinnamon sticks being the most common. Ginja is served in the form of a shot with a couple of cherries at the bottom of the cup – €3.20. We saw other shops selling it for €1 – I was fine with 3.20 for the historical charm of this tiny place.

post tour refreshment

Other than the ginja and a chocolate covered lemon gelato on a stick, we bought nothing. On the way back we saw another kiosk in a square near our hotel similar to last night’s kiosk that seemed like a good spot to whet our whistles…Chris had a beer; I had a sparkling wine.

Although it was ‘lunch time’ we weren’t remotely hungry, so headed back to the hotel for naptown. The room wasn’t yet done, so I ended up blogging while we waited.

I never know how to deal with the whole room cleaning situation. I dread coming back to the room mid afternoon and the room isn’t done. Not the end of the world, some rooms have to be cleaned later in the day, but I want that not to be mine. I’ve been known to call housekeeping to ask that it be done as soon as we are leaving, but I didn’t this time.

ham tasting

The blogging time is down time too…the room is cool and quiet.

One of the hotel’s free activities is ham tasting. This was our late afternoon activity. It turned out to be a private

sign should have said pizza and wine

tasting just for us! Miguel, one of the restaurant waiters explained to us about ham that comes from Portuguese black pigs. We tasted this and Parma ham from Italy and discussed the differences. This is much more like Iberico ham from Spain than the Parma ham. It was dryer and less salty than the Parma ham. This all came with a glass of wine, some bread, and grapes. After about 20 minutes Miguel left us to our snack and wine. It was lovely.

outside hotel

Another one of the hotel’s free activities is a gin tasting which followed the ham tasting. This time there were 6 of us. We learned some basic facts about gin,

the ship's already here

tasted 3 Tanqueray gins, learned how to make a cocktail, learned about tonic waters and garnish, and then one person from each couple made a cocktail behind the bar – that was fun. I made my cocktail with Tanqueray 10 and cucumber tonic. I didn’t realize that only one from each couple would make a cocktail or I wouldn’t have used cucumber!

After all of our lessons, we visited the hotel’s lobby for cocktail hour. Tonight’s cocktail was red sangria – very delish. We drank these along with a couple of small cod fritters at a small table on the hotel’s outdoor seating area. This area is basically a handful of tables outside the
hotel. There’s no grand entrance to this hotel as it is in the historical area of

chuch by dark

Lisbon. We sit and watch skateboarders across the small square along with the comings and goings of hotel guests.

sangria please

Our hotel is close-ish to the cruise port terminal. Not as close as the 5-minute hop from the hotel we stayed at in Southampton, but close – about 20 minutes. We could very easily take an Uber, but we will likely walk. Tonight we checked out the walk without suitcases – it’s doable.  

Then we wandered up into the Al Fama area – very hilly with bars and restaurants. We found a place with outdoor space for our first European pizza. It
was good, which pleasantly surprised me when I saw it come on a paper pizza plate. All of this was washed down with a Portuguese rosé.

Portugal's ready for World Cup!

After dinner we decided to go back to last night’s kiosk for one last white sangria. This kiosk serves drinks in reuseable plastic cups that you return for the deposit
you paid when you bought the drink. We weren’t charged last night, but tonight we were…a simple process.

cocktail lesson

We made it back to the hotel in time for their mid-night snack time – small sandwiches, cheese, cakes, fritters etc. It hit the spot!

cool place to work out

May 23/24 – Calgary to Lisbon, Portugal

Weather

onboard champagne!

– 23º in Calgary, 28º when we arrived in Lisbon

Steps – 10,966

Humidity – 74%

WestJet isn’t the fanciest airline in the world, but after experiencing Emirates, last year I’m perfectly happy with WestJet. I’d almost say you get what you pay for and that is true for WestJet, but I’m not sure (in my opinion) for Emirates.

WestJet is fantastic for direct flights from Calgary. To only need to get on one plane to get someplace is a luxury. This sort of applies to us today. In the fall, we (we being Chris) saw a good price on return business tickets to Barcelona that
he snapped up. We filled in the hotels and cruises after the fact. We (we being me this time!) found a cruise that fit our time frame departing from Lisbon.

Pyrenees mountains

Coming into Barcelona the views were terrific. We were looking at the Pyrenees mountain range.

Because these 2 flights were booked separately, we had to exit security, take a shuttle to a different terminal, check bags and go back through security. After all of that we had time for a couple of hours in the airport lounge for a drink, a snack and a shower – I LOVE an airport shower.

