Vines as far as the eye can see.

It's been an interesting couple of days, sadly the  cruising part is not going according to plan. Apparently they have had huge amounts of rain during March and the river is in flood and flowing too fast to safely navigate upstream towards Spain. This means we have been moving back and forth along a section of the river in the hope that the situation would improve. At lunchtime today they decided that upriver was not going to happen and they have modified the program accordingly. We are still able to do the shore excursions apart from the tour to Salamanca.

This church in Lamego was at the top of a hill - 836 steps. Thankfully the bus could drive right to the top. 

Day 3

This morning we went to the town of Vila Real which was a drive through some amazing vineyards – every inch of space on every hill was terraced for vines (and it was very hilly, the road was very twisty and I was glad to be on a bus rather than sitting beside Fangio aka Rob). Vila Real was very quiet – Sunday so nothing was open). We had coffee and a local pastry and wandered the old  village.

A beautiful example of the terraced vineyards.

The Mateus Palace. They built the pond to get the reflection so the palace looked bigger.

Looking down on the Douro River.

From there we went to Mateus Palace, now the summer residence of the Mateus family.  When I think of Mateus it is Mateus Rose but the family has nothing to do with the wine other than their palace appears on the label.

This afternoon has been a quiet time on board. We are finding out about cruise food – there is so much of it and it’s all been excellent. It's a worry when you arrive in the restaurant for lunch and there is so much cutlery on the table.

I'm still having issues with this new technology. It's certainly not as easy as my old computer. Wish I had that with me.

Tonight is spanish themed with sangria, paella and flamenco music and dancing.