A brief wander around Regua

We had a sort of rest day our second day at Quinta da Pacheca. We walked the 15-20 minutes or so down to Regua, the town where we had arrive on the train. There's a nice pedestrian bridge that crosses the river and we happened to be there at almost the perfect time when the shadows made the reflections of the arcs in the bridge look almost like complete circles.

There were several river cruise ships docked there as well as a few smaller, local boats. We looked into the latter, but one was just a kitschy one-hour cruise for EUR 10 and the other was an afternoon/evening cruise for several hours, but then you had to take a train or bus back, so we just continued wandering around the town.

Like Porto, most of the tiles on buildings were set up quite high rather than at street level, though there were several places where various scenes had been painted on tiles, most related to the making of wine which makes sense, given all of the vineyards in the area. I've included a few here.

I think it's safe to say that one of the highlights was stumbling across a farmers market just as it was getting over. Lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, as well as dry beans and meats. Outside, there was a truck laden with huge bags of potatoes and at the side of the building an enterprise selling live chickens and chicks. Cherries are in season and Kimberley loves them, so we decided to buy some from a woman at one of the stands. The price seemed to be EUR 1 for an entire kilogram (over two pounds) of cherries. Suffice it to say that we didn't need an entire kilo of cherries, and just asked her to stop filling the bag at a certain point in time, but she kept pressing to add more when we offered the EUR 1 anyway. I used my best Portuguese to tell her it was fine but she still seemed confused why we wouldn't want to get our full kilo. Lovely lady.

I'm still not quite used to seeing meat hanging in the windows. The big ham things, yes, but I still find the goats or sheep (not sure which) a little unsettling.

We stopped at a somewhat local place for lunch that seems to be the regular lunch place of several employees of a local company (based on their matching uniforms). It was also the type of place where I think the server appreciated my attempts at Portuguese given her limited English. We had a table overlooking the river and that gorgeous view and some large salads only set us back about EUR 10.

After the long climb back up (always the hills....) to Quinta da Pechaca, we enjoyed a few more hours relaxing and reading on the deck of our wine barrel suite. Just so beautiful.