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We took a three-hour train ride from Porto south to Lisbon and spent a week in Portugal’s capital. We stayed in the Graça district, one of the oldest parts of town. A short walk from our apartment to the top of one of Lisbon’s seven hills.

The neighborhood is served by the 28 tram. We never took it; the line was always long.

Street art.

Our friend Maggie from Portland had a business trip to Lisbon at the same time so we connected. I somehow only have a picture of her and Leena in a store for, uh, rubber duckies.

The pink street in Lisbon indicates (or used to indicate?) the red light district.

We went to the top of the arch overlooking a major plaza on the Tejo river. One of many great vantage points to take in the beautiful city.

A view of Praça do Comércio, the main plaza of Lisbon, from the top of the arch.

We connected with Brian and Jen who moved to Lisbon from Seattle about 18 months ago. We know them from many Thanksgivings at Steve’s and a few other Seattle visits.

Another view from near our apartment. The flag on the left is on the old castle.

We nicknamed this the “little Golden Gate Bridge” and then learned that it was designed and built by the same company that did the Bay Bridge. It seems they took some inspiration from that other San Francisco bridge. It is actually called the 25 de April Bridge.

We visited the São Jorge Castle

We walked a long way (about 4 miles) along the Tejo river to sail for a couple of hours on the river. The marina was under the bridge.

Remember that plaza on the river with the arch? Here it is. The castle is atop the hill in the right center (with the trees).

I took the wheel for a bit.

 

The Belém Tower dates from the 16th century and was part of Lisbon’s defenses of that era.

The pink house is home to the president of Portugal, a beloved man and very different from the Prime Minister of Portugal.

We took a day trip to Sintra, about an hour by train. It’s a beautiful old village set at the foot of hills with fairy-tale castles on them.

Meanwhile, back in Lisbon.

 

 

Leena said it best in an Instagram post. We’ve been to many wine regions in the world, but the Douro Valley may be one of the most beautiful.

We stayed in Santo Adrião, a tiny hamlet of narrow and steep cobblestone streets.

The directions to the place were to drive into town and park at the coffee shop. When you get there, you see why this is obvious. As we parked, our AirBnB host Maria came out to greet us. She offered us a glass of port. And not just any port! She makes port each year with her brothers.

We (mostly Leena) had a great time chatting with Maria. She speaks very little English, and since we speak very little Portuguese, it was a bit of a challenge. But Portuguese and Spanish (where Leena has some fluency) are similar enough that you can get by. We were soon looking through her family scrap book and learning all about her kids and their weddings and grandkids. You know.

Our AirBnB is on the right. We sat out on the balcony one evening with some nibbles (olives, cheese, meat) and a glass of wine. Everyone who walked by smiled and nodded approvingly.

Tiny Santo Adrião is set into the hillside. A shot from the drive into town.

Here’s a shot of the lovely Douro Valley from our first stop, Quinta do Tedo. That’s the Tedo river; the winery is at the confluence of the Tedo and Douro rivers.

And here’s a view the other direction of the Douro river.

Here’s the view from our dinner spot, just a town over from our little village (which is too small to have a restaurant).

At dinner, after the first course of soup, you’re invited to slice some ham for the table. I was advised to do very thin slices. Delicious.

We stopped through the town of Régua on the Douro river and poked around before visiting some more wineries.

We’re right at the end of harvest which means lots of grapes are in fermenting tanks.

Want to stay in a room fashioned from a wine cask? You can do that at Pacheca. The family name behind the winery is Pacheco, but since a woman first ran the winery a few centuries back, it was named Pechaca.

We told you the Douro Valley is beautiful!

After spending the summer back in Portland, we got back on the road at the end of September. We flew to London for a one-day layover, then down to Porto, Portugal.

Porto is the second-largest city in Portugal. We stayed in the old town, and everything about it did feel old: cobblestone streets, narrow alleys, beautiful buildings. From the main plaza:

Porto spans the Douro river with lots of bridges.

We took a 45-minute cruise up and down the river.