Lisbon seems not that far from Barcelona (2 hrs by plane, 12 by car) but if for some reason (jet fuel issues) the flight is cancelled the other options are few – no trains and the bus takes 10 hrs and I don’t think the bus has pods! We were crossing our fingers that the flights operate. Even if ours doesn’t there are others scheduled for that day. Plus, the cruise doesn’t depart for a couple of days, so we’ll be fine…hopefully!

In the end we were fine. The flight to Lisbon was an hour late, so we missed the evening wine hour at our hotel! But we survived.

airport shower!

Vueling Air seats are TIGHT! These are no Westjet, business pods! I suppose taking uncomfortable flights reminds us how comfortable we really are on some flights. I don’t think I need the reminder, but it can’t hurt. It really wasn’t bad at all for a 2-hour flight

sea of humanity waiting for Vueling!

We are not big folks, and this flight was tight for us. The woman seated next to me couldn’t fit either of her bags under the seat and by the time she arrived the overhead bins were full. She kept one bag at her feet (not under the seat and the other on her lap!) None of this impacted my space, so I didn’t care and the flight was less than 2 hours, but WOW!

We had a checked bag included in the fare we bought, so we checked the bags we carried onto the Westjet flight. This was our plan all along…no worrying about if we would have to gate check our bags, plus then we weren’t schlepping anything other than our backpacks. In retrospect our whole “carryon only plan” wasn’t as advantageous as we thought. Of the 4 flights we will take before we get home, we will check bags for 3 – the 2 small inter-Europe ones and probably the one home on Westjet. The “carryon only plan” definitely limits what we bring and I’m always in favour of bringing less. Cruising these days is not as ‘fancy’ as it once
was for us and although I’d like a reason to wear some of my ‘fancy’ things…I’m happy for less packing angst.

waiting for bags

a tad tight

The distance from the airport to the Corpo Santo Hotel is 10Km, but takes 30 min. Streets are windy and steep – I forgot how absolutely nuts the hills are in Lisbon.

We were checked in and taken to our room in a matter of minutes. This hotel is interesting in that there is complimentary food/drink at all times. Breakfast is included, but so is soft-serve from a self-serve station, pastries,

nuts, fruit, sparkling water etc, etc… Our room’s mini bar is also complimentary. We knew all of this going in, but it is interesting to see. Of course we pay for

welcome snack

everything in the price of the room.

As soon as Ruben, the check-in guy who brought us to the room left, I could have passed out we decided to go for a walk.

We ended up at a small square with a kiosk selling drinks and snacks. We had a couple of white sangrias and then it was passing out time.

drinks and snack kiosk

Spring 2026 vacation prep

cruise route

Springtime in Europe? Sure, sign me up! 2 of the most appealing bits to this is that spring should mean cooler temperatures and fewer people. Well…maybe not. I’ve been monitoring temps for the last while and found historical temps when we booked the trip – historical temps say it should be highs hovering around 20º - ha! The forecast for the next 2 weeks has highs as high as 35º - OMG! That’s not every day, everywhere…but – OMG! As everyone knows, I am NOT a lover of heat…Chris in the other hand...

Spending time in Europe in spring will be new for us. Before I stopped working full-time it was summer or nothing…another perk of retirement.

cruise itinerary

Tomorrow evening, we board an overnight flight to Barcelona followed by a shortie flight to Lisbon for a 24-day European adventure. We will be 2 days in Lisbon on our own. Then we will be on the Windstar Legend for 15 days along the Atlantic coast to Rouen, France. From there we will fly from Paris to

What it’s SUPPOSED  to be

Barcelona and finish with a few days on our own in Sitges, Spain before heading home.

This trip we are taking only carry-on luggage. We’ve realized that if we have access to laundry facilities (and really, who has 24 pairs of underwear anyway??) we need very little. Toiletries are always tricky, but for 3 weeks less than 100ml of everything is perfectly doable. Carry-on only makes us be disciplined with what we bring – no fancy clothes or shoes but sacrificing that for the freedom that comes with no large luggage is fantastic.

🥵🥵🥵🥵🥵🥵

Our itinerary will take us to some places we’ve been to and some that will be new for us. I’m looking forward to more pastel de nata in Lisbon and oysters in Bordeaux. I’ve always wanted to visit the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao and this time it looks like I will. Other look-forwards-to for me are sitting in a pub in Guernsey and shopping for dish towels in Bordeaux.

♨️♨️♨️♨️♨️♨️

Again, a really big looking-forward-to is being in Europe when it isn’t as hot as the face of the sun and packed with people – time will tell.

Ps…this is the 20^th anniversary of the BLOG! I know, I know…I should find a better, newer platform. Or should I? March 23, 2006, was the first ever post and on May 10, 2006, we were in Lisbon!

I’m thrilled to have as many of you along with us!