Porto Portugal - day 1

Time for another adventure.  This time we are taking our mini-adventure-buddy with us, Wren.  She is a couple weeks shy of her second birthday which means that she can still fly as a lap-child but is a handful on international flights.  Why Portugal, you might ask?  It's clean, which is important when traveling with a little person (anyplace you can't drink the water is not realistic with a toddler), relatively small, warm (after Iceland, which was beautiful, I was voting for someplace warmer), safe and not very expensive.  We managed to get a super amazing deal on plane tickets back in November ($900 round trip for the three of us) so we decided to make it happen!

Jeff and I have learned that traveling with a toddler takes a lot of gear.  Not just the obvious extra stuff like clothing and diapers but also, car seats and backpacks, entertainment and just-in-case items with a huge variety of description and use.  Fortunately we have an amazing little girl so the 22-ish hours of travel and 3 flights went rather well.  We got to Porto late last night and managed to all get to sleep around 12 midnight. 

The morning dawned rainy but beautiful.  This is our view out of our little apartment.

The sun came out at this point and it was a beautiful morning.

 We were able to get breakfast brought to us in the morning and ate in the apartment which was the perfect low-effort start to vacation with a slightly groggy toddler and still slightly tired parents.  We all woke up a little before we really wanted to so that we could adjust to the local time.

We really wanted to get out side and moving to help get our internal clocks set on Portuguese time so we wanted to be outside today.  We rented bicycles and rode along the Douro River to the Atlantic Ocean.  There were some scattered showers throughout the morning but it was beautiful.  The bicycle was about 4 miles each way.

Jeff and Wren with the rental bike.  It was a great way to keep moving and see a lot with a toddler.  She loves bike rides.

This was a lighthouse we saw on our way out on the bikes.

This was a random pergola that we saw while riding and is my favorite picture for the day, beautiful colors!  This pergola and beach was called Praia da Luz and was really lovely.

Jeff and Wren enjoying the sunshine.

Wren on a rock after she enjoyed exploring the beach a little bit.  She liked finding sea shells.

We took a little lunch break and watched the ocean  Lunch was fantastic.  There was a cool playground that Wren played on a little while both before and after lunch.  It was nice to let her wiggle a bunch before putting her back on the bike.

Super cool play structure right off of the beach that was shaped like a boat.  As you can see by the dark clouds it was time to get moving back towards the apartment.

We got Wren to take a nice afternoon nap which timed out nicely since it was raining.  Jeff and I enjoyed some éclairs from a shop that is famous for making them, delicious!

Once Wren woke up and the rain stopped we went for a walk around Porto.

There is a unique architectural style to Portugal where the buildings are tiled with blue and white pattern tiles. Here are examples of two of those types of buildings.

This is the tile close up.  It is very detailed and appears to be hand painted based on the variations in the tiles.  I'm assuming newer tiled buildings are machine printed tiles.

Does this remind you of the Eifel tower?  The same person designed this bridge.

This is another image of the bridge that we took riding the funicular which is a cable car up the steep slope of Porto.  You can walk up the stairs or ride.  We thought the ride would be fun. 

Had some nice afternoon lighting when walking around.  This is the other side of Porto looking back towards where we were staying.

Family photo, aren't we cute?

Wren blowing bubbles with a street performer.  She thought it was awesome.

Steep, narrow streets of Porto.  Many streets have stairs or are too narrow for cars.

We had a fantastic dinner at a small local restaurant and went back to the apartment for some much needed sleep.  Wren went right to bed but had a little jet lag and decided to be awake from 2 to 4 AM. Not ideal but hopefully she sleeps good tonight. 

The night view from our apartment.