A relatively cold and dreary day, today we have all day in Porto, a place we’ve been looking forward to visiting – another new port for us. We waited too long to sign up for the ship’s HoHo bus tour, so figured we’d just book it on our own. It isn’t that much more money and we could get the “premium” ticket which includes not only the HoHo but also the Tram city tour and the Fuindais funicular. Figured that was the best deal.

Sadly, the day doesn’t start out as smoothly as we’d like. First of all we are in Matsinhos, a port town approximately 30 minutes away from Porto. Normally not an issue, but it is really hard to figure out the time schedule for the first HoHo bus out of Matsinhos. It looks like 10 am – and it is only a little after 8am now. No way we are waiting that long, we’ll not be able to see everything and be really rushed to get back here to the port. When we exit the port, we see a Yellow bus waiting in the pick up area, figuring we’ll take a chance, we go over there to ask the driver if we can get on here, showing her our reservation. Unfortunately, as we knew, that bus is only for the ship tour. Bummer.

The helpful security guard, who is really sweet and totally acerbic in the funniest way, tells us we should take the port shuttle out to the main town here and get a coffee or something to wait for the bus. This is where he lives and he says it is a great town to visit. Well, we don’t have many options at this point, so we take his advice, hop the pier shuttle and walk out to explore. We find the Yellow HoHo bus stop right outside the pier, which is convenient, but sort of worthless for the next 2 hours. The visitor center right next door isn’t even open yet, so we stroll to the beach to take a picture of the Tempest of the Sea sculpture memorializing the greatest nautical disaster recorded off of Portuguese waters when a fleet of fishing boats sank killing 152 crew.

Scanning oru surroundings, we don’t see any available coffee shops. Hmmm….this is not going well. Walking further into town away from the shore, we realize we’re being stupid. We can just take the public bus into Porto and catch the first HoHo there. Duh. A little slow on the uptake this morning, yep.

The bus was perfect – bus stop was really close, bus pulled up minutes after we arrived, it was cheap and easy to hop on. After a nice 30 minute ride along the coast, we got off right by where the HoHo began its route with 5 minutes to spare. Couldn’t have asked for more.

From here, well, we’d like to tell you everything went smoothly, but….. not to be. We did get on the bus, managed to get decent seats upstairs, and that was the end of the success for the morning. The bus is packed to the gills, which is fine, except it is really hard to take photos. But ok, so, we take too many photos anyway. We manage to snap some of the cool bridges that span the Douro river as we cross over into the other side of the city.

But, as we make a few more stops, it is apparent that there is no capacity control (definitely not like A Coruna and the Torre!). There are people standing everywhere – including 6 very obnoxious people who are standing in the aisle UPSTAIRS with us. Besides the fact that is so dangerous, they are hanging onto the back of our seats, because, well, the bus is rocking and swaying – and did I mention dangerous? It wouldn’t have been so bad if when they got yanked in one direction or another, so did those of us whose seats were being used as handrails. And of course, they completely blocked any chance of a view. Everybody sitting around us was getting irritated, but there wasn’t much we could do.

We did manage to get some photos of the architecture, shots over the river to the cathedral, and the fools did finally disembark so it wasn’t so annoying sitting upstairs.

We had wanted to get off at a couple of stops, but everything was so crazy crowded and busy, we didn’t dare. Even the Livraria Lello, a bookstore that is reputed to be the inspiration for a lot of Harry Potter Hogwarts scenery had a line a mile long. Yikes. Needless to say, we’re not stopping there. Also couldn’t manage a picture of that, but did manage to get some lovely shots of Igrejo de Carmo with the gorgeous tile murals on the sides.

After that, well, we were sort of done. We did see the entire town – both sides – but the crowds, the construction, it just didn’t do anything for us. And the Tram? Ha! The lines for that wrapped around the block. Big bummer. At least there’s great architecture and art around. They day isn’t a total loss.

Hopping off the bus down by the river, we started to walk toward the funicular, then decided, why? We knew it wouldn’t be any different from the tram. Instead we sat at a lovely little cafe on the seaside wall walk and had a cappuccino while deciding what to do next. Which ended up being that we went back to Matsinhos on the public bus!

What the heck. We came, we saw, we left. Just one of those days, but it turned out to be beautiful – windy and cold – but beautiful and we saw some very pretty scenery. And Matsinhos is actually a lovely little beach town with lots of restaurants and parks. We hopped the bus back and found a great place in the business district called Temperos da Zezinha, where we sat outside under an umbrellas and sampled a bunch of different tapas – olives and octopus pate (that came with the drinks but also were at a charge) – assorted chourica, alheira (sausage) croquetes, a super octopus salad and complimentary brandies – or some liqueur – for dessert. Fabulous.

Walking off our lunch, we headed down the beach promenade which is huge and massive, just like the beach. We had planned to walk all the way to the end and go to the park there, but it started to rain which made us reconsider and turn back to the pier.

Instead of waiting for the shuttle, where the line was huge, we ended up walking the length of the pier, protected from the rain and wind by the breakwater wall. When we arrived at the pier, our sweet security guard was there, and he was so excited to see what we had done, and where we ended up. He was very proud of us for taking the public bus and happy we enjoyed “his” town so much. What a dollbaby.

And that was that. Dinner at Aqua with Kadek again, then the magician who we still cannot figure out for the life of us. And we go now specifically to see if we can figure out how he does everything! Nope. He’s good.

Then to the balcony and bed. Tomorrow a half day in Lisbon where we plan to do, well, a whole lot of nothing, to be honest!