We left Porto this morning after a splendid week sight-seeing. The last thing we did was visit the world famous Majestic coffee house. It opened in 1923 and was, at the time, the place for society types to visit and be seen. Now its full of American, Korean and Japanese tourists and is wildly over priced. With that said, I thoroughly enjoyed my pot of english breakfast tea and a pastel de nata.
We travelled from Porto to Vila do Geres in the Peneda-Geres National Park. To get there we took a train followed by two buses. It took just over 3 hours. Lets talk public transport. I bought two train tickets, Porto to Braga. A distance of 50 kms (31 miles) and a one hour journey on a slow train. I paid €3.75 per ticket. The same ticket in the UK would cost €20. Finn’s 5+ hour bus ride from Porto to Santiago cost €9. Why can’t the UK provide public transport at the prices the Europeans enjoy?
The journey to Geres was a surprise. The scenery was beautiful as we climbed in to the mountains above the Cãvado river and reservoir. Perhaps I should have been expecting lovely scenery but i wasn’t.
It must be low season because Geres is not busy. A number of the bars and restaurants are not open and those that are have not got many customers.
Luckily the town has a small tourist information office that was open when we visited. Our luck got even better when the woman informed us there are a number of marked hiking trails that we can access from Geres during our 6 day stay in the National Park.
Trip Advisor came up trumps. We had a wonderful dinner at Lurdes Capella, a family restaurant that has been in the same family for 13 generations.
Wandering Boomers 
Hi Sheila and a Kevin. Loving hearing all your news. You must both be fit as fiddles whilst we’re sitting on our backsides watching the women’s World Cup – come on England. Today is the last day of our U.K. road trip holiday – we’ll have covered about 1200 miles by the time we get back to Clacton tomorrow. Been extremely lucky with the weather, sunshine seems to have followed our trip. Got quite a lot of walking in – up in Scotland part of the John Muir way. He was born in Dunbar but emigrated to America at an early age and was one of the founders of several national parks there.
Last few days we’ve been in Cheshire where I was brought up. Been lovely visiting my old haunts and also managed to meet up with 4 school friends that I hasn’t seen for almost 50 years. Good old Facebook. Picking Mum up at Hilary’s in the morning and hitting the road home, ready for the forthcoming heatwave.
Talking of public transport – £9.60 for the 2 of us to go from Grasmere to Ambleside – 3 miles at most!! Then again, the Manchester trams are great value at £4.50 to travel all day.
Keep on enjoying, love Bren xx
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