Porto - boat trip and back to Toulouse

Saturday 14 September

Porto - boat trip and back to Toulouse

Bit of a disturbed night, maybe the Grand Marnier flambé crepe was one too many courses.  At least I didn't get up to dance on the tables to the rhumba played by the Cuban Quartet!  At least I don't think so......

So after packing and leaving our bags in the hotel lobby we had another big hotel breakfast and decided to walk through the little streets again

heading down to the river and do the river cruise in one of the motor powered Gondolas.  

We got there with about 10 mins to spare, a queue soon formed and we had to clamber over the first boat tied to the wharf and over the ladder to the second boat which was tied to the first.  

The seating was just loose on the deck, about 6 rows of wooden chairs which people sat on or moved to suit.  The River Douro must always be calm!  The boat became very packed so they started filling up the first boat which wasn't leaving for another hour.  Yesterday the boats had very few customers, but being the weekend there were so many different languages on our boat and I was sitting next to a lady from New York who was talking to a lady from Holland.

We left on time and slowly made our way mid stream, unfortunately there was no literature and understandably no commentary, but in was nice being able to see the riverside from a different angle.  

 

The river looks tidal so a bit of power is needed.  We did the seven bridges cruise which took about 50 mins,

 

it was interesting to see the really ancient ruins of Porto's previous docklands,

 

(There was a cycle race up to the left of the bridge in this picture)

and some of the beaches. It was also good to see the rowing clubs competing in a race - maybe it wasn't a race, they didn't look that synchronised  so perhaps a practice run?

The tour was nearly over

 

and the boat pulled in to the south bank where we had lunch previously, so we decided to get off here,

 

And take the gondola up to the top of the bridge, the view down from the gondolas shows the roofs of the many cellars lining the waterside,

 

and in the water were many boats with one oar at the back for steering,

 

I think they were sardine boats and they competed in events. 

 

We then got the Metro to 'El Corte Ingles' the new shop we had seen on the previous bus tour.

We had been given flyers for this shop offering us 10% off everything, and for overseas visitors a further 23%VAT could be claimed.  We saw the overseas customers information desk as soon as we walked in, so they made it easy, showed my passport, filled out the forms and gave me my card.....  All I had to do now was shop till I dropped.  I didn't really want much, but it's funny how you see people walking around and you think that's the top I would like, or the skirt or the shoes, etc.  when it comes to finding them I can't decide, the shop was huge, floors and floors of mainly designer clothes, but with 33% off just one or two special pieces would be ok.  Some were already 'on special', but where do you start, I tried, just made a bit of a sweep to begin with, but ended up on the top floor queuing up for lunch to think about it.  The queue was too long and time was running away, so, determined to buy something I went down a couple of floors saw a few things I liked, tried them on and bought them.  Experience with claiming back VAT has not been good previously, but this sounded too good to miss.  It wasn't, finding the right accounts person was a challenge, having found her in the basement, we then had a long and tedious bout of form filling, then half an hour later we had our letter which we present to some customs officer in Toulouse, (which would probably take another half an hour) and we get the princely sum of €13 back.  Don't ever bother trying to get VAT back on overseas purchases it isn't worth the time!

We were running a bit short of time by the time we got back to our hotel, asked for one of the pieces of baggage with the left over crackers and cheese and went up to the 9th floor where they had a garden terrace, sat in one of their blow up loungers and had what there was for lunch, and of course finished off the port.

Time to get our bags and head off to the airport.  Had a few problems getting our tickets at the Metro, automatic "user-friendly" machines in a foreign language - needs a credit card, not sure if we will end up in the Foreign Legion with no money, fortunately 'customer service' guy comes to help, we wait 20 mins in the ticketing office, our number comes up, lovely assistant spoke English quite well, and we got a ticket to the airport.  

The trip took 40 mins, got out at the airport, and waited for EasyJet to tell us our bags were too big, too heavy, too many, fortunately we were ok and we were on the plane back to Toulouse.

We arrived back at 10.10 and James met us.  It was lovely to be back with the family again, it felt like Toulouse was our home.