Joining The Locals in Lordelo.

LORDELO.

The time change from Spain plus the extra hour play havoc with our sleep pattern overnight. We wake up to find a family on the stone table next to the van reading the bible. There is a cold wind so they are wrapped up. They stay for well over an hour.

We head off to Porto after breakfast. An overweight guy points us into a free car park. It's well worth the couple of Euro tip. We find the centre is full of students. It transpires that it is the equivalent of Rag Week. The roads are closed and there is a fantastic atmosphere.

We follow the walk shown in the guide book, 2 kilometres highlighting the best of the city.

Rosie trying to work out if this the tall tower mentioned in the book. It costs Euro 5 to climb the tower but it is the hour's queue rather than the cost that puts us off.

Next stop is the railway station. The tiles make up fabulous scenes. They also appear on the outside of buildings.

You can cross the river on a couple of levels. We settle for the lower one, the upper one posed too much of a climb.

Lunch is taken off the main strip on the south side of the river. 5 course Touristica menu with wine costs us 30 euro.

On to our final destination which turns out to be a concrete town to the east of Porto. The journey is not an easy one with much of it on cobbled streets. We are parked on the side of a small river. There are two bars in quick succession. Both are full because Porto are playing football and it's live on the television.We choose the second on the basis that it seems to have an older clientele. We watch the game sharing a table with a local who thinks that we are French. The barman speaks excellent English. We drink as normal, everyone else appears to nurse one drink throughout and most of them are non-alcoholic. Three beers, two ports and a packet of crisps comes to just over 6 Euro.