Relaxing holiday

Despite my years of award winning travel consultancy, the Editor is in charge of 99% of our holidays.

So after years of being up early, jam packing every inch of sightseeing into a day and regularly topping 20,000 steps in a day, times have changed.

Today we didn't have to catch a train until 09:20, yet there we were, walking to the train station before the sun came up because we woke up early.

The station was covered, surprisingly, with tiles.

We got on the right train at 08:20 to Guimarães, saw a palace, a castle, an old town and then having seen everything in a leisurely manner, made our way to the station.

Unfortunately, google maps had taken us to the bus station. A quick calculation had us getting to the train station with 5 minutes to spare. Of course the entire 19 minute walk was straight uphill. The biggest hill of the holiday. We did it in 16 minutes, spent 74 minutes on the train, wondering about all the eucalypt trees on the way and ended up back at our room (it's uphill all the way).

A quick break and we headed off to purchase fabric, Portuguese tarts and more music. 2 out of 3 ain't bad. No records purchased but if you are in Porto and want records, head to Vinyl Discs. It's on the 3rd floor in a tiny room with sooo many records.

Unfortunately with the recent boom in vinyl, prices have exploded. That, and the fact I already own most of the records I pick up, had me leaving empty handed. (Editor's note: I can wholeheartedly recommend stopping by Natas D'ouro for Pastel de Nata, which you would know as Portuguese tarts. I'm now on a mission to learn how to make such crispy pastry)

A quick trip to the supermarket to buy food supplies was followed by a quick trip to the same supermarket to buy the stuff we forgot to buy and all of a sudden the 20,000 steps of the past became the 20,000 steps of our present. Just as well. We needed to burn off the burger and chips calories.