Beautiful Day Photography’s Weblog

The town that we flew into is called Porto and it is in the North country of Portugal. My sister Marisa and her husband, Cedric, rented a beetle convertible to drive all over the countryside Port wine tasting and sightseeing the day before the wedding. We found out that Port wine is called Port, because it started in Northern Portugal and was mainly shipped out of Porto, so they named it Port. They have COMPLETELY different grapes that are only grown in this region and nowhere else in the world; grapes I had never heard of before. Only recently have their port wines been exported (since 1996) and usually only throughout Europe, so it’s next to IMPOSSIBLE to get these wines in the US.

The Douro Valley was SO beautiful and we had the most BIZARRE weather, from sunny and hot, to raining, to cold and windy, to the clouds breaking and a rainbow. It was magical either way you looked at it and PERFECT for the day, but we were constantly putting our convertible top up and down throughout the day. Our first stop was this 16th century palace that was part of and still IS part of the Portuguese Royal family. They had these insane gardens straight out of Alice in Wonderland and antique art and furniture from ALL over the world. We went on a tour throughout the house and in their chapel attached they had a REAL saint relic…The bones of St. Michael and people pilgrimage there to see them.

We then went to Quinta De la Rosa and tasted all types of ports and wines. I tried White Port for the first time. I didn’t even know White Port existed. People drink it as an aperitif and it’s SO good. I bought a bottle. The “quintas” are like little bed and breakfasts all over the wine country that are also port wineries. There are HUNDREDS of quintas all over the region and you can just pop in anytime to go wine tasting. It was SO wonderful. I then got super excited, because the wedding reception and place we were staying the next night was at Quinta da Vista Alegre ( Or House of the Happy View)…so I WAS happy to be at another Quinta the next day!

That night my other sister, Elizabeth, joined us all for an amazing dinner at “Sesenta Setenta”. It was SUCH a hidden secret, that our cab barely made it down the alleyway through the medieval town to get us there. The other cab we took didn’t even know it existed! We were so stunned by this gorgeous building and how you truly felt like you were in another world. We were treated like kings at this restaurant since we were a referral from the Sheraton (the nicest hotel in town) and we had the chef come out and talk to us and ate (for the second night in a row) an AMAZING meal! I will never forget that place! The ENTIRE day was one of the best I have had in a while.  It was SO fun to be with my two sisters, my brother-in-law and Robert (whom they had JUST met for the first time on this trip) and just have such an awesome adventure.  We all had a blast!