Porto thrives on the banks of the river. So many shops, restaurants, bars and people.

We climbed the 200+ steps to the top of the main bridge.

Day 2 featured a food and walking tour. So many cured meats, aged cheeses, delicious olives, and lots of port. We also tried bifana sandwiches – slow cooked pork in a secret sauce.

There are three traditional styles of port: white, ruby, and tawny. We concluded the tour with a taste of each.

On Day 3 we climbed the Clèrigos tower (76m high) for some aerial views of Porto.

We then crossed the river to an area with plenty of port houses for lunch and a few tastings.

We capped the day by taking in the Porto vs Galatasaray (from Turkey) match in Champions League. Porto was slightly better that night and was rewarded with a tight 1-0 win. Leena found the tickets the night before. They were only 15 Euro each and we were in the second row. I’m guessing those don’t sell because they’re so low down it’s almost an obstructed view, but we loved the seats. As you can see, it’s a field-level view, but it’s not at all obstructed.

While in Creel we set up a day trip to see the tallest (246 m; 807 ft) year-round waterfall in Mexico: Cascada Basaseachi. At dinner the night before, I saw a painting/photo on the wall of the restaurant we were at depicting a waterfall in a surreal setting. I pointed it out to Leena and said I was wondering whether it was a photo or a painting. It looked like a photo, sure, but it was also framed in a way that made you think it couldn’t really look like that.

After a couple of hours of driving the next day, we arrived to the viewpoint. The canyon was full of fog.

At first, we couldn’t even see the waterfall, though we could hear it. After about 20 minutes, it began to emerge from the fog.

As it emerged, it soon became clear that it was in fact a photo in the restaurant.

From the viewpoint, we hiked about 45 minutes down to the top of the falls.

From the top of the falls.

Looking back upstream at the river just before the falls.

After the hike, we continued past the falls about 15 minutes to meet our driver. After some lunch, we headed back to the original viewpoint since all the fog had cleared. Here are a bunch of shots of one of the most beautiful vistas I’ve ever taken in. Did I mention this was on my birthday? Quite a treat.

We took a bus from Divisadero to Creel, a ride of just over an hour. It was much cheaper than continuing on the train, and a Swiss couple who happened to stay at the same places as us in Divisadero and Creel did take the train and had an awful trip. Some rocks had fallen on the track and the scheduled one-hour ride took more than four hours.

Creel is a much bigger town than Divisadero. With elections just a month away, there was plenty on canvassing. This generally involved a pickup rolling down the street with giant speakers in the back playing a campaign song while canvassers walked alongside.

On Sunday morning, we went to the bar at the Best Western (actually a very nice bar!) to watch Mexico take on Germany in their opening match of the World Cup. Mexico of course upset the #1 ranked team, and went on to advance from the group stage. That was fun to watch in Mexico, even if they are the US’s main rival.

On Sunday afternoon, the entire town seemed to just cruise the Main Street. We’re talking everyone. Not just young men, but entire families too. Some of the younger kids would ride their bikes. There was a group of a half-dozen men on horseback. Everyone sips away on Tecates. And they go back and forth for hours.

On our first day in Creel we took a hike that went up over a bluff with views of the town and over to some unique rock formations.

As the sign indicates, the next section is called Valle do Los Monjes, which translates to Valley of the Monks. However, it was originally called Valle de Los Penes Largos. I’ll let you guess the translation on that one…

I woke up early on our second day in Divisadero and caught sunrise over the rim of the canyon by mere seconds. Lucky me.

We hiked the Ruta Panorámica to the bottom of the canyon. We started at the rim and worked our way down and around. So many incredible views; this hike is easily in our personal pantheon of hikes.

The trailhead.

Some turns are VERY important.

You can see the cable car that we’ll take back to the top.

The “Did you know?” sign says: “The canyon system is four times larger in extent (60,000 square kilometers) and nearly twice as deep in depth as the Grand Canyon.”

At the start of the cable car ride you actually drop down before starting the long ascent to the rim. A look back.

A sign at the top of the cable car (teleférico) states: distance 2,700m in a straight line or 3,000m above the cable.

We headed back to the Hotel Mirador for another celebratory beverage while enjoying their deck and hummingbirds.

We took one more stroll along the rim and took it all in for a bit longer.

A gallery of panorama shots from the Ruta Panorámica. Appropriate, no?

Divisadero is a small town on the rim of Copper Canyon. We spent a couple of nights there to get in some hiking. After the train ride in, we did a short trail along the rim in the afternoon. All of these are from our walk. The late afternoon light and mix of sun and clouds made for ever-evolving views of the canyon.

We treated ourselves to some beverages at the Hotel Mirador after the hike.

We took an overnight bus from Sayulita to Los Mochis. It was a very comfortable coach, certainly more comfortable than any red-eye flight I’ve taken. We caught another bus to El Fuerte, at the western edge of the Copper Canyon.

Sunset over the El Fuerte river.

We caught a train the next morning from El Fuerte to Divisadero in the heart of the Copper Canyon. The train ride was about six hours long, and we spent long stretches leaning out windows between cars and taking in the views.

El Fuerte station.

The train stretched out before us.

There were lots of climbs along the way. This looks back at a bridge we had just crossed.

I hadn’t done a train ride at all like this. I’d highly recommend it! It’s a great way to travel.

We took a bus from Guadalajara to Sayulita and rented a car for the week for a whopping $13. Not $13/day, but $13 for seven whole days. We stayed in La Peñita, a small town on the beach about a 40 minute drive north from Sayulita. The place was a small RV park with a few additional rooms. We were the only ones staying there besides our host Robert and his brother-in-law Byron. They’re Canadians; Robert and his wife Suzanne recently bought the place.

We spent plenty of time in the pool. The walk to town was just 10 minutes down the beach. We did a hike one day to a view point a bit south of town.

Robert and Byron had us upstairs for dinner one night where we all enjoyed great food and wine and a great sunset.

The recovery after surgery went smoothly. Since they’d gone in primarily through my belly button (which may never look quite the same since they sliced it open), I couldn’t use my core for anything. Sitting up was a process of propping myself up and twisting around while pushing myself up with my arms. I couldn’t sleep on my stomach for a few days. But I hardly needed the pain pills – I basically just took one before bed to ensure a decent night of sleep.

After a couple of days of lying low, Leena asked if I wanted to take a walking tour. Uh, no, that doens’t sound that great. But when she pitched it a second time as a food tour with some walking between stops to eat, I was in.

We headed to Tlaquepaque and met our guide; we were the only two on the tour that day. We started with a walk through the local market. This really whets the appetite!

The local bread is a bit like sourdough and derives its unique flavor from the local water and yeast.

They make hand-made tortillas at the market and sell them at a premium. Here’s the automated tortilla making.

Beautiful produce.

I was very ready to eat at the first stop. We enjoyed birria and cazuelas. Birria is a spicy stew with goat meat marinated in adobo spices. The drink is tequila with a bunch of citrus juices. It’s somewhere between a margarita and a paloma. Delicious.

Some photos from walking through Tlaquepaque.

A tile recreation of a famous Diego Rivera mural depicting several eras of Mexican history.

We also stopped for tejuino (fermented corn drink), chile en nogada, tascalate, torta ahogada, some local chocolates, and a tequila tasting.

This shop claims the world record for most different bottles of tequila (1700+).

Thanks to another day of recovery, I was ready for a tour of Tequila about an hour’s drive from Guadalajara. Like Champagne, you can only call a spirit “tequila” if it comes from a specific area and is made from the blue agave cactus. Mescal is a similar spirit made in different areas and different cacti.

We started with a tasting at a medium producer, Marengo.

I inspected the fermenting tank at a large producer. The smell is STRONG when you open the lid.

Blue agave field in Tequila.

We concluded the tour by stopping for lunch and a cocktail in the town center of Tequila.

We went one day to a screening of Han Solo. Going to the English screening at 2p on a Tuesday means you’re solo while watching Solo! We had the theater all to ourselves